/In Uxbridge with Paul Neale/

So as it turns out, living in the countryside is not without benefits -- for example, I got to meet Paul Neale in his home! Paul lives in Uxbridge, which coincidentally, is a shorter trip than going to the Toronto office (the former Alias HQ). Anyway, we had a good chat and here is the edited version ;-)

Paul, you're someone who has been active in the 3ds Max scene for over 2 decades. Let's go back to the very beginning -- how did you get started with 3d Studio?

This goes back to a friend who got me started in the business. He was one of the really early guys who got involved, even before the DOS version of 3DS. We're talking spheres...and not even chrome ones. So this friend got me in around the time when 3D Studio DOS Release 3 had come out. I was then attending Seneca College and they were teaching it at the time. Anyway, the year I started doing 3D was the year 3ds Max came out, so I've been using it ever since!

As someone who specializes in character rigging and coding, what is it about these things that appeal to you most?

Coding appeals to the problem solving side of me. I like to figure out how things work and enjoy doing it. I also like modeling and texturing. I enjoy the creation and art side of modeling and texturing.

Going back to problem solving, it must have come from my dad who was a mechanical draftsman and was one of the principal designers for the 3D IMAX cameras from some time ago...anyway, my brother and I grew up learning how things worked. When I started 3D, I was doing everything at first...modeling, rigging, you name it. But over time, I became interested in how I was going to move a character and how it should be rigged. I always tried to figure out a better way, rebuilding rigs and such. People starting passing characters to me and said that I could fix them, so that was how I got started as a character TD. I didn't look for it, it was just something that I turned out to be good at.

What are some of your favourite projects and clients over the years?

Good question. I would say the different ones, moreso than the mainstream stuff. I enjoyed working on Bioshock, that was cool. There were considerations for MotionBuilder or Character Studio, but I suggested that I could write a rig that would allow you to dump straight mocap data onto it, directly in Max. I had never done such a thing before, but I figured it was all just math and there had to be a way to do it! Things like that stood out to me the most. Another client...one I have been working with for 6 years and counting, he's doing a product called Perfect Fit. It's a rehab tool for sports injury and related physiotherapy needs. We did 2000 mocap capture sessions that needed to be physically accurate and exact, and again, I wrote a motion capture system for that, where the data could be brought into Max and dumped right onto the rigs. Having to solve problems on the fly and thinking of things that hadn't been thought of before, it makes the job very interesting for me and that's what I like most.

Another project I'm working on, a bird for an undisclosed client. Doing a rig that will handle thousands of feathers... how do you make a rig that can handle 3000 feathers? I didn't want to pay for a plugin, so I wrote it! I wrote an entire paint system where you can paint feathers right on the surface, fluffing and combing all those individual feathers... all of it is MAXScript. Being able to custom-make what I need to deliver on projects, these are what make them most memorable.

Have you always worked freelance under PEN Productions and if so, what are your reasons?

The only place where I've ever been on staff was at Red Rover in Toronto. I was hired by Red Rover co-founder Andy Knight, to put together a 3D department and get them up and running. Prior to that, Red Rover was exclusively a 2D animation studio. I stayed on for a year and returned to freelancing afterwards. All of the work I've gone on to do, everything from Disney to Rockstar, has been freelance. My clients are spread around the world, from Mexico to England, US and Canada.

What usually happens is an internal artist will reach out to me when they've run into some problem which requires a highlevel TD. I go in and help them out of their situation. I've never looked for work; everything has been word of mouth, either from past clients or from posting and being active on forums like on AREA. I enjoy working out of the comfort of my home, in my bathrobe with a mug of coffee in hand :-)

I've heard that you are also training and teaching at Humber College?

Yes I do. I am a professor, teaching 3ds Max and Mudbox, with focus on modeling and TD. I got the opportunity to teach at Humber thanks to Terry Posthumus. He’s the Course Coordinator at Humber College; Terry and I worked at Disney together and eventually he offered me the position at Humber. I've been there for 7 years and 4-5 of those years have been fulltime. I also do a handful of productions in the year, usually around summertime when I have time off school.

The latest animated short with the boy and ogre... how much time did you work on it?

First off, it's a girl ;-) Or his name is Gwen... you decide ;)

Good question... how long? We've been working on that for a while actually, but only because the story and animation went through so many iterations. I worked with Brian Lemay, at least a year ago on the character design. I also worked with Keith Chamberlain and Shawn Hendriks, coming up with the original designs. In the end, everything came back to me for rig work. I worked out of my office here at home, so I can't answer for anything outside the scope of rigging, but the short was spread over about four months with me.

So what are you working on nowadays?

Asides from Humber, I'll be teaching three classes for the upcoming Autodesk University classes, so I'm preparing for those: "Developing Character Rigs from the Ground Up in 3ds Max", "Advanced Character Tools and Systems in 3ds Max", and "3ds Max MAXScript + Microsoft® .NET: Discover a Bigger World". I'm also working on 2 projects in-house. One is with Tombolo; the client is Disney for an undisclosed project, and also the project for Perfect Fit Health, the physiotherapy work I mentioned earlier.

And those three classes, even though they are going to be covered and demonstrated in Max, is it possible that users of other applications like Maya and SI can benefit from them?

Yeah, absolutely. When I teach anything, I try not to teach button-pushing. You can go through some tutorials out there step by step, but you don't know what you're doing in the end. The way I teach is a lot less about coming up with a specific end-product, and finishing that end product. It's more about how do all the parts of that product function and work, what's going on under the hood and how does it all come together. With that - you should be able to make many more different things. Not just this product we're working on, like a bipedal character.  Or how do you rig an IK/FK arm. I don't teach how to rig an IK/FK arm. Ok I do, but I explain how do constraints work and how does the idea of it work. How does an animator want to work with this sort of system, etc., etc.

After so many years, why do you still continue to use Max? Asides from the time you've invested...in developing techniques, custom scripts and in tools you've written -- but is there some other reason for it? 

Yes, it's fast and easy to work with for a lot of productions. Max has been called the Swiss army knife; great for doing small to mid-size productions quickly. It's got almost everything in there and you don't have to go out to something else; not that there isn't a better solution somewhere else, but a smaller midsize shop can't necessarily afford to buy a specific plugin or tool to do a specific job and then train on it. The job needs to be done in a month, so get it done. Max has got a lot inside that will get the job done in a really great way and plenty of other tools that will get you through areas that you just need to get through…it’s all in there. It's quick and easy to learn, has a big userbase and a large pool of artists which is important for productions. And also, I guess I just know it really well, so sticking with it is also partly because there's always been a call for it. I'm always having people call me because I know Max really well. So that's a big part of the reason why. Max has kept me busy. Though I also use Mudbox, Combustion and Composite, I still mostly keep to Max.