From the course: Sebastien Deguy: Allegorithmic Changing the Art of Games

Trajectory of Sebastien and Allegorithmic

From the course: Sebastien Deguy: Allegorithmic Changing the Art of Games

Trajectory of Sebastien and Allegorithmic

- No, not at all actually. We were aiming for animation and VFX. Because of the booth guys and also because some of the first people we would meet, or I could meet, were the people at SIGGRAPH actually, like the Pixar guys and Dreamworks and Digital Domain. And they would listen to me because they were interested in these procedural noise functions. They were using them already. But in the end, the constraints you can find in these fields, and combined with the fact that they were not ready at all, the products were not there yet. We couldn't sell anything to this market yet. And actually we still don't. But along, I mean after a few years, we realized that what we had at the time was more adapted to the games market and that was fine because we were into games as well, and we were respecting that very much, so we focused on the game developers and movie makers. I used to be a gamer. I'm less of a gamer now but I used to be a gamer, when I was younger, crazy. What did I play? Oh wow, at the time, well Rick Dangerous was one of my favorites. Tetris and that kind of stuff, but Rick Dangerous. Yeah I liked Lode Runner, I'm that old. Well VR and augmented reality is one more console somehow, so it's one more way of consuming 3D. So that's great. Obviously it's amazing and it's going to be huge, and that's great because that means for us, it means more people needing to, will have to use tools for creating that content. So that's obviously good news and good news for 3D overall because these experiences have to be 3D. They cannot be 2DR. I mean, it's not even true what I say, because the first thing you will see on this VR headset, it will be movies. Or just plain movies, but you will be, oh 360 movies at least, but the next step will be 3D obviously. I think the big change to me will come from, as soon as you get these scanners on your iPhone, and you will be able to scan something, like your head, you will be doing a 3D selfie. This is where it gets crazy. Because I think that the amount of 3D content you will see coming, will like explode, completely. And this is where you will need to rethink everything about the pipelines. So we're trying to think about that in advance. We don't think it will happen in like the next two to three years, it might take a little bit longer. But we're working on that already. But I think the big change will be this. Because VR, AR, it's great, it's amazing, and it will lead to more content and more content being produced and more need for content. But I think that when it comes to, really, the process of creating 3D, what will change will be when modeling can be done by scanning something, and starting from there you just modify what you scan, or you mix with something else. You see what you look like with different hair. Big or small nose, whatever. You name them all. So I think this is when it will become crazy. I'm very much into MOOCs. I love that actually, I discovered Coursera, not so long ago actually. I love it. And currently I'm not following any on Coursera, but I'm following an online certification in something serious from Stanford University And so it's what I'm doing right now but at the same time on the side, I'm learning music production, because I'm a musician also on the side, and I'm learning that as well. So you can find everything on the internet again, so I bought a series of lessons and I'm following that right now. So it's interesting. So that's what I'm doing, yeah I'm very much into it, I love it. Being French, I would say I was speaking English, stupid eh? But the first time I came here, in the US, I was not speaking English at all. Almost nothing, or as bad as French do. And it's stupid, I'll give you a little stupid story, about this word "eventually". When you translate it literally, from English to French, that means you get that the sense is "maybe", whereas "eventually", it means it will happen, at some point, for sure. And "maybe", you don't know if it will happen. So if you translate it so when somebody says to you, "Yeah I'll get back to you eventually." I would get back home and say, "Ah, I'm disappointed." Because that was a nice way of saying, "No, we're not interested." So I wouldn't get back to them and I wouldn't try anything anymore. So I'm pretty sure I lost so much time just by not speaking English well enough. And not being able to connect to people, and that's stupid because of course, English-speaking people, they don't get that, but what you get though is when you speak to somebody from abroad who doesn't speak, for whom English is not their first language, you sound always dumber than you are, really. And it was so frustrating, it was so frustrating, because the first people I would meet, they had to be really, really patient and super smart to actually understand what I was talking about, and see behind the lack of language and understand what I was telling them and understand that I was also trustful, that they could trust me and trust my company. And that was super hard, and it took me years. So the first and most important thing, I guess it could translate to English, people saying communicate. Just being able to communicate correctly what you have in mind and what you want to do. Because you won't be able to do anything if you don't ask, if you don't talk, if you don't connect. Everywhere, everywhere, yeah. And actually I try to get away from my desk as much as possible. I mean from time to time, I don't feel bad when I just don't work. Because I have to do that. But not everybody's like that and I'm very much inspired by external things so I have to talk, I have to watch, I have to read, I have to listen too. Some other people have to just listen to themselves and concentrate, they're more internal. Whether you're external or internal, do whatever you want but in my case, yeah. I find it everywhere, everywhere. Like my kid, for instance. Just the pure enthusiasm for something, it's super important because that's usually the first reaction people have when they look at something new and we're producing something new. We're producing products. So you want to understand that very first moment. So just being able to read that somehow, and understand it better, and getting better at understanding it is important. But then I watch movies, I play games when I have the time, less now. I watch movies, I read books, a lot of books actually, I try to. And not only practical books, novels as well. And I try to do music as well, so yeah.

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