" Keinohrhase und Zweiohrkuken " 2010 - 2013
In this production I was responsible for developing shaders and the fur for characters. On this base, later, all the secondary characters were done by different studios which process I was supervising. During shading work I was also obliged to develop a certain unified light system for each character, which could work through the whole production.
Here are the two characters "koh" and "fox" which I was shading and "furring" completelly myself. The "koh" had been developed at the beginning, serving as a prototype for all the others upcoming. Especially the gang of bad rabbits was based on "koh's" fur development in 90%. The modeling was a process which had been constantly commented from Shading and rigging POV so the both areas are on the save site.
Here are the two characters "koh" and "fox" which I was shading and "furring" completelly myself. The "koh" had been developed at the beginning, serving as a prototype for all the others upcoming. Especially the gang of bad rabbits was based on "koh's" fur development in 90%. The modeling was a process which had been constantly commented from Shading and rigging POV so the both areas are on the save site.
I was also supervising the shading of all (more then 100) props ..... and for many of them I prepared the shading solutions myself: pilot cap, puppet, ropes, traps (see the props section under filmograpfy) ...
" Laura's Stern " productions 2005 - 2010
3d elements looking toony were the biggest challenge in "Laura's Stern" 3d productions. Here are shown rendering elements used for the final look of characters and props. It all had to go hand in hand: toon shaders, geometry with specially treated edges and system of lights creating soft transition between "lit area" and "in shadow areas".
It's worth to know, that the most difficult task, facial expressions, were generated by toon shader with it's outlines only, and never were touched-up in post-production. They were pure rendering. For some people from 2d area, not involved in production it looked just perfect, too good as for 3d animation. Of course the most of attention was focused on the three main characters, Laura, Tomy and Ling .
Apart from developing shading technology of all characters (except all extra pedestrians) I was also modeling Laura, Tommy, and LingLing's heads and clothes. It's because first, we had to get acknowledged how the geometry (edges) influences the toon shader behavior, especially in animation. After we got through the problems of main characters we could split the work of shading and modeling.
It's worth to know, that the most difficult task, facial expressions, were generated by toon shader with it's outlines only, and never were touched-up in post-production. They were pure rendering. For some people from 2d area, not involved in production it looked just perfect, too good as for 3d animation. Of course the most of attention was focused on the three main characters, Laura, Tomy and Ling .
Apart from developing shading technology of all characters (except all extra pedestrians) I was also modeling Laura, Tommy, and LingLing's heads and clothes. It's because first, we had to get acknowledged how the geometry (edges) influences the toon shader behavior, especially in animation. After we got through the problems of main characters we could split the work of shading and modeling.
The thickness of the outlines has to fit to the size of the sillouette, the smaller in frame it gets the thinner the outline should be. In this case it came really handy the feature of Final Renderer Toon which could calculate the distance of the object to the camera and relationship could be specified by operator.
Few words about modeling challenge with a great character designer at my side, Gabor Steisinger. His ideas lead us to creation of most appealing CG toon face in cinematography I guess. This way we did together model and shaded the whole family of Laura, detail by detail. Development of lighting system came right afterwards.
The bases of pre-composing all rendered layers
... and here are the main elements necessary for compositing the final image.
The outline behavior is very dependant on geometry edges and intersections between objects/polygons. Establishing priorities of outlines appearance is essential in shading task. It's a purely arist's choice when specifying which outline of two intersecting objects/polygons should "take over". Sometimes outlines are undesired like for instance intersection between eyeballs and eye sockets when intersecting accurs always. All of such dependencies narrow possibilities down to a certain pattern of dozens of toon sub-materials having specified priorities in one and only way which works in all situations. Below samples of shaders.
Animation / Rotoscoping
Having a basic knoweledge about moving cg characters on the base of captured footage I thoght about implementing this technique in Laura production to achieve in a very quick way a good timing base, so the animators wouldn't have to start from the scratch. I did some tryouts with my kids. That was before MoCap systems started to cost cheaper and cheaper. Anyways it turned out that a quite cheap compromise of a MoCap system was available, so we bought it.
You can watch my tryouts on Vimeo (left) or in the file below.
lau_rot_an_codh264_680_05mb_35sec.mov | |
File Size: | 5795 kb |
File Type: | mov |
" Der Kleiner Eisbar 2 " 2003 - 2005
I've had an incredible chance at the beginning of my 3d career to work with a great character designer, Frank Pe. We've been working side by side developing his 2d design of Monsterfish in 3d. Later on, for next 7 years I cooperated with Gabor Steisinger on all characters.
.. and some of his designs, references for modeling the cg Monsterfish
MODELING
Modeling on the base of drawings, scalptures and having Frank Pe at my site
.. also RIGGING and ANIMATION
I composed this shot these days with After Effects and Depth of Filed plugin. For the BG I have used oryginal background from the movie.
cra_nor_an_codh264_720_10mb_10sec.mov | |
File Size: | 9755 kb |
File Type: | mov |
LAYOUT
CG character posed in layouts.
example final shots ...