Richard Kidd, vfx supervisor at Catalyst Media, and Colum Slevin, director of computer graphics for ILM. Kidd photo credit: Chris Ann Brunsmann.

Convergence of Gaming and Film
As more vfx specialists — animators, modelers, riggers and texture/rendering artists — hop between the film and gaming industries, technological and artistic trends are starting to spill over from one to the other. The gaming business has adapted many film technologies, especially those that make games look photoreal and more movie-like. “Gaming is stealing people away from vfx and they’re coming closer to what we do,” adds Kidd.

But in some ways, gaming technology is ahead of that used for film. Realtime technologies, from rendering to MoCap, are used frequently in gaming, and the graphic cards and high-dynamic range imaging (HDRI) used in the gaming industry have improved dramatically. “In gaming, it’s an absolute necessity to have light rendered more dynamically in realtime,” Slevin says. “In our industry, these technologies are fantastic luxuries. They bring massive productivity gains, but they’re less of an absolute business necessity.”

“Gaming technologies are hugely important to the future of the film industry,” predicts Ippolito, who notes that game companies often release a second, much-improved version of a game just a year after the original. “Gaming adapts to technology a lot quicker,” he says, adding, “The real advantage gaming has on the movie industry is organization and asset management. We could learn from them in that respect.”

Games are also starting to influence film vfx from a creative point of view. “Both games and filmed entertainment are about storytelling,” says Kerlow. “Games brought a lot of innovative ways to gain an audience, and movies have learned from that. Games affect how we tell stories and how we relate to images. They’ve influenced a generation. We’re not seeing the whole picture today.”

But while games and film vfx are influencing each other, and there is more cross-over of artists between the two, Slevin cautions that “the actual mediums that the two work in are still separated by a gulf.” Both industries are reaching for more synergies in tools and assets, but “that’s another leap around the corner. Now it’s just a trickle back and forth.”

The trickle should become larger over the next five to 10 years. That, along with the continuing impact of globalization, outsourcing and downsizing, and the effect of new technologies such as realtime rendering and performance capture, will change digital production artists’ role even more. And these issues are something artists need to think about now, suggest those currently working in the field.

Karen Raugust is a Minneapolis-based freelance business writer specializing in animation, publishing, licensing and art. She is the author of The Licensing Business Handbook (EPM Communications).