Makers of The Metaverse: Adam Sidwell Of Future House Studios On The Future Of The VR, AR & Mixed Reality Industries
An Interview With Fotis Georgiadis
Creative Mindset — You’ve got to have some kind of artistic eye and some kind of ability to tell a story that would work well in VR. You’ve got to understand how to use the medium and understand how it differs from film, video games, commercials and mobile games. You have to think in VR and have that ability to say “How do I use the medium in a way that it’s never been used before?” That is exciting.
The Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality & Mixed Reality Industries are so exciting. What is coming around the corner? How will these improve our lives? What are the concerns we should keep an eye out for? Aside from entertainment, how can VR or AR help work or other parts of life? To address this, we had the pleasure of interviewing Adam Sidwell, Founder of Future House Studios.
A storyteller, technologist, and entrepreneur with expertise in multiple mediums, Adam Sidwell is the Founder and Creative Director at the Future House family of companies. Future House Studios and Future House Publishing work in concert together to develop creative content for the Metaverse: virtual reality, real-time content creation, animation, games, books, film, television, and more.
With over 15 years experience building iconic CG for major motion pictures such as I,Robot, the Academy Award-winning King Kong, Pirates of the Caribbean III, I Am Legend, Speed Racer, Transformers II, the Academy Award-winning The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Tron, Thor, Ender’s Game, Pacific Rim, Warcraft, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II at world-class VFX studios such as Industrial Light + Magic, Weta Digital, Digital Domain, and Mirada, Adam’s roots are in building and directing the art and technology so that teams can bring animated characters to life.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dig in, our readers would like to get to know you a bit. Can you tell us a bit about your backstory and how you grew up?
Thanks for having me! I was born and raised in Modesto, California — A tiny town in central California, famous for being where George Lucas went to high school. The high school was across the street from my Dad’s office and I loved Star Wars growing up, so it was really cool to know that I was in the place where Star Wars was born. That was always on my mind. I grew up loving art and became inspired by what George Lucas did with the Star Wars franchise, until one day I lived out my dream by working for George at Industrial Light + Magic.
Is there a particular book, film, or podcast that made a significant impact on you? Can you share a story or explain why it resonated with you so much?
It would have to be Star Wars. In addition to the hometown connection I share with Star Wars, the technology that went into that story, and building those roles has always resonated with me. Walt Disney and the work that he did on Snow White and Sleeping Beauty to bring the first animated films to life was incredible. Bringing those impossible things to life made me want to be in that industry.
Is there a particular story that inspired you to pursue a career in the VR and AR industry? We’d love to hear it.
Honestly, I’ve always just had a fascination with turning the impossible into the possible. I have an appreciation for the way that engineering, technical aspects, creative aspects, and storytelling all have a place in the VR/AR industry, and ultimately wanting to be someone who successfully merged all of that together is what inspired me to pursue a career in the VR and AR industry.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began this fascinating career?
I worked on the second Transformers film with Michael Bay. Michael Bay has exceptionally exact standards that he requires when directing movies. That gives his films such a unique visual look. I was working on the Pretender bot Decepticon in Transformers 2, and had to go through several iterations until he finally approved it. The animator next to me was on version 136!
It was then years later that Future House Studios had the opportunity to work with Dave & Busters, VR Studios and Dark Slope, and we had to go through some of the same iteration process to hit the G1 original Transformers look that would match the aesthetic that Dave & Busters was looking for. I was able to recall all of those creative moments and the ability to execute creatively years later. But this time instead of on the big screen, it was in VR in an immersive Metaverse Experience. It’s fascinating how certain parts of your career come back to you later. It’s a culmination of the film, art, character creative and technical work all coming together in one — which is fantastically fun.
Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
When I first started out, I was at a Digital Domain working as a Pipeline Technical Director and my role was to write tools for the iRobot character pipeline. I was writing scripts and tools that were being used by an army of animators on the show, and they all had to process their animation work through this one tool. One day, I left out a backslash which made the whole facility and animation publishing come to a halt — we were all working in this large warehouse and suddenly you could hear shouts and frustration as things began to break down.
I quickly made a fix and things were back up and running again. I learned that you need to be very exact about checking your work — I had people counting on me and the clock was ticking. The big thing I took away from that was that what you do matters; it always affects other people.
None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?
One person that immediately comes to mind is a Technical Director and VFX Supervisor named Steve Preeg — he was one of the guys who would yell at me if my code broke. He was tough as nails, and he shouldn’t have had time to tolerate the rookie that I was at the time, but he taught me incredibly well. The whole time I thought he hated me, but at the end of the year he recommended me for a job as a Character Technical Director at Weta Digital and told me if I worked there, I could work anywhere. I certainly would not be where I am today without his help — it was incredible that he helped me so early on in my career.
I need to also mention a producer named Chan Park. He hired me for my first real-time VR job at a company called Within, working under Chris Milk. I had to convince Chan that I was the right guy for that job as I was pretty far along in my career but didn’t have any real-time VR experience in a professional sense, but I knew I would work hard and could solve the problems if given the opportunity. He took a chance on me, hiring me for my first VR role and we worked really well together. A couple of years later, when Chan started to work at Wave, he gave me a call to work together again on some of their virtual concerts and that is part of what helped launch Future House Studios — so I’ll always be very grateful to Chan for that.
Are you working on any exciting new projects now? How do you think that will help people?
We are in the midst of some very exciting AR and VR projects, and we’re excited to share more when we can on our LinkedIn page.
Ok super. Thank you for all that. Let’s now shift to the main focus of our interview. The VR, AR and MR industries seem so exciting right now. What are the 3 things in particular that most excite you about the industry? Can you explain or give an example?
- Technologies Are Merging: One of the things that is most exciting to me now is the merging of these technologies — we’re seeing pass-through on headsets. AR and VR are starting to merge in the next iteration of the Oculus. What I’m excited to see is the version beyond that, where we’re walking around with a headset that we can use for VR but then it can switch to AR seamlessly, allowing incredible experiences that make the two into one, and give us immersive worlds at a moment’s notice.
- True Immersion: I love the way that we can go into worlds, and unlike a film or video game on a screen, we feel like we’re there. The sense of presence and awe when you’re playing together with other people is remarkable. I still get excited to bring someone into a headset who has never seen VR before. It’s that WOW moment that is still impactful and mesmerizing. I love having people over to my house to try new experiences and you see grown men screaming, because they’re so terrified of the reality that VR gives to them — everyone comes away with this adrenaline and euphoria, sometimes the two combined, because they have just transported themselves to a different world. What’s really exciting to me is that as Unreal engine gets better, as the hardware gets better, we’re going to see a lot of opportunities for us to make even more realistic and immersive worlds and then play with them in a very cool way.
- Metaverse Interoperability: The next thing that excites me about AR/VR/XR is this whole idea of the Metaverse and the interconnectivity with each of these things. To me, it’s fascinating if I can have a shared avatar that walks from world to world and experiences all of these different worlds that different people have created, just like we hop from web page to webpage with a hyperlink, I would love to feel like all of these worlds are interconnected and interoperable in a way that really feels like we’re going from planet to planet. That to me, means that we have an entire universe to explore.
What are the 3 things that concern you about the VR, AR and MR industries? Can you explain? What can be done to address those concerns?
- Big Promises for Tech Still In Its Infancy: Having the tools to be able to create what is actually possible. There’s so much of a promise on what the Metaverse is, but the technology is still in its infancy. When sci-fi writers sit down to write about the grand metaverse, or we read about “Ready Player One,” it’s easy for everyone to construe what that is but it is so much harder to actually build it and we just don’t have the tools for it right now. We have tools to build miniature slices of it but not the full thing and people are really starting to feel like the metaverse isn’t real. We’re still several years out from what has been promised; however, it doesn’t mean that there aren’t a lot of fun experiences that can happen already and a lot of things that are very very worthwhile and exciting in the Metaverse. Are we going to have a photo-realistic experience where we have 30,000 avatars simultaneously in battle with a giant robot outside of Anorak’s castle? No, that’s not going to happen right now because we don’t have the processing power or the algorithms worked out to make that happen. I worry about people getting burned out on this idea of the metaverse before they realize that it is still several years away from being the level that has been described in fiction.
- Will It Be TOO Good?: Second worry I have is that if we make it too good everybody will want to spend 24/7 in a headset — that would change the way we interact with people and change the way we connect with others.
- Egalitarian Utopia Dream World: My final concern would be that there has been such an idea in many descriptions of the metaverse that there is this grand, perfect egalitarian utopia, where everyone gets along and everything is free — it’s wonderful. I’m concerned that in some of these grand visions and dreams, we’re actually not acknowledging human nature, we’re not acknowledging that there has to be some kind of economy that develops. There will be, for better or for worse, just like in every other system, some levels of hierarchy that develop because there will be people that are experts, people that own the tech, people that are better at building than others. I think if we try too hard to remove human nature from the equation, then we will end up breaking the whole thing. There has to be a commercial, economic incentive from brands — things are going to have to cost money somewhere — otherwise we won’t be able to pay for the metaverse and the creators behind it, and there needs to be money from it, for that. We have to develop a fair economy so that creation can thrive and creators can earn money for themselves.
I think the entertainment aspects of VR, AR and MR are apparent. Can you share with our readers how these industries can help us at work?
Definitely. So I think one of the main examples that is very clear, which the pandemic taught us, is that we can use VR/AR/XR to interact with each other, when we couldn’t before. Future House Studios has been able to bring people together from all over the world, which we have done with multiple companies, where they haven’t seen each other for years and we can put them in the metaverse, and they feel like they are there together, playing and laughing with one another and getting that emotional connection of being present with each other when they haven’t had that in a long, long time. We recently developed the interactive environment for NICE Interactions Live which helped business executives connect in the metaverse — and even featured appearances from former President George W. Bush and George Clooney.
I think some of the things that Microsoft is doing with the Hololens and their mixed reality is really fascinating because you can have digital twins. For example, let’s say you’re examining a car engine, and you need to have a meeting with the engineers to discuss the car, but the engineers are on the opposite side of the world. The person dealing with the actual engine physically in the garage can wear a hololens to project what he sees, which is then being represented as a digital version in VR to someone who is far away. At the same time, the person who isn’t physically there can have his avatar, which matches him, in the AR version of the headset for the person in the garage. VR/AR can all mix together and help us be geographically agnostic, meaning we can overcome some of those communication issues that would otherwise occur. This technology is as amazing and promising as email was at a time when we were sending letters via snail mail.
Are there other ways that VR, AR and MR can improve our lives? Can you explain?
Commerce. Human connection. Work.
One of the best ways to do that is to be able to communicate and be present with those friends and family that we haven’t seen, that are far away and that we can sit down with them. There are a lot of people that aren’t able to see or be with their parents, yet they could put on the VR set and be in the same room and sit next to them on the couch. It has a lot of the same emotional and body language cues that we recognize as humans, how close someone is, how close they are to you, which you don’t get with Zoom or other systems.
The way we shop can be more convenient and immersive. Video games have proven to have an incredibly high level of engagement. The metaverse allows those same levels of engagement with brands. The way we socialize can bring together those who are far apart, yet it feels like they’re right next to you. The way we work can allow talent from all over the world, where before it was limited mostly to just geographical areas. We’ve even built our physical office in 3D to allow our team members from across the world to visit and meet there, just like the local team members. The way we play can put us into these amazing worlds more than ever! The possibilities are endless.
The public is going to encounter a tipping point where devices and applications will become so ubiquitous, and so convenient, they will need and want to use AR/VR daily to enter the metaverse. It may be the way they interact with customer service, or test out a new travel location before they book, or view an overlay of a city block to find directions to their destination. The expansion of AR/VR will only come as the devices are simple to use, comfortable, and necessary. You can see that with some of the smart AR glasses in development. VR Headsets are getting smaller and more comfortable. Convenience will drive mass adoption and make them part of everyone’s lives day to day.
What are the “myths” that you would like to dispel about working in your industry? Can you explain what you mean?
People are going to assume that the Metaverse and VR is already hyper-realistic and that it is already at the level of Call of Duty video games — it’s not there yet, we’re still a ways off.
Other rumors I could dispel are the fact that a lot of people who haven’t used VR before are worried or believe that they are going to get sucked into VR and AR headsets and never want to take them off, spending all day on it and getting sucked into the matrix, as you could say. Ultimately, I think that’s a non-issue as most VR experiences are only made to last 20–30 minutes, if that. You’re going to find that VR is highly exciting and interesting, but it’s not currently designed to keep you in the headset all day long — imagine it like a 20 minute matrix and then you go home. Games tend to be something you can play all day whereas VR doesn’t usually lend itself to sucking you in all day. It’s about diving into the immersive experience to feel something different and then removing yourself from it. Most experiences are not designed for full-day experiences, especially because there are a lot of limits on how nauseous and disoriented you get after a while so most people want to take it off after 20/30 minutes. However, right now there are a lot of smart engineers trying to find solutions to combat those problems, so maybe there will be a time where you do want to stay in it all day — but we’re certainly not there quite yet.
What are your “5 Things You Need To Create A Highly Successful Career In The VR, AR or MR Industries?”
1. Curiosity — You’ve got to want to learn how it all works. You’ve got to want to try different games, want to learn the technology, you’ve got to learn to code and how it works, you’ve got to learn how the animation works, the game engines. How does Unity work? How does Unreal work? How does this version of a headset differ from another? What does foveated rendering mean? What are the things that need to be improved upon and what can be improved upon in the headsets and the games? You need to ask questions and want to find out answers because you love it.
2. Tenacity — You have to have the ability to stick to it. It takes long hours to find out those answers, read your tutorials, do tests, and download the software. You have to be willing to put the time in to truly do great work. When you get it wrong, try again and iterate. You may fail 1,000 times, but you might find success on trial 1,001.
3. Creative Mindset — You’ve got to have some kind of artistic eye and some kind of ability to tell a story that would work well in VR. You’ve got to understand how to use the medium and understand how it differs from film, video games, commercials and mobile games. You have to think in VR and have that ability to say “How do I use the medium in a way that it’s never been used before?” That is exciting.
4. Analytic Mindset — In the analytical sense, you have to think like an engineer and break down the problem. You can have a great idea but you have to think how you would convey that idea and make it work. That’s a huge need currently as we have creatives and clients come to us saying “we want to do this and that with our brand” but at FHS we breakdown for them what is possible currently, and help match the scope with the engineering ask so that we can actually get to building them an experience as quickly as possible.
5. Connections — You can’t work all alone in your room on this! You have to get out there and get experience, find work and make yourself enticing to an employer. Whether you want to start a company or be an artist within your career you need to get that first job/experience because you will suddenly meet 20/30/40 people who are in the VR industry. They will remember you if you do good work. They will become a part of your network and they can and will help you out later in your career — it’s critical for success.
You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂
I think if I could inspire a movement it would be to inspire people in VR to realize that there is a gap between who we are and what we can become. When we’re in VR and we start our imaginations working on what it would be like to be a hero, to do good in the world, to do good for others around us — that’s why we game, we game because we want to become something more than what we are. If through VR we could tell the stories that inspire people to become good things, that in real life are going to make us the best humans we could possibly be and take on that responsibility, that’s what I believe VR could become and that’s what I want to see it become.
We are very blessed that very prominent leaders read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would like to have a private breakfast or lunch, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them 🙂
I’d love to sit down with Tim Sweeney, the CEO of Epic Games. Aside from Epic Games being such a powerful influencer of change in the gaming community, I think Tim is incredibly forward-thinking in terms of how games affect our lives. From the young preteen who loves to play Fortnite up to how Unreal engine is going to support and enhance our work, our play, our learning and the automation of things, he’s consistently ahead of the curve. He sees Unreal engine not just as a game engine, but as a reality development engine, and I am impressed with how he’s able to see a vision of the future and that he’s actively helping transform that into a reality.
Thank you so much for these excellent stories and insights. We wish you continued success in your great work!
Makers of The Metaverse: Adam Sidwell Of Future House Studios On The Future Of The VR, AR & Mixed… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
