As many of Hollywood’s filmmakers get deeper into the 3D movie experience, the demand is increasing for skilled digital artists who understand the 2D to 3D conversion process. And Digital Character Animation grad Esteban Ortega is one of them.

After completing his student film, Nuts (watch it on the VFS YouTube channel), Esteban returned to his native home of Mexico City and delved into the film production industry there. Though he can’t speak publicly about the projects he’s working on, Esteban offered us some info about the stereo conversion process used by his team, and his fond memories of training at VFS.

[Update (2/22/11): Now that it’s been released, we can say that the film Esteban was working on as a 2D to 3D Stereoscopic Supervisor at the time of this interview was Conan the Barbarian.]

Hi, Esteban. Can you talk a bit about what you currently do in the industry?

Esteban: Over the last nine months I have been developing a technique for 2D to 3D stereoscopic conversion, which was successfully completed. That led to my position as the Head of the Stereo Department. I am now working as the 2D to 3D Stereoscopic Supervisor and Asset Manager for 3DLiveFlix (a DURAN DUBOI company).

For those of us who might not know much about the process, how do you convert a 2D film to 3D?

Esteban:  There are several ways to convert, like masking and re-projecting over GEO to generate depth maps; masking/rotoscoping to clean plates (reconstruct plates) and then moving images along the Z axis to give viewers a sense of depth; but what we are doing is called “pixel shift”, where we use a generated depth map to displace a 2D image. There are many ways to do it, and some combine techniques to be cost-effective.

There seems to be a growing number of opportunities in stereoscopic conversion. In your opinion, what are the main skills someone should have in order to find work in this field?

Esteban:  This question makes me recall my days at VFS. I used to hear [Senior Instructor] Greg Berridge say that the Digital Character Animation guys are “troubleshooters”, but I did not really understand why until all this time after VFS.

All the basics I learned at VFS like modeling, rigging, texturing, lighting, rendering, animating, and compositing were mastered once I started working in the industry. I’ve met tons of guys who are “specialists” and know either how to model or light (just to mention a couple of skills), but they can’t do both. It’s fair to say that you cannot cover everything, but you can learn the basics and that helps you troubleshoot when necessary.

I think to work in this field, your main skills could be: camera tracking, compositing, modeling, and rotoscoping/animation. I would also add a clear sense of depth and attention to details. Some compositors have really good knowledge of software, but lack a sense of depth. I do really think my 3D skills, specifically rendering and compositing, have given me that sense that I need to catch any incongruity in 3D stereo compositing.

How would you describe your time at VFS?

Esteban: I can only find one word to describe that time: AWESOME. It is an awesome school. I told Greg Berridge that he was, and still today is, the best mentor I’ve ever had. Thanks to Steve Taylor, my animation mentor, and thanks to my unofficial mentors, my classmates, who were a key part of my VFS experience. They pushed me hard to do my best.

Before VFS, I didn’t know the day could have 27 hours.

Thanks, Esteban! Congrats on your success!