A discussion about tech, rendering, de-noising, data flows and, yes, AI.
Today on the befores & afters podcast, we’re chatting to Wētā FX CTO Kimball Thurstan about being a CTO of the revered visual effects studio. Kimball started at the studio in 2017, first working on their proprietary renderer Manuka, and then Gazebo. He’s also been the head of the engineering department at Wētā FX, and head of architecture, before becoming CTO.
We discuss a range of topics, including rendering, de-noising, data flows and…yes…AI. Kimball even gives a little sneak peek at new developments in their ML denoiser, and we reconvened after SIGGRAPH in Vancouver to discuss an open source project for a tool that allows users to train ML models but keep track of the licensing of the dataset. That part of the conversation is something we added to the end of this podcast.
This episode of the befores & afters podcast is sponsored by SideFX. Looking for great customer case studies, presentations and demos? Head to the SideFX YouTube channel. There you’ll find tons of Houdini, Solaris and Karma content. This includes recordings of recent Houdini HIVE sessions from around the world.
Listen in, above.
