Guet-Apens specializes in 3D animation, illustration, and product visualization. They have a unique ability to make things real, and have developed interesting techniques for using textures and shaders. Stephane Crouzet, one of the two brothers and cofounders of Guet-Apens, has agreed to answer 11 questions about their course so far.

Nikos K: When and how was Guet-Apens established
Stephane C: Guet-Apens was created in 1997. We were beginners at the time with little experience in the 3D world. My brother was working for a communication agency and I was finishing my studies. We had been interested in the 3D industry for quite a long time and had begun our discovery on an Amiga 500 with the Scuplt3D application. At this time we were putting spheres and cubes together for making… well… spheres and cubes I think that the Toy Story movie really opened up our eyes to what we wanted to do. But as our studies hadn’t prepared us for 3D work and we weren’t so young anymore, we decided to create the company and to learn the technique with the different jobs we would get.

Nikos K: How many people work at Guet-Apens?
Stephane C: We are only two people (tiny company). My brother, Laurent, and myself. From a graduate point of view and from our respective know-hows, we have been really complementary since the beginning. He followed architect formation for four years. After studying cinema at the university, I went to Quebec (Canada) for one year and attended the Visual School of Art. All the primary reflections were made by the two of us. Then, Laurent did all the modeling. He has more skills in the design, so he is responsible for the creation of the models. He starts with basic forms that I test in the render to check the proportions and shapes, … then he constructs the entire model with greater detail. He participates in the texture creation and is in charge of the sound design. On my side, I’m in charge of the texturing, lighting, animating and rendering (compositing) of all the things we create. What is important for us is that all the creation steps are checked and validated by the two of us at every stage of the production. We keep an eye on the work of each other and make some comments about what works and what doesn’t. We must be satisfied by what we are doing.

Nikos K: What is the main object of your company’s work
Stephane C: The company was created for 3D production purposes (animated shorts) but for obvious financial reasons we had started with graphic design services. Today, we are definitly a 3D company, specializing in CG creations for stills and animations. We haven’t any favorite work domain for 3D creations. We tend to explore every field from industry works, to publicity…

Nikos K: What other services or special services does your company offer?
Stephane C: We love 3D but we are very interested in all the ways design can be brought to life. That’s the reason why we offer multimedia and graphic design. We think that all methods of expression are not only good for us but good for our 3D work as well. CG creation is a demanding field which combines lots of complementary skills so we must keep our eyes open.

Nikos K: What hardware and software do you use? (any special plug ins?)
Stephane C: As I told you we began our discovery on an Amiga 500 with DeluxePaintII and Sculpt3D, so the Macintosh platform was an obvious choice. The problem was that when we founded Guet-Apens 6 years ago, the 3D software availability was very limited for the Mac. We wanted a professional 3D tool so we had the choice between Lightwave or ElectricImage. Lightwave was arriving on the Mac platform with lots of bugs and was 50% usable. On the other hand there was ElectricImage which had been used in Terminator by the ILM guys. We decided to take the EI way with Amapi for the modeling. Day after day we suffered from the instability of Amapi (the boleans functions were a nightmare when it was time to export models), so when ElectricImage arrived with the fantastic tool that is Modeler, it was almost heaven. Today ElectricImage Universe Modeler and Animator are our unique 3D tools and we love them even if they aren’t perfect and if they lack of other 3D technologies (to fill the gaps we use a bunch of third developers plug-ins and shaders). HDRI and Radiosity are really good and impressive render techniques but when there is fire in the studio, Phong rendering and tweaking aren’t so bad AfterEffects does all our compositing… well… with little help from us, and we use Illustrator and Photoshop too.

Nikos K: Why did you choose these particular tools?
Stephane C: Mac platform… because we love Apple, the company and the guy who is at the head of it. For us, this company is progress. PC have always appeared unnecessarily complex whereas Macs were user friendly. Steve Jobs is at the head of Apple and Pixar. These two companies are constantly creating, searching, innovating… It’s an interesting point of view which corresponds to ours.

Nikos K: What are the advantages of the tools you have chosen? (software and the hardware)
Stephane C: Universe Modeler: elegant design, stability, resolution independent, hybrid solids and surface modeling. Universe Animator: clear and simple interface design. Universe Camera: fast rendering, image quality, huge polygons number handling, antialiasing and network possibilities. After Effects: simplicity and quality of the entire product.

Nikos K: What are your main projects and who are your most important clients?
Stephane C: The distribution of our works is: 50% for the CG and 50% for the Graphic Design and Multimedia works.

• 3D movies for the industry.
• CG Images for the industry and advertising companies.
• TV commercials.
• …

Nikos K: What work is currently in progress at Guet-Apens?
Stephane C: We are finishing a 6 mn 3D movie on CD-Rom for a US medical system company and some images for different adverstising companies. Simultaneously, we are developing a new concept (http://www.la-fabrik.com): This is our online store to offer to the world some of the graphic and 3D tools that we have created and that we use in our day to day work.

Nikos K: What is the next step for your company?
Stephane C: We have updated our website in english (http://www.guet-apens.com), we are finishing our first big DemoReel on DVD (16:9 - 1024×576 pixels - 25 fps interlaced) and the next step is our first animated short. The script is already written and we just need some time to begin the production.

Nikos K: Tell us the secret of those fine textured images you have made.
Stephane C: When I will tell you our secret you will cry and wonder “How could I not have thought of that before?” The most hidden secret of detailed images since the beginning of the time is … work. To be more precise (because it’s really serious) we use lots of 2D textures and shaders. We try to be subtle at all the stages of our work. All of our models are really exported in high resolution with lots of details and each material is prepared with lots of layer mixing 2D textures and 3D shaders at different intensity and in different channels (bump, diffuse, specular, reflectivity, …). We keep watching how materials react to light and we take lots of pictures of real-world materials. Thus we have constructed a classified 2D textures database to help us to reproduce reality. But the real secret is that we continue to work on the image or animation by adding some subtle details up to a point that it becomes ok for us. We keep going back to work.

More Information About Guet Apens:
Guet-Apens - Imagerie Synthetique
CG Images - Multimedia - Graphic Design
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infos@guet-apens.fr - http://www.guet-apens.com

La-Fabrik.com
*Ultimate graphic tools for new designers
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infos@la-fabrik.com - http://www.la-fabrik.com