Beso Mzhavanadze, our fluid guy from Georgia by the Black Sea, shares his work and insights on commercial ad visual effects with Cebas! 

 

 

Cebas: we hear that you work for an avant garde advertising company in Georgia. Georgia is a beatiful country and inspirational too. How do you find the art culture and atmosphere in your country?

Beso: Hello, My name is Beso Mzhavanadze :) and I've been in the VFX business for 15 years now. Yes, I’m from Georgia, a very beautiful country in eastern Europe with it’s own unique culture and history. Sadly for most of the people here, it is known as a post-Soviet country but actually, Georgia had more than 2 thousand years of independent history. Great wine comes from Georgia and the very first European caveman was found in Georgia. However, in the 1990s, Georgia had to face many challenges and growing up was not easy, I mean there were so many problems.

As a kid I loved si-fi and fantasy movies. Some of the movies that inspired me from Hollywood which made me want to become a CG artist were Terminator 2, Jurassic park... also, there were the amazing tv shows. I watched with interest the movie visual effects and later, when I finally got my first computer, I imediatelly started learning computer graphics. I am still learning as there are endless flow of things you can do in FX :)

 

 Beso's iconic love for the Beetle VW: "...only 10 seconds but lots of layers and involved many millions of poligons! "


volkswagen beetle by besomzhavanadze  

 

Cebas: could you tell cebas and our visitors about your design work in the field of advertisement / marketing? You are the first talent cebas have interviewed that is doing advertising VFX.  In your view, how crucial is visual technology in terms of advertising effectiveness ?

Beso: currently I’m working in a small studio CREATOR and I work there as a 3d generalist, doing lots of stuff. And I do freelance projects and this makes things very interesting, because I’m getting very interesting projects from all around the world and I’m doing my best to achieve the desired results.  At the end of my projects, I hope that my clients are satisfied. Nowadays, I do mostly vfx work, realflow, fumefx, etc.

As you know my work is mostly with advertising and here everything must be done super fast. It’s a big stress sometimes because if everything does not go as planned then, I will have to find ways to solve the problem quickly and one of the best problem-solver for me is the finalRender. It has been my primary render engine for more then 10 years now and it is a true lifesaver at times when a lot needs to be done very quickly! Here are a few of my advertising fx and RnD clips. The Beetle VW was also completed with Cebas finalRender.

Zedazeni Beer from Beso on Vimeo.

 

QT - Making Of Video from Beso on Vimeo.


 

Freezing Tests from Beso on Vimeo.

Freezing Tests with 3DsMax, finalRender-Cebas from Beso on Vimeo.

 

Cebas: could you tell us more about a creative project you would best described as your all-time favourite and giving you the best artistic reward in how you felt about it?

 
Beso: I can’t distinguish one project, I think there were several projects that were very important for me. The Nokia 6233 project back in 2007 and I made a photorealistic model of the mobile phone and then render the Nokia phone. Surprisingly, I received good feedback and was asked by two different 3D sources to create a video on the “making of” the Nokia project. The overall feedback was very good. I used cebas' finalRender for this project.
 

My other hot favourite that I want to mention is the 'ViDrive' project because the success of this project help changed my career drastically from photorealism to NPR and now I get to exercise my creativity extensively and do great vfx stuff, which I enjoy! Again, with finalRender.

 

ViDrive from Beso on Vimeo.

 

Cebas: Beso, we have shared a number of your attractive portfolio using moskitoRender on Cebas social media. Could you recall some amazing rendered images that you felt a gush of ‘wow’ in the effects that moskitoRender was able to give you? Are you more a finalRender person or a moskitoRender person?

Beso: I was able to work with moskitoRender when it was still in beta and I’ve enjoyed it ever since. It has a simple UI and reminds me of iRay but with additional parameters that made a big difference, and it supports all the native 3ds Max lights and materials - fast and awesome.

   

Super cute! Beetle VW rendered with the GPU-powered moskitoRender.

 

Cebas: Beso, you have used both render tools from Cebas, what would you say is the main functional difference between the two when it comes to visual and creative appeal?

Beso: my # 1 render of choice is still the finalRender, because I have used it for several years and I know it exceedingly how to render with it fast and this is very important to my workflow. I recall a project where I was mainly using Realflow simulations and rendering was not my part for that project, but relatively simple shots became tricky to render but I resolved this problem quickly using finalRender, especially with finalRender's highly adjustable shader.

moskitoRender is new to me. I use moskito if I have more time to play around with the rendering. Of course, I love trying out new things and rendering with moskito as well. Skill-wise, it's much like photography. Before, I rarely used 3d motion blur or 3d DOF in my projects but now I use them all the time as the effects give the final image a much more realistic feel.

  2d models rendered with Cebas finalRender: bronze & beer...

 

Cebas: could you give us some insight on how you created those amazingly realistic 3d results?

Beso: moskitoRender is more like taking an actual photograph since you see the results almost instantly. I used it mostly for the rendering of liquid as moskito seems very powerful in fluid rendering. I used almost the same technique as used in the studios for the liquid photography. In the near future I will be considering doing some video tutorials about mR. I hope people will find it useful.
  

 2d model clear fluids with Cebas moskitoRender:

 

Cebas: what was the most difficult render to date that you have had to do and how did you do it?

Beso: there were many projects of this kind, but I would say that finalRender is highly adjustable and if you know how to use it, even with limited hardware power, you can get really good results and referring to the Beetle commercial video ad (see above), this project I think involves the biggest scenes that I ever had to render - looks simple enough and lasting only 10 seconds but lots of layers and involved many millions of poligons! And high resolution textures and I was quite limited in terms of hardware but as I said, I rendered everything using finalRender with GI and the proof of the results is right before our eyes.

Cebas: how did cebas software integrate with your other design software? How straightforward was it for the UI?

Beso: I think with moskitoRender the UI is the simplest. everyone can start using mR from day one get fantastic results. Alternatively, finalRender is more complicated but it gives you much more control over the light, GI and shaders and I do like this.

In any case, finalRender- Advanced material is one of my top favorites because it makes it possible for me to create almost any material from using fR- Advanced material. also I use fR because of fumefx and these two create powerful imagery together!

Cebas: what is your wishlist for cebas software that it's not currently doing for you in terms of rendering and visual effects ?

I can’t wait for the long awaited finalRender update. i hope this will happen soon and I hope with new version we’ll get much faster renders. Also, I want to tell you that Cebas is doing a fantastic job with thinkingParticles so keep it up, I’m learning the FX part slowly and I hope you’ll be as innovative with the two Renders as you are with the well-known thinkingParticles.

Cebas: do let us know about your up and coming projects that we can expect to follow you in the future (if you're able to tell us).

Beso: tons of projects going on now and I’ll be glad to share it with the Cebas community when they are completed. Thank you very much!
 


Thank you Beso Mzhavanadze for your time and effort in doing this Testimonial for cebas! We look forward to continued engagement with your creative work at rendering for commercials!