From anguish and fear to a place where every second of life is a moment to be savored, so it is with our Rising Star! for November 2024, EVERYPlant, also known as Tony Meszaros.  

“Most of my life I was a driven, career-focused individual which all changed when I was given a very tough health diagnosis. I was basically told to get my life in order and settle my affairs because I had at best, 18 months to live,” he said.

It was a very rare bone marrow condition similar to leukemia with comparable symptoms and debilitating effects.

“That was 22 years ago! I am now the longest known survivor with this condition, and someone that continues to baffle my hematologists. Something like this very much changes your perspective on life, and I now realize that my family is everything, that relaxation and time out for yourself are critical to well-being, and that pursuing your dreams and interests is important, because we all have a limited time on this Earth” he said.

Meszaros was born in the former Yugoslavia to Hungarian ancestry. Much of his early childhood was spent travelling and living in one European country or the other, particularly Germany, where his parents were able to settle for several years. Sometime later the family emigrated to Australia where they settled for good, and where he still resides. He has his own family now, with a wife of Italian descent and two kids – one an adult and the other in the “troublesome” late teen stage.

“I've always had something of an interest in technology and science and always had an artistic bent, so CGI rendering was a natural fit for my interests. This has been passed onto my kids with the oldest studying for a career in engineering, and the youngest an extremely accomplished artist in traditional media,” he proudly stated.

Aside from tech and art in the virtual world, EVERYPlant’s real world interest is a passion for cars. “Whenever I have a tiny bit of pocket change it is quickly sunk into one of two project cars. One is a late model NSX, and the other an XB Falcon, which some readers may recognize as Mad Max's "Last of the V8s."

 Q&A

 What were the first programs and tools you used when you became interested in 3D design and what are your favorites now?

Bryce was my first program, followed quickly by Poser. Later I graduated to Vue. Today I use Plant Factory, Vue, Poser, DazStudio, Blender, Unreal, Unity and sometimes Autodesk 3DS Max or Maya if a client requires it. I had previously used GrowFX which is a plugin to 3DS, but I find Plant Factory to be far superior. I very occasionally use SpeedTree if a client specifically requires it, but again, I find it to be very inferior.

What part of design work do you most like doing and can you tell me about your design style?

 I find 3D design to be de-stressing, even when things don't come together as I want them to. Weird, I know! And when it does come together, it's a marvelous feeling.

I began my working career as a programmer in IT working for a major automotive manufacturer where I rose to IT management quickly, then onto corporate management, and eventually senior management. Most of my work was project based, with many teams working on many different things at the same time. It was an extremely high-pressure position and involved a lot of stress and travel, mainly to the corporate HQ in Japan, usually to make an excuse for time or budget blowouts! The stress and time away from home took a heavy toll. I decided to take up rendering images as a form of stress relief and found it very satisfying because it appealed to both my creative and technical sides.

How did you transition your interest in digital art to becoming a vendor?

 When Cornucopia3D was formed, they invited me to broker there. I was known as "Realms Art" and I shipped just about every type of product, including plants, architecture and other models, as well as Poser costumes. I worked mostly with historic items such as Viking outfits, medieval buildings, etc, but with progression more toward plants, initially in SolidGrowth and later in Plant Factory formats.

 What motivated you to become a vendor?

 Mainly because of career pressures, I was late starting a family. But once I married, and kids were on the way, the high-pressure senior management role just lost its appeal. My wife had temporarily put her career on hold to look after the young kids, but after a few years of this, she was ready to return to work. This, coupled with my very bad health diagnosis, inspired me to give up my career and become a stay-at-home dad.

Eventually, the kids became less needy which left me with time on my hands. Used to being busy all my life, I decided to take up CGI asset production as a full-time career. Initially, it was through Cornucopia3D, but that of course folded. Nonetheless, I found a career I could continue to pursue. I became known as "EVERYPlant" since I decided to concentrate on plants exclusively. Over the years, I have had many clients; mainly small video producers and indie game developers, but often larger organizations, and occasionally very large clients like Ubisoft and the BBC.

After 15 or so years of this, I realized that this job had become the job I had left behind! Full of unrelenting deadlines, unreasonable customers with unrealistic expectations and often an unwillingness to pay what is a fair price. So, I decided to take on fewer projects and work mainly with previous customers I had come to know. I had more time on my hands once again, but this time with well over 2,000 species of CGI plants in tens of thousands of individual models. I thought it might be good to convert these to various user formats and make them available to the general marketplace, so here I am at Renderosity to offer plant models in Vue, DazStudio and Poser formats … and if you don't see it in my store, let me know. My bet is I have it on my HD awaiting upload!

What is your typical workflow for a new design?

 My workflow begins with extensive research, often this is the major part of any project. Where possible, I try to locate real life examples of plants I intend to work on, but occasionally I have to settle for what the internet has to offer. Next, I develop the model in Plant Factory and the textures in GIMP. I use an excellent free program called Materialize to make all the various PBR textures. Once happy with the model, I export it and use Blender to clean it up, fix export errors and a number of other things (TPF has a very poor export process full of all sorts of problems) and convert it to a number of generic formats such as FBX and OBJ, ready for customers that want it in that format. I make both high poly and low poly models and the low poly ones get further converted to Unreal and Unity formats. Lastly, I specialize the various models to a number of target formats including VUE, DazStudio and Poser formats for Renderosity.

What are your favorite products now, and what do you want to create in the future for your goals as a vendor?

As I mentioned earlier, I started off as a jack-of-all trades in CGI, but there was just too much stuff to develop, so I honed down to plants because I had a strong passion for them, and because there seemed a general lack of quality assets in this field. Plants are also ubiquitous in nearly every render, video or game, so lots of opportunities there. Later I specialized even more with a focus on prehistoric and extinct plants. This proved very successful as, unlike existing plants, you cannot just go out and take a photo of one! Prehistoric plants have proven to be my most successful line. I already have in the Renderosity marketplace Carboniferous plants for Vue, with versions for DazStudio and Poser coming soon. And later there will be Permian, Devonian, Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous plants. There will also likely be Silurian plants as well though this is still a little elusive because not many plant fossils from this era exist.

With well over 2,000 plant species awaiting conversion and upload, I have more or less a lifetime of things to keep me busy! And the list is still growing today as clients ask for something I don't currently have, or when I just get bored with conversions and decide to work on a new plant to break up the workflow.

If I was to give any advice to someone looking to become a vendor, it would be this: find an area of interest to you and specialize in that field. Get good at it – get really good at it. Then specialize even further and hone your skills even further. Make it a field you have a strong interest in, you will do far better with that than trying to pursue where you think the money is. If you have a passion for it, everything else will just follow.

Are there other artists that influence your work or have mentored you?

I have a strong admiration for most of the well-known classic artists, but I wouldn't say they are influential on my work.

As far as CGI is concerned, one of my closest friends is another vendor here at Renderosity called London224. In the past, he and I have collaborated on several successful and very satisfying projects, and we may do so again. We've talked about it but haven't really gotten together on it.

Why did you make the decision to become a vendor at Renderosity?

 What I like most about Renderosity is the clientele that shop here. AI is having a big impact on this industry, particularly at the top end. Many video producers have fully or partially swapped to generative AI already, and the game industry tried as well but had a major customer backlash. Nonetheless, AI is creeping into everything and will take over many aspects of this industry. There will always be indie video and game developers that prefer traditional CGI models, but where big industry is concerned, that will likely entirely go. But here at Renderosity, the marketplace is filled with people who have a passion for creating, an urge for artistry, and who just want to make renders as a form of creative outlet, something that AI can't and never will replace. It's the people here at Renderosity that make it special.