Silo Q&A With Mirko Haenssgen
Freelance 3D Artist

Hometown: Boehlen, Germany
Current Location: Leipzig, Germany
Previous Studio: Rocketbox Studios
Current Job: Student (IT--Digital Media) / Freelance 3D Artist
Silo User Forum name: ko'gen
Silo Tutorials: Medieval Sword Parts I & II

How did you get interested in 3D art? What do you enjoy about it?

When I was ten years old I got a tiny 3D program as a Christmas present. The example images were amazing, though they only showed a couple of spheres and cylinders with different materials. Since that day I always wanted to create and animate spaceships, monsters and later, with the appearance of the Tomb Raider series, female characters. ;)

For me 3D modeling is a bit like playing with building blocks when I was a kid. Of course, the blocks have changed from plastic to polys, but you're still able to create everything you can imagine. And you can even go further by bringing things "to life" digitally. To cut a long story short: It's simply great to see a finished model becoming part of an entire digital world.

What is your typical modeling workflow?

When I do hard-surface modeling I normally do all the modeling completely in Silo.

When it comes to organic modeling I typically start with a very simple base mesh in Silo and sculpt it in ZBrush. After sculpting I re-import the model from ZBrush to Silo and start creating a retopologized model that can be rigged and animated afterwards.

How long have you been using Silo, and how did you get interested in it?

Nearly three years ago I was looking for another modeling application, because the program I was using at the time seemed to be too slow and complicated for modeling.

A college told me about Silo, so I gave it a try. The handling of the program just felt right after playing around with some of the tools. At this time I was also working at a local game studio. Luckily, my bosses agreed to buy a copy of Silo so I could learn more about the program right on the job.

What do you like about Silo; why do you use it?

Silo doesn't bash you with tons of functions that you do not need. What you need to build a 3D model is clearly organized and easy to find. And, of course, let me say that some of the tools like mirroring, the new surface tool, or the UV-tools are really cool.

Controlling the program is very intuitive and if you think something should be arranged in another way you're free to customize the program as you like it. This is great! There are not many programs that give this "freedom of customization" to the user.

I use Silo because it's fast. Once someone who didn't know about Silo said to me that it looked like "the program does everything itself". Of course most of the time you don't need to interrupt your work by opening dialogs to set some values to make something happen--as you do in other programs all the time. I love the fact that you can arrange all your buttons close to your model and drag values along with your mouse. No disturbing dialogs, no interruptions.

What types of projects have you worked on?

In the past four years I've been mainly working on content for video games. This last year I also did a few jobs that dealt with high-poly modeling for commercials and cover art.

Can you share any specific titles that have included work completed in Silo?

Yes, of course.

The main characters of the indy-game Salvation Prophecy by Firedance Games have been modeled and unwrapped using Silo.

During my internship at Rocketbox Studios I worked on some of the animals of the prefab 3d library Complete Animals.

In Crazy Machines 2 by FAKT-Software some of the props as well as the professor (the main character in the game) were made using Silo.