Member Spotlight
Welcome back, AREA readers! Today we would like to introduce July's Member of the Month, Jesse Pitela! Pitela's story is one focused on the democratization of knowledge. As the founder of 3D educational platform RedefineFX, the Prague-based creative is equal parts educator as he is an artist. Since its launch in 2019, the RedefineFX YouTube channel has accumulated 45k+ subscribers and over 2.5 million views.
Having uploaded all this amazing educational content to AREA, Pitela and RedefineFX quickly landed on our radar. His latest tutorial series focused on tyFlow and 3ds Max 2023 is currently being sponsored by Autodesk. We recently caught up with Pitela as part of his AMM nomination to discuss why educators like him are so vital to the greater 3D creative ecosystem.
Could you please introduce yourself?
My name is Jesse Pitela. I'm currently based in Prague, working as a full-time online educator & freelance 3D artist. I first got seriously interested in CGI after seeing The Matrix Reloaded and Transformers. My introduction to VFX was the Shatterize tutorial by Andrew Kramer, which I somehow managed to follow even though I had never opened After Effects before. Around that time, Freddiew & Corridor Digital were blowing up on YouTube, which inspired me to start making my own short, VFX-heavy action films. Eventually, this led to me discovering 3ds Max, which I've been using for over ten years.
What can you tell us about RedefineFX?
RedefineFX is a VFX educational platform I started in 2019 purely out of my frustration and inability to find to-the-point but high-quality learning content, mainly for FX simulations (water, fire, destruction, particles, etc.). Many courses were hard to follow, overdone, or unnecessarily long. I try to do the opposite. I'm constantly reminding myself that absolute beginners might be watching before I start recording, so I try to teach the concepts the way I would want them explained to me; not over-explained, but spoken in plain language. Just tell me how it works like a friend would tell me by my desk, and move on. I've tried to make my tutorials very approachable. I always say that even if an effect seems quite complex, it can always be broken down into easy steps that anyone can follow.
You recently teamed up with Autodesk to create some tutorials for us. How has that experience been like for you?
It's been so rewarding for me to be seen and recognized by Autodesk after making 3ds Max content for such a long time. I'm very grateful. It's been truly a great experience as I was given the complete freedom to do what I would typically do for my audience and make the kind of tutorials they're used to seeing from me. It's always the unexpected setups that people most want to learn, like the tyFlow plastic foil peeling simulation found in this series. I appreciate that Autodesk let me create the series the way I envisioned it.
"New tyFlow & 3Ds Max 2023 Tutorial Series" (Sponsored by Autodesk):
What makes a good tutorial? What is most important to you when making a new video?
A good tutorial must clearly show the final result you'll be making at the start, and the thumbnail should accurately represent it. It should be appealing enough to excite the viewer to click on it and learn. Bonus points if you render out animation instead of just an image or a grey viewport preview. There's no need for long introductions. Just jump straight into the setup and keep it focused. I put a lot of time into making my tutorials concise. They aren't stripped down or incomplete, just straightforward. People's time is valuable. It's easy to record a 40-min tutorial but much harder to compress it into 10 minutes. If you properly plan, organize, edit out mistakes and pauses, and stay on topic, your audience will walk away with complete, tangible results. After a 5-15 minute tutorial, they've created something real they can immediately post online or show to a client.
Do you watch tutorials as well? Who are some of your favorite educational content creators?
Yes, I'm probably subscribed to every CGI YouTube channel in existence. I follow everyone. I enjoy Jonas Noell's tutorials, Eloi Andaluz has done a great job with his 3Ds Max News, and Chaos is posting some very helpful tutorials on their official channel lately as well. I've also bought a ton of courses and make it a point to allocate a percentage of my income toward self-education. If it's important to you – if it's something you really want – invest in it. Take it seriously, you know? If you can spend a little bit of money to give you an edge and get you there faster, I think you should do it. I'm 100% self-taught, and it has worked for me. I wouldn't be in this business if I didn't believe it could help other people.
How do you differentiate your educational work from personal projects? Are you currently working on any other projects?
I think of RedefineFX as my personal project, and continuing to build it is really what I'm most passionate about. I've learned not to filter myself because if I find something to be cool, chances are a lot of other people will want to learn that, too. It doesn't matter if it's a realistic explosion, or abstract soft bodies bouncing around, people want to learn it all. Other than that, I still take on freelance work if a cool project comes my way. I recently got to work on commercials for Dell and Hershey with an awesome studio called IAMSTATIC. I've also been setting up some FX sims for a gaming project called Illuvium.
Who/what are some of your inspirations?
I'm really inspired by Chris Do (https://thefutur.com/team/chris-do) and what he was able to do with The Futur. He was among the first people to really step out there and say that you don't need to go to college. You can learn this stuff online, get clients, and make a full time income. Back then, before Covid and the remote work revolution, this was a pretty bold idea. They now have tens of thousands of students taking their courses, and I would love to do the same for 3D & VFX artists with my platform.
Your most recent tutorials are focused on 3ds Max. What features of 3ds Max 2023 have you been drawn to lately?
I can't really answer this question without mentioning tyFlow and Phoenix – two plugins that I think have completely changed the game for what is possible with 3ds Max. I have never seen the Max community as hyped up and excited as when tyFlow came out. The stuff you can do with it, oh my god. Destruction, cloth sims, particles. I think it truly re-ignited the entire community and has attracted many new users into the Autodesk ecosystem. As for Max itself, the speed improvements have been great, as well as the retopology tools & improved viewports.
What do you recommend someone do if they can't easily find an answer to their question in a tutorial?
I think the fastest way to get help is to ask in a specific Facebook group or forum. I do my best to respond to DMs on social media. Students in my courses also have a way of contacting me directly with their questions.
Why do you think it's important for this kind of educational content to be readily available?
Because, frankly, college tuition can be insane. It isn't always worth it. For instance, if you were to save a few thousand dollars, you could instead buy a very powerful PC and still have money to buy tons of courses. These days there are many job openings for VFX work and even more opportunities for freelancers with all types of 3D skills. You could completely change your life in 6-12 months of dedicated self-taught education and be doing VFX for a living much sooner than you may think.
What I tell people is to focus on just one thing, in my case it would be FX simulations. Don't try to learn the entirety of VFX. Narrow it down to a manageable skillset that you can get a hold of quickly and immediately monetize it. There's always a VFX Supervisor out there that needs a smoke sim added to a shot or a creative studio that needs liquid simulations for a product commercial. There's so much work out there for this stuff and not enough skilled people to do it. If you start learning today, you could be booking very well-paid gigs in a few months.
*This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
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