Blog

The new feature film “Dauntless – the Battle of Midway” was created using 150 different stock 3D models purchased from the CGTrader Marketplace – saving an estimated one million US dollars in production costs. This is truly remarkable example of the advantages of using photorealistic stock 3D content in film and animation production.

Michael Swack from the CGTrader Blog caught up with Bayou Pictures owner and VFX producer Mike Phillips in Los Angeles at SIGGRAPH 2019 to discuss the role 3D content played in the film.

The CGTrader blog recently spoke to Lukas Lamprecht and Andreas Monke from RenderPeople - one of CGTrader’s most prolific and unusual 3D model sellers.

Client: Xootr Australia & New Zealand

“ I did not need to do anything. No photoshoots, not sending the scooters to anyone - nothing. Everything they needed, CGTrader downloaded from our website: they used the store’s product images to make their 3D models”
- Charlie Mills-Mateer, Managing Director at Xootr Australia & New Zealand.

Xfrog has been an industry leading company for more than 30 years. It has developed its unique software and created the largest database of botanically accurate 3D plant models in the world. We got the chance to ask the creators of Xfrog a couple of questions and delve a bit deeper into their work, which really boggles the mind: each leaf of their models has a different texture, a model has no polycount and can range from 3,000 to 3,000,000 polys, and, at the same time, is just a single page of text.

Mike Johnson is the harbinger of the future of independent filmmaking. He proves that creating an engaging animated movie is already possible for anyone with the right set of skills and approaches. Mike has created three full feature films already, with a fourth one in the works. One of them, Battle Oasis, has been watched on YouTube over 10 million times until now. Mike agreed to talk about his work, inspiration, what he looks for on CGTrader, and what the perfect 3D asset must have to be chosen for his movies.