Senior art and design director at NVIDIA Gavriil Klimov a.k.a. Hexeract has discussed his view of the metaverse, shared his opinion about the rise of NFTs and AI, and gave some tips on how to become a CG master.
Introduction
80.lv: Hi Hexeract, would you mind giving us an intro for our readers?
Gavriil Klimov a.k.a. Hexeract, Design Director at NVIDIA: Hi, thanks so much for inviting me for this interview. I am from Italy was born there in 1988. I started to draw right away, was obsessed with it, started to do digital art with Macromedia Flash when I was seven on a Pentium I 133Mhz. Unfortunately, I had a terrible sickness that didn’t allow me to go out and play for a few years at that age. I was confined at home, so I ended up spending a ton of time in front of the PC.
As a kid, I was hugely inspired by movies like Toy Story and games like Starcraft and Warcraft, and that’s what propelled my love for CG graphics and real-time. I attended the European Institute of Design in Milan after high school but dropped out. I won a scholarship to attend Art Center in Pasadena, CA, where I relocated to attend a newly formed major by Scott Robertson. At 19, I started to work at Pixar while still in school, and from there, I ended up working. I eventually graduated with a BS in Industrial Design. After that, I worked for many companies such as Activision Blizzard, MJZ, Kojima Productions, Paramount Pictures, Warner Bros, Oculus, to name a few.
I now work at NVIDIA, a company I love, leading a fantastic team that I love dearly.
80.lv: Are there any highlights previous to NVIDIA that you think are worth mentioning?
Hexeract: I worked as a senior concept artist at Kojima Productions, which is one of the things that was on my bucket list, as I have always loved Metal Gear Solid both as a game and visually, it was an honor to be approved by Yoji Shinkawa san to work in the LA branch. I got to meet him, and it was terrific.
Unfortunately, we all know the office didn’t last very long for other reasons but doing mechanical designs for that franchise was a highlight of my career. However, I am very proud of many highlights at NVIDIA right now among many Marbles RTX, the 2080Ti Cyberpunk edition, Isaac designs, and the old SOL cinematics.
Becoming a CG Master
80.lv: You have worked on dozens of projects, movies, and games as a Lead Designer. Could you advice an action plan on how to become a CG master?
Hexeract: Passion, discipline, and practice.
Passion: You’ll need it to push through all the challenging moments, the dull moments, or anything else that may come your way. Passion keeps things alive and makes you go forward no matter what. It’s the backbone of achieving your dreams.
Discipline: You’ll need some form of punishment at some point to execute anything. Discipline applies to studying, exploring, working. It’s what allows you to make commitments and make sure you follow through with them. Without it, passion alone may not suffice. If you’re genuinely passionate about something, it will become easier to force yourself into it. When I attended college, it really helped shape my character on the discipline side. Of course, not everyone has to or will. It would help if you found your way to shape it.
Practice: Ultimately, there is no shortcut to becoming a master at anything. You need to practice day in and day out – hours and hours of training. We’re talking about thousands of hours and dozens of thousands. Some people believe you need 10,000 hours to master something. I think that’s the minimum entry, as it can easily be more. There was a point in my life where I did NOTHING else but draw and paint. There was another period in my life where I did nothing else but model in 3D. These moments were crucial to defining me and my skillset.
The Metaverse
80.lv: What is the Metaverse and what is NVIDIA's role in it?
Hexeract: This became a buzzword real quick, and you see it everywhere online at the moment. I think the idea of what it means is different than what I have seen discussed for the most part. I think the way Facebook is phrasing it makes it sound like it’s some digital reality that we have to access in VR as if they are creating Ready Player One.
I do not believe that is the case for various reasons, including that no one company alone will create the Metaverse. More importantly, I think the Metaverse’s conception is flawed if we see it just as a single place with some avatars. Sure, avatars will be involved, but the Metaverse is not one place; it’s a moment in time.
The Metaverse is the moment when our digital reality is worth the same as our physical reality and eventually more than that. I think it will happen in two stages. First, this is a change that has been happening for years and has not started the other month with some company’s announcement.
Life has been going digital at an increasingly exponential rate. Work is going digital from physical places to computers and laptops – physical meetings to Team meetings. We care about followers and following, online trends, viral content; we check opinions online.
There are now more teenagers playing Epic’s Fornite than kids are playing many physical sports combined. Video stories are your mirror to show who you are and what you represent or what you like. Everything goes digital eventually, from job to identity. Digital skins are a substantial digital flex. Having a skin worth thousands of dollars is the equivalent of having a luxury item in real life. NFTs are the new online luxury items. Someone may have wanted to get a watch; now, it may be a digital skin or an NFT.
If everyone hangs out online all the time, then your flexes need to be digital.
Being able to show off online also inherently targets a larger audience – and all the time. You do not walk anywhere or go anywhere to show off something on your digital identity online to be seen 24/7 from anywhere in the globe. The Metaverse is the collective advancement of digital assets that are taking over the physical ones. One day, more money will be spent on digital goods than there will be on physical ones. This is the first stage.
The second important notion of the Metaverse is the democratization of content creation. The whole point of the Metaverse is that anyone can create anything and generate experiences. So the Metaverse is a place in time where if I want to execute an idea – digitally – I can, without having that many obstacles. If someone wants to create the next Fortnite, they should do it without needing a team like the one at Epic with hundreds or thousands of people. This means we need a toolset that will allow us to do that.
This is not the case now; in fact, that is a very highly specialized job right now. I will give you an analogy. Once upon a time, owning a video camera was expensive and also required a certain degree of technical skills to use. Think of that as the current digital artists and digital creators of today. However, one day the smartphone came around with a camera in it. Over time it got decent enough that it can take great videos. At this point, anyone with a phone could take a video. This has enabled a whole generation of creators to quickly and without any obstacles create content and generate videos and contributed to the enormous growth of YouTube into the giant it is today. One of YouTube’s biggest creators, Mr.Beast, who gets billions of views per month, started shooting with his iPhone and kept shooting with the iPhone even as he kept getting bigger and bigger.
This is a non-existent technical level entry to create the content other than the idea itself. Similarly, writing a book requires no technical execution other than writing it, so all you need is a good idea. Currently, it’s still tough to generate digital content for the masses by the average person. Once every person will be able to create their own digital experience, this will be the second stage of the Metaverse.
Imagine with the same ease someone with an iPhone shoots a YouTube video, that someone could generate a game, an AR/VR experience, an avatar, a CG movie, a digital clothing line, and so on. The democratization of content creation is a massive step to enabling the Metaverse. Our attention used to be 99% on our physical environment, and now it’s shifted heavily towards our digital environment. Eventually, this world will be much larger than our physical world. Everyone will own and buy 3D content. We will buy/sell games, experiences, spaces, luxury goods, art, even clothing.
At NVIDIA, we are working on Omniverse, which is a platform that aims to act as a hub among all the existing tools; it’s going to allow people to create digital twins of real-life and ultimately democratize content creation, leveraging various features including ray tracing, physics, and AI. We are working on the building blocks of the Metaverse, and it hasn’t started now, it is something that NVIDIA has been working on all along. When you asked about my role? My team is at the forefront of this creation.
80.lv: Can you tell us more about the content creation vision you are talking about?
Hexeract: If someone wants to shoot a video and upload it on YouTube, they need a phone and an internet connection. The entry barrier for video content creation is shallow and accessible by large masses. As I mentioned before, that is not the same for the content that allows you to generate experiences such as 3D content. Whether it is games, experiences, CG movies, avatars, you name it, none of that can be easily created by an average user. Content creation is still far from being democratized. This is not an easy effort, of course, and won’t happen overnight.
Still, a crucial part of the Metaverse being a reality revolves around the fact that anyone should be able to create virtually what they envision. Right now, there is a massive explosion in people trying to build more virtual 3D experiences even within the NFT realm. If you look at the quality, despite the enormous capitals in the scene, 99% is incredibly amateur and can’t compete with the real studios producing this content. Even seemingly easy spaces are not looking too good. It is a tough job. The tools aren’t there for the masses to allow them to do this. It requires incredible technical skills and a long learning curve.
One day, just like there are thousands and thousands of successful YouTube channels creating content, there will be thousands and thousands of people providing experiences online, virtual realities, and it will be possible to link all of them with each other through the use of a standard format. This is the second stage of the Metaverse.
In order to achieve this, many steps will need to be taken, including the creation of tools and platforms that can be used by the masses for this purpose. AI will play an important role because it is the only force that will allow us to scale to this capacity. One day it will require a team of 5 artists or less to create the environments at the scale of a massive triple-A game that now takes one hundred plus. In the future, a single person will be able to generate a realistic virtual environment without needing the resources of a game studio and without needing to spend millions of dollars. AI is going to help democratize content creation. It will slowly take more and more a crucial part in the various steps of the pipeline until it is the unifying force behind it.
The Rise of AI
80.lv: Do you think artists should be concerned about the rising of AI? How do you see it?
Hexeract: No, similarly to how filmmakers shouldn’t be scared of people with an iPhone. Just because everyone can shoot a video, it doesn’t mean everyone can be Nolan. Also, competition is always healthy, and the consumers always win.
Right now, companies can’t scale. Look at the years’ gap between the various GTA games. It’s getting bigger and bigger. The audience wants more prominent and more extensive worlds, so they have to outdo themselves and create something more comprehensive. Last time it was Los Angeles, now it’s rumored to be the whole United States. That would take a massive effort with thousands and thousands of artists to generate. Now let’s say that effort is made; what next? Imagine they want to re-create the whole Americas. The game would come out another 20 years from now and span across the min specs of various consoles and PC hardware parts. It is just not realistic for companies to keep scaling worlds without leveraging better collaboration tools, better exchangeable formats like USD, and definitely not possible without AI helping to do so. Games are taking larger and larger teams and are taking more and more years in between each release.
Everyone will benefit from a future where more people can generate more content more easily. Not only big companies, but there will be an explosion of middle-sized, small-sized, and even individuals who will generate content which ultimately will benefit the consumer as they will have more choices to pick from and will create a healthier competition than the same 3-4 players who can generate games or VR-experiences you name it. A kid will be able to develop his room virtually and invite friends over from all over the world. A small group of teenagers will be able to create the next Fortnite or the next PUBG.
A couple of siblings will create the next squid game series in CG.
Twitch streamers will be streaming also their creations, not just what other people have created for them to use. The audience will be able to link their own experience to one of the streamers, and they will exchange data. I do not believe there is one single company that will create the Metaverse. It’s not Facebook; it’s not Fortnite, nor Roblox. All these will co-exist, and many more will appear and exist, and once they can communicate with each other through the same format and we will be able to cross borders more efficiently as users, we will be one step closer to the Metaverse. I believe the ability of the average person to be able to create virtual goods and experiences with ease, is when we will fully be in the Metaverse and thus the economy of the Metaverse will surpass the economy of the physical world.
NFTs
80.lv: What do you think of the current rise of NFTs, blockchain usage, and play-to-earn games?
Hexeract: It’s one of the various natural evolutions of this world we are going towards. That model is already in use by early NFT games like Axie Infinity which has exploded in popularity and generated huge revenues. Ultimately this kind of model will allow players to earn rewards and content, own content, and it’s going to change this industry drastically over time.
There is also going to be a greater connection between digital goods and real-life goods. The two used to be separated and still are to a large extent. For example, if you own something in real life, there is not necessarily a digital equivalent and vice-versa.
You will see more and more of this connection being made as we go forward; it’s one of the steps to going way more digital and eventually digital content becoming more valuable than real-life content. Everything will become connected.
80.lv: How has your personal experience with the NFT space been?
Hexeract: Very good so far. I have encountered new people and made new friendships through it that I am glad happened. It’s its own very unique field with specific rules that, to a large extent, remind me of the old fine art world by methodology. It’s pretty interesting for this reason because it is at the forefront of technological advancement and, on the other hand, is still tied by one of the oldest industries in the world works.
It revolves a lot around hype, circles, cliques, collectors, marketing, and so on, with all the pros and cons that it brings. In general, I like the artist are being able to be compensated directly for their work. Artists bring a considerable amount of value both commercially speaking to companies as well as culturally too. More often than not, artists are not compensated for the amount of value they add. I could make a lot of examples, and we could go down the rabbit hole. But to keep it short, for instance. Imagine the artist who created baby Yoda. His creation generated billions of dollars, but he still got paid a salary. There is such a massive imbalance in the way digital artists have been treated. You get the point.
Despite everything, I like artists being paid for their work, and digital art was always looked down on by people who only created physical art; however, it’s just as hard to develop, so it’s nice to see it recognized. In my regards, I have some new pieces coming up, and I am part of a beautiful exposition in a museum in Milan very soon. You can find more info on my social media about that.
Conclusion
Hexeract: Thank you so much for taking the time to interview me; I love your website and read it every week; you guys share a lot of exciting content and articles. It’s a fantastic source of knowledge.
For anyone who wants to follow me, I am only active on Instagram and Twitter. You can find all my updates about my professional art, personal art, or projects there.