Uploaded October 2025 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
In this episode, Sica von Medicus, CG Supervisor on Max and the Midknights at Nickelodeon, takes us behind the scenes of one of animation's most ambitious pipeline transformations.
Sica and Jase explore the messy reality of innovation, including:
- The leap of faith that led a traditional TV animation team to bet everything on Unreal Engine, despite having little experience with real-time rendering.
- Why everyone told them "don't use Alembics" – and why they had to do it anyway to preserve the expressive character animation they needed.
- How they invented a custom rim lighting shader when Unreal's limited light channels couldn't handle their complex character lighting needs.
- The creative workarounds for managing international vendor relationships without shared version control systems.
- What it really takes to maintain that "claymation" look in a game engine designed for photorealism.
- This isn't a success story with a neat bow – it's the honest account of a team that chose the hard path, made mistakes, learned from failures, and created something unprecedented.
Speakers:
Jase Lindgren, Sr. P4 User Advocate
Sica von Medicus, CG Supervisor at Nickelodeon
Find Us Online:
perforce.com/podcasts/p4/in-development
linkedin.com/company/perforce
In this episode, Sica von Medicus, CG Supervisor on Max and the Midknights at Nickelodeon, takes us behind the scenes of one of animation's most ambitious pipeline transformations.
Sica and Jase explore the messy reality of innovation, including:
- The leap of faith that led a traditional TV animation team to bet everything on Unreal Engine, despite having little experience with real-time rendering.
- Why everyone told them "don't use Alembics" – and why they had to do it anyway to preserve the expressive character animation they needed.
- How they invented a custom rim lighting shader when Unreal's limited light channels couldn't handle their complex character lighting needs.
- The creative workarounds for managing international vendor relationships without shared version control systems.
- What it really takes to maintain that "claymation" look in a game engine designed for photorealism.
- This isn't a success story with a neat bow – it's the honest account of a team that chose the hard path, made mistakes, learned from failures, and created something unprecedented.
Speakers:
Jase Lindgren, Sr. P4 User Advocate
Sica von Medicus, CG Supervisor at Nickelodeon
Find Us Online:
perforce.com/podcasts/p4/in-development
linkedin.com/company/perforce
