THE REMESH, A CREATIVE STUDIO

Jakub Spacek and James Lee are focusing on exploring new ways and techniques of delivering unseen beauty and experimental digital art within the visual effects and motion design industry. This artist duo is passionate about pushing their limits and finding new challenges. Over the past two years, they have completed several projects together to experiment with the possibilities of real-time and emerging technologies.

Their main artistic tools are 3d software packages HoudiniFx and Unreal Engine, enabling them to be at the core of artistic possibilities.

COSMOS OF SENSATIONS

The piece is a 4 part abstract visualization of the process of how cheese is made. We drew inspiration from other natural processes in the world, using them to find unique visual languages that can communicate ideas about cheese without it being a literal representation.

Translating different processes from the cheese production, we create different worlds of different scales to take the viewer on a journey.

By using complex simulation techniques we are able to discover the true sensations behind the abstract world of cheese.

THE CREATION PROCESS…

The whole creative process was oriented around the abstract representation of the sensations that can occur when tasting cheese. Abstraction is not only part of Jakub and James’ working style, it is very strongly integrated in their process. The starting points may seem quite close and literal to their sources of inspiration, but this collaboration has allowed the artists to dive into totally different directions in an exploratory way, especially to get innovative and interesting results from their mistakes.

The beginning and the end of the creation of the work are very opposite. The process of creating the work is very similar to food production, and in this case, cheese making. The starting ingredients are not what you will eventually sell, but the result of a long process of making and mixing that will give the final result: the cheese or the work.

The collaboration between Jakub and James allows this idea to be abstracted in a creative way, as they mix their own interpretations and responses to find a good balance in the art they create. It is this mixing and reinterpretation between the two of them that they find exciting as a creative process, which helps them find something new.

Looking at the narrative of some of the cheese-making processes, the duo decided to encapsulate airborne elements in a kind of microscopic world that would feel like being inside this world of culture. The artists first designed the environment, iterating different shapes until they found the desired look that connected to the microscopic biological cultures.

After some initial testing, Jakub and James discovered that the Soft bodies system would be best suited to achieve the desired result – creating fabric-like movements with a light, elegant feel. This system takes all the surface points of the geometry and connects them all together with constraints that ultimately drive the entire animation and behavior.

While the capabilities offered by the Soft Body software simulation technique proved to be a great resource of different possibilities, the duo decided to pursue its use to create a cheese that produces a wave motion that triggers a propagation effect.

When you break cheese and rub it, you get crumbly bits. This is how the “Crumbly” animation was born. Using the ‘rigid body’ technique, the artists were able to explore the visual language of this animation, allowing them to work with huge quantities of individual fractured pieces of different sizes.

In order to artfully direct the structure, it was necessary to create custom controls for disintegration to animate the gradual separation of individual pieces in an abstract environment.

Jakub is a master of liquid manipulation. Drawing on his experience and skills, the artists went through a cycle of interesting experiments before they could refine the art direction and find the ideal animation.

The right rendering was found in the use of complex liquid simulation techniques to melt objects on an abstract surface while mixing the colors and properties of two different liquids.

By also using Unreal 5 software, Jakub and James were able to work in a completely new and dynamic way, reducing the design process time, as they were able to visualise and interact with their animations and final lighting in real time. One of the biggest benefits of using this technology is that it allowed them to render animations that traditionally take 4-6 hours with a render farm in less than 20 minutes on a single machine.