Our first ideas emerged from this sketch: What characterises the robot, what is the relationship between it and the dog, what kind of world do they live in? We are in the near future. People and seemingly all life have disappeared from the city and countryside. Posters, camps, cars and facilities left behind bear witness to the vanished culture.

By Edgar Bauer, Franz Stöcker and Felix Zachau. They are studying image design at the HFF Munich, specialising in VFX. All three found it exciting to tell the story of such different characters coming together, which is why they joined forces as a team.

The rusty old household robot has also been left behind. It still works and seems to mechanically fulfil its old routines. The dog is playful, it eats and seeks closeness.
In doing so, he gradually brings the old, cumbersome, stuck machine to life. He takes it out of its routine and humanises it. The robot becomes a humanoid that can care, play and feel. You watch as the years pass, the dog grows older and the robot becomes more human. It all ends with one last special evening when they watch fireflies together.
This sets the cornerstones of the story, focussing on their relationship and the development of the robot.
In weekly meetings with Prof Jürgen Schopper and Dr Rodolfo Anes Silveira, we presented our respective progress and discussed how best to proceed. Team assistant Petra Hereth coordinated the project organisation for us, including the lectures and all associated seminars and workshops.

Storyboard

With the script ready and a precise idea of the aesthetics, it was time for the storyboard. Professor Michael Coldewey helped us to break the story down into a few images, which we then drew in the “Procreate” drawing programme. The focus was on the comprehensibility of the images and not on details, but at the same time we were also able to think about the camera settings.
The aim was to tell and structure the script visually in such a way that an outsider could look at the storyboard and understand what was happening.

Animatic and pre-visualisation

The animatic can be divided into two phases. First comes the drawn animatic and then the PreVis, a rough 3D animated version of the film. The drawn animatic is an animated version of the storyboard. We used the images from the storyboard in the “Premiere Pro” editing programme. We also tested how long we should leave the shots for and created a rudimentary version of the sound. This allowed us to consider what should be shown visually and what could be told via the sound. That was very good for getting a rough feel for the story. The next step was the PreVis.
We modelled and rigged rough versions of the dog and robot in “Blender” and created very simplified sets. The scenes were then quickly animated and rendered in Workbench to see where the characters were, how well the camera was placed and whether a viewer could understand the film at all. Our focus on speed meant we could quickly see which shots worked and which we needed to rework. Telling a long period of time in a short film was a particular challenge. Over 28 versions, we considered shot sizes, moved characters to different locations and added, replaced, moved in the timeline, changed or discarded entire shots. In the end, we had a plan of how long each shot had to be, how the camera should be placed and what should happen in front of it.

Music

With a rough idea of what kind of tonality we wanted to create in our film music, we were very lucky that the composers Arezou Rezaei and Jiro Yoshioka from the Munich University of Music agreed to compose the score for us. It was ideal that we started collaborating even before the PreVis was finalised.
This allowed us to give each other feedback and they were able to advise us on which scenes we should keep longer or shorter so that the composition could unfold its full effect. The music also provided plenty of inspiration and the insights the musicians were able to give us based on their expertise had a significant influence on the development of the story.

Pipeline & Workflow

Without the help of our Pipeline TD Jonas Kluger, this film would probably still not be finished. He familiarised us with the project management software “Shotgrid” and made sure that possible errors caused by the communication between “Blender” and “Shotgrid” did not affect us as much as possible. We initially created tasks for all environments, characters, assets and shots. We then divided the tasks among ourselves and uploaded the results to “Shotgrid”. This pipeline makes it possible to work on sets simultaneously so that the updated assets are also opened when a scene is opened.

Modelling, Texturing, Rigging

It was important to us that the last dog and the last robot should be archetypes. The robot’s shapes should convey a fascination for its technical abilities and yet still look old and capable of development.

Settings

The film shows a contrasting world. It starts in a destroyed, abandoned city and then switches to a rural, old-fashioned landscape where nature is slowly returning.
Both landscapes were modelled in 3D in Blender. The textures were then drawn in “Procreate” from a camera perspective and then projected onto the model in “Blender”. In some cases, we also used the drawings directly as backgrounds. The backgrounds had to be coherent and picturesque without distracting from the actual action.

Look

The look development is more than just the selection of colours and designs. It defines the visual language of the film, gives it character and lends the story a unique aesthetic. This process is crucial to how viewers perceive the world of the film and how they connect emotionally with the characters and the plot.
The process is iterative and required many feedback loops. In the beginning, we aimed for a photorealistic, Pixar-like look. Partly to save render time, but also because we wanted to focus on the relationship between the robot and the dog, we decided to use a mix of drawn textures and a 3D animated film.

This change was one of the most difficult decisions we made for this film. We had already completed several sets in photorealistic style and had fallen in love with the look of the test renders.
But when we saw the dog in motion with a drawn texture, the decision was easy. It looked much more lively in the new style. We were also able to emphasise the character of the robot better in the new style.

Rotation

To recreate a movement realistically, it helps to collect as many references as possible. We planned a day of shooting for this purpose. Studio masters Andreas Beckert and Peter Gottschall let us use the HFF’s internal television studio for this.
We filmed with a younger and an older dog to cover him in both the younger and older scenes.
For the robot, our fellow student Julius von Diest slipped into Xsens’ in-house motion capture suit. David Emmenlauer explained the correct operation of the suit to us in advance. We only used the data collected with it as a reference so as not to make the robot appear more lifelike than the dog.
We took each shot with three different cameras. Each was responsible for a selected perspective. The first one was placed as close as possible to the camera position defined in the PreVis. With the other two, we filmed from the front and from the side so that we could then jump 90 degrees from axis to axis when animating.

Animation

The animation was a big part of our work process. We wanted to show the slow humanisation of the robot and the ageing of the dog in the animation. The recorded references from the studio shoot came in very handy.
We also got help from Professor Melanie Beisswenger. As an experienced animator, she had a trained eye for our animations and was able to give us very good suggestions for improvement, especially for the dog, which made it appear even more natural.

One thing that made animating technically much easier was that both the dog and the robot had a very detailed model for rendering and a less detailed one for animating. When animating, we could deactivate the body responsible for rendering the characters at the touch of a button. Thanks to the saved computing power, we were able to animate in real time in the viewport.

Rendering

The film is rendered in Blender via Cycles. We used the HFF render farm to save rendering time and stay on schedule. We also rendered out masks for the dog and robot so that we could edit them better during grading.

Grading

We were very lucky to have Claudia Fuchs, a professional grader, at our side. Together we made some colour corrections and matched the colours of the shots to each other.

Sound design

For animated films, in which every visual component is created from scratch, the creation of realistic soundscapes is a major challenge. Stefan Möhl took on the sound design for us. We discussed our ideas with him about how the robot and the world should sound. We felt it was a great privilege to be able to look over his shoulder as he worked. It was fascinating to see how he creates a soundscape from different sounds that seem to have nothing to do with each other and breathes life into the film. He surpassed all the expectations we had beforehand.

Retrospective

A strongly humanoid robot leans against a car, smoking. A year has now passed since this sketch was made. A lot has happened in that time. We have spent many days and nights at the university and have grown together as a group. The collaboration led to creative solutions and a film that we are proud of. Only now do we realise how many steps and how much work is actually involved in the development of an animated film. It was a long process with many ups and downs. We have learnt a lot from it, we would like to thank everyone involved and look forward to the next project

The post Ghosts at the HFF first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by HFF Hochschule für Fernsehen und Film München.

The challenge for the visual effects design was to achieve a photorealistic visual aesthetic that blends seamlessly into a real film with real actors. A Portuguese courtyard, built in the HFF studio in the summer of 2022, served as the central set for the dystopian narrative of a family drama.

by Franziska Bayer, Valentin Dittlmann, Alexander Hupp, Ines Timmich and Hannes Werner

The plot unfolds on an isolated island in the middle of an endless ocean and thematises the conflict between the spirit of discovery of youth and the entrenched convictions of the older generation. Although officially listed as a “VFX film 02” by the visual effects students, “Wind Up” is a joint project. For example, screenplay student Tamaki Richter wrote the script, while the production was handled by WennDann Film GmbH, which was founded at the HFF, and students from all departments took on additional roles – wenndann-film.de.

The professional expertise of the film industry complemented the work of the HFF students, with Matthias Zentner(velvet.de) acting as director and Moritz Rautenberg(moritzrautenberg.com) as director of photography. The synergy between various educational institutions in Munich should also be noted, with contributions from the Academy of Music, the Academy of Fine Arts for the set design and the August Everding Drama School, which used some of its students for the make-up design. The studio building, which provided the basic setting, was also created as part of the “Entwerfen und Gestalten – Architectural Design and Conception” programme at the Technical University of Munich. The cooperation within the departments of the HFF and with other art academies not only marks an impressive short film, but also emphasises the power of interdisciplinary exchange. “Wind Up” stands as a testament to the creative fusion of talents from different disciplines at the HFF and its partner institutions in Munich.

See for yourself:

• Munich Film and Television University hff-muenchen.de
• VFX Breakdown is.gd/vimeo_windup_vfx
• Making of is.gd/wind_up_making_of

Brainstorming and script development

What is hidden behind the boundaries of a studio courtyard? A lonely family on an island, in the sea, surrounded by monsters. That was the basic idea submitted by a screenwriting student that would eventually become “Wind Up”. The process of developing the idea was a creative collaboration between several departments at the HFF, which included intensive discussions about the relationship dynamics of the characters, the special significance of a lamp and how a hot air balloon works.

The core, the family drama, remained an important guideline throughout the script versions. The result is a story of a family that grows beyond its limits in the fight against its shadows. Lino (16) spends his everyday life building up the crumbling walls of his home island to protect himself and his family from the darkness that lurks outside the island and swallowed up his mother 10 years ago. Until he learns that his sister Benedita (18) and his uncle Afonso (52) want to flee the island to find his mother: She’s alive? And the darkness is just a fairy tale told to him by his grandmother Madalena (83) to keep the family on the island. Lino now has to find his way between mysterious lamps, home-made hot air balloons and family lies and make a decision: Will he stay on a crumbling island with his family? Or will he set off in search of his mother – into a world of shadows?

Animatic & Resolution

When planning the VFX shots, it was important to break down the entire film into individual shots in advance. That’s why the VFX team, together with director Matthias Zentner and cinematographer Moritz Rautenberg, spent several weeks developing shot plans for the film. The set plans were used to create animatics that could be quickly adapted. In contrast to traditional planning with storyboards, it was an advantage to work directly on the previs, as the space of the set could be taken into account. The characters were generated in readyplayer.me, placed in a scanned 3D model of the set and animated in Blender. Different focal lengths and camera movements were created in this way, with many of the non-VFX shots later being made more dynamic or combined as one shot during the shoot. As the dialogue was also set to music in the animatics, screenwriter Tamaki Richter was able to quickly determine whether her story was working the way she wanted and make changes accordingly.

Concept Art

The realisation of the short film “Wind Up” required a well thought-out, consistent visual look that went beyond the set of the Portuguese courtyard to include the entire island. The layout of the courtyard was the starting point for the design of the exterior buildings and the island. An extensive search for references of remote places, coasts and islands laid the foundation for the development of concept art for the location. The aim was to create a doomed island, with buildings slowly decaying and being maintained by the last four inhabitants in an endless battle against decay. The result is a gloomy look of an island that seems to be drowning in fog, illuminated only by a single light source. The VFX students were supported in designing the concepts by concept artist Luis Guggenberger(luisguggenberger.de).

Another crucial aspect was the design of the “shadows”, which embody the fears of 15-year-old Linos in the film. Dark, abstract illusions that gnaw at the walls of the island and ensure its decay were designed as a visual representation. To realise this concept, ink spreads were shot on paper in various combinations with water, alcohol or glycerine on the first day of shooting. In post-production, these black and white shots were used as masks in Nuke to make the shadows move across the walls of the island. In addition to the design of the island and the shadows, the design of the so-called “barkonaut” was also developed. It is a mixture of a small rowing boat and a hot air balloon, as escaping across the ocean is not possible with a boat alone due to stormy waves.

The composite appearance of the vehicle, made from washed-up components, old planks, nails, fabric patches for the balloon and improvised assemblies in the workshop, gave the “Barkonaut” an authentic character. Artificial intelligence was used to generate construction plans for the barkonaut and maps of the remote island. The images were plotted onto semi-transparent paper and patinated with tea to give the maps an aged look. The door to a secret workshop, a painting of the island, was made especially for the film by painting student Elisaveta Bogushevskaya.

Sculpting the island

As the final island model was used as a reference for the above-mentioned painting in the film and some other parts of the set design, the island had to be ready several weeks before shooting began. The sculpting of the island was done entirely in Zbrush. Depending on the concepts, a rough silhouette was first defined, then smaller details were worked out. With the exception of the details in the rocks, the entire island was sculpted completely by hand and without procedural aids.

As the island model in Zbrush ultimately had a very high resolution of over 4 million active points, a lower-resolution duplicate of the base mesh was created, which contained fewer details and would speed up the further texturing process. This mesh required less computational work in programmes such as Houdini or Substance Painter and thus facilitated the entire work process. In Blender, the low-resolution mesh was UV unwrapped. The high-resolution mesh was then projected onto this reduced mesh in Substance Painter in order to retain all the details of the original model in the maps generated in Substance Painter.

Modelling & Texturing

The story takes place on an island threatened by decay. Wind and water have reduced the piece of land, which was once richly populated, to a minimum. A sparse amount of dilapidated houses are the last thing left on the island, but even these will not last much longer. The house assets were divided into five complexes before filming and arranged based on the set scan. An attempt was made to create a recognisable silhouette by varying the heights of the buildings and a tower whose top had been broken off. After the shoot, the models were refined in Blender and customised with Kitbash assets.

As the houses were almost only shown in supertotal shots, it was possible to keep the models low-resolution with only around 100,000 polygons. The roof tiles, for example, were not modelled individually, but were just flat roofs onto which roof tile textures were projected. However, for two shots in which one of the house walls was used as a set extension, a detailed asset with 338,394 polygons had to be modelled. When texturing in Adobe Substance 3D Painter, the wall colours, as found in the set, were adopted and digitally patinated using various layers. Stains and elements that contributed to the worn, dirty look were painted by hand.

The digital colour and structure of the barkonaut’s balloon also had to match that of the real equipment. The basket could be designed more freely, as the real basket is hardly ever seen in the film, but it also had to look worn and dirty. To achieve this, the layers were first projected using smart masks and then adjusted by hand. For the most part, the software’s own PBR textures were used, but textures from Textures.com were used for the roof tiles.

Shooting preparations

Careful planning is extremely important for a production with around 60 people involved. Especially for the smooth realisation of the VFX shots, it should be as clear as possible in advance what will be seen and what you should pay particular attention to during the shoot. Basically, the filming preparation can be divided into two sections: firstly, the internal VFX coordination of the various tasks and secondly, the communication of the VFX-relevant information with the other departments.

The internal preparation ran in parallel and in close collaboration with the director and the DOP. Once the script had been developed to such an extent that it was foreseeable that there would be no major changes, an initial calculation of the VFX shots could be made. Thanks to the existing Previz, the calculation was quite accurate and there were few surprises, as it was easy to see in the virtual set whether the shots could be realised as planned. Based on the calculation, all assets and shots were created in Shotgrid, divided into individual tasks and distributed to the various people. This resulted in an extremely precise schedule, which enabled a largely smooth realisation. Working backwards from the deadline, it was easy to recognise when which tasks had to be completed in order to have enough time for subsequent tasks and still meet the deadline. The calculation, assets, shots and tasks were regularly revised when changes were made to the resolution or the script.

Communication with the other departments involved was essential to ensure that the shots could actually be realised as planned. The above-mentioned painting of the island was also created as part of the set on the basis of an early rendering of the 3D island, which ensured a consistent and coherent depiction of the island.

Plan B’s production designers were able to make targeted additions to the existing set construction using the virtual model, which meant that set extensions could be largely avoided and the real and virtual sets could be made to match. The special effects department, which was responsible for the destruction of the lamp as well as the inflation of the balloon, also had a virtual simulation to fall back on. Based on the simulation, which clearly visualised the inflation process, the set could be built in such a way that the balloon could actually be inflated with the help of a wind machine and the actors could enter the basket of the balloon.

Set supervision and DIT

The combination of CGI and live-action film presents a few more difficulties than the purely animated film that the VFX students produced in their first year. In addition to thorough planning, realisation is one of the most important steps. The role of the VFX supervisor is responsible for the interface between the director, camera and the final post-production.

The aim is to plan and prepare the VFX shots as accurately as possible so that the post-production schedule can be adhered to. The focus is also on recognising and preventing potential problems that would cost a lot of time and money later on. Another important task of the supervisor is data acquisition on set.

There are many tools that provide helpful information during the shoot and make realisation easier later on. Camera and lens data are extremely important. This information must be known so that a seamless transition between VFX and the original material shot is possible. For Wind Up, a LiDAR scan was also used to improve the tracking of the planned set extension.

This was created directly after the shot was filmed. The key is to capture as much important data as possible at the right moment without holding up the entire shoot. The supervisor is also responsible for finding the best compromise between the valuable time on set and the avoidable additional work in post-production. The students were supported by Prof Jürgen Schopper, 3D mentor Berter Orpak and Pipeline TD Jonas Kluger throughout the filming period.

The different “roles” were rotated daily between the 5 VFX students so that everyone could gain an insight into the different activities. They also took on the tasks of the DIT (Digital Imaging Technician). Thanks to a mobile workstation, not only can the backups be made, but the dailies can also be rendered directly. Another advantage was the ability to process 3D scans on site and create slap comps to identify potential problems.

Simulation

An island in the water and a balloon that inflates and flies away were the two simulation tasks. Several full CG shots were planned, in which the island was to be seen surrounded by water, partly with an expanding and flying balloon. The real balloon was measured, photographed and recreated from these references in Blender.

The basket of the balloon was only created on the side facing the interior based on the real one, the rest was modelled inspired by our own concepts. The idea was a flying lifeboat, a so-called “Barkonaut”. This model was revised based on the advice of simulation specialist Felix Hörlein in order to optimise the resolution and distribution of the topology for the subsequent simulation in Houdini. The size of the opening through which the balloon was to expand, as measured on set, was recreated virtually as a collision geometry to ensure that the CG settings matched the real filmed settings well. After several versions and adjustments of various parameters in Houdini, the fabric finally behaved as desired and the simulation looked convincing.

The loneliness is mainly told through the huge and empty ocean in the background. The interaction between the water and the island was one of the biggest challenges in achieving a realistic end product. Like the balloon, the water in Houdini was also simulated and shaded. The latest FLIP solver was used to calculate the base water.

For high efficiency over the entire process, the simulation area was limited to a small part around the island. This allows a fast workflow even with a high scaling of several million particles. In this area, the input parameters were extracted from the original ocean in order to use them as parameters for the simulation. The level of detail of the water is largely represented by the whitewater, which is then calculated as a function of the water simulation. Not only the water, but also the wind influence the dynamics of the spray. To make the behaviour even more realistic, an airfield simulation was simulated around the island so that the turbulence in the air also works.

Lighting, shading & rendering

The aim was to use lighting to create an atmosphere and mood on set that emphasised a tight and oppressive feeling. To ensure that this mood is not interrupted by the full CG shots, the lighting has to be adapted to the mood. Whilst the lighting contributes a lot to the overall mood, it also plays a crucial role in terms of the realism we are aiming for. To give the impression that computer-generated elements are part of the real world, light and shadow must fall on them correctly. Careful lighting ensures that the island is seamlessly integrated into the scenes and matches the real lighting conditions, some of which are provided by the stock footage.

The professional help of CG supervisor Frank Dürschinger, who supported the students with the basic principles of lighting through to the individual shots, was also important here. However, light alone is not enough to create a photorealistic image. The interaction with the light is influenced by the shaders. As the entire process of lighting, shading and rendering took place in Houdini, the students used MaterialX shaders to guarantee a high degree of flexibility between the programmes. To increase the level of realism, the texture of the island was combined with several PBR materials.

The resulting improved level of detail creates a real look even with closer settings. A modified version of the Houdini shader was used for the water and spray. To maximise the scope for compositing, the image was split into several layers and rendered individually. This makes it possible to adjust areas such as whitewater, the island or the balloon afterwards. Individual AOVs were also calculated in the respective layers, for example to make the light in the balloon flicker or to re-insert the reflection in the water. The use of the Karma render engine enables a very efficient and fast workflow overall. This was also important for the lighting due to the real-time factor.

Compositing

Lino’s anxiety, which is symbolised by shadows, was visually represented using real rotated ink spreads. With the help of Nuke, the recorded elements were used as masks to darken specific areas. To break up the fluid look and give the “shadows” a creepy, organic aspect, the ink shots were also distorted with noise.

To keep objects and actors in the foreground, they were rotoscoped in the scenes where the shadow spread was located. For shadow shots with tracking shots, the movement was tracked to allow for the integration of the shadows; for static shots, minimal camera movement was added in post-production to increase authenticity.

The students integrated the rendered island model in the long shots of the island with real ocean footage to create a more appropriate atmosphere. The overly friendly sky of the original footage was replaced with more dramatic matte paintings to emphasise the sombre mood.

The black and white levels of the digital image were then adjusted to achieve a seamless integration with the original shot. The digital island blended more realistically with the real ocean through simulated white water effects and supporting VFX elements such as fog. Additional effects such as lens distortion and chromatic aberration contributed to the fusion of CGI and real footage.

To add scenes with a visible exterior wall of a building on the island, the students extended the physical set. With the help of 3D equaliser expert Ando Avila, the camera movements of the crane ride were tracked and reconstructed in digital space. This enabled a correct representation of the digital set in conjunction with the original shot, supported by additional VFX elements such as fog and particles for seamless integration.

In the film sequence where Lino’s fear reaches its climax and he goes into a panicked state where he perceives his grandmother as a demon-like being, her altered appearance was also supported with visual effects. The eyes were tracked in Nuke, rotoscoped and coloured black, while retaining the real highlights to preserve the plastic appearance of the eye.

In addition to the main tasks, inattentions that happened during the shoot were also addressed. This included removing the special effects operator including his leaf blower in the background or adding a forgotten oil lamp to the barkonaut’s burner. The finished VFX settings were delivered by the HFF students to the post-production company Pharos. There, senior colourist Andreas Lautil not only gave the entire film the finishing touches with his cinematic colour grading, but also by taking over the VFX shots. For the compositing tasks, the students received support from Nuke expert Martin Tallosy.

Soundtrack & sound mixing

The musical and tonal layer of the film was extremely important, as it not only emphasised the moods of the characters in all the scenes, but also provided a way to make the location and supernatural events such as the shadows more believable and real. The film’s music was composed by film composer Victor Ardelean. As part of his final thesis at the Munich University of Music and Theatre, it was even possible to record parts of the final composition with the Munich Symphony Orchestra.

Rehearsing and recording with such a large and renowned orchestra was a unique and unforgettable opportunity, not only for the composer but also for the rest of the team. The final piece “Ballonflucht” in particular has an epic orchestral sound that emphasises the final scene and its hopeful mood.

The tonal layer had two main tasks: the acoustic unification of the scenes shot entirely in the studio with the narrative location on an island in the sea and the visualisation of the living shadows. Since the entire film had been shot in a studio building, the soundscape of an island surrounded by the roaring ocean had to be added later. Artistic collaborator Dr Rodolfo Anes Silveira took over the sound mixing here and added subconscious sound elements in addition to the obvious sounds. In addition to the sound of waves and the occasional screech of a seagull, you can practically feel the breaking of the waves on the rocks of the island in the form of a deep bass rhythm in your own chest. The acoustic design of a short film is often a creative challenge, especially when the question arises: How can shadows sound at all?

The answer to this proved to be subtle and yet effective. Whispering noises, crackles and pops were mainly used to shape the acoustic identity of the shadows. The audience should not only see the shadows, but also literally feel their presence. The quiet but haunting sounds meant that the shadows were no longer just an embodiment of fears and evil, but also a reminder of actual dangers such as real cracks in the walls.

The post WIND UP – Family drama on a desert island first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by HFF Hochschule für Fernsehen und Film München.

by Mayra Ebensen, Silvia Loose and Paula Wodniok

Story development began in October 2022, during the weekly meetings with our Professor Jürgen Schopper. We received strong support from Dr Rodolfo Anes Silveira, Jonas Kluger, Berter Orpark and our team assistant Petra Hereth. We discussed many concept ideas and styles that we wanted to try out, and that’s how our team finally came together. The three of us – Mayra Ebensen, Silvia Loose and Paula Wodniok – were all interested in a very stylised animated film.
After the first story outlines and concept drawings, we finally agreed on a children’s film with a scary factor, initially set on Halloween and with a rather humorous tone. We later moved away from this theme, but the core of the story remained: the child’s unique creativity and overcoming fears. To further explore the depth of the character, we had the support of psychologist Dr Walter Stehling, who gave a seminar on the hero’s journey and character motivation.

Concept Art

Our story is about childhood fears, especially the fear of the dark and of being alone. For the eerie atmosphere of the old house where our whole story takes place, we drew inspiration from art nouveau architecture and films such as Henry Selick’s “Coraline” and “The Nightmare before Christmas”. Ornate designs and the complementary colour scheme were intended to give our setting something unreal.

In order to visually emphasise our character’s fear, we designed the rooms of the environment to be crooked and huge in comparison to the main character. We also wanted the lighting design in the entrance hall and corridor to appear cool and unfriendly.

The small play corner in the attic, on the other hand, was to be like a safe oasis for our protagonist. The walls are hung with real children’s drawings and their toys are scattered on the floor. In addition to the attic, the most important setting is the entrance hall. We incorporated a lot of Art Nouveau elements here: the large window front, with curved arched windows and an ornamental door, the ornate coat rack and the curved, winding banister are modelled on the organic design of Art Nouveau.

In terms of colour, we wanted to limit ourselves to blue-purple and yellow. The shadows and rooms are predominantly kept in cool and dark tones, which makes the yellow tones of the light colours stand out all the more and trigger a feeling of warmth and security.

Animatic

We had time to work on the story until the beginning of February and created the storyboard with the help of Prof Michael Coldewey. Every week there were new variations of editing and camera angles, with self-recorded sounds and music. We drew the floor plan of the house, planned how our characters would move around in the rooms and where the camera would have to be positioned to avoid any off-centre shots. At the same time, we built the first rough models of the characters and the house to get a feel for the size and effect of the shots in 3D space. Gradually, we mixed our drawn 2D animatic with the 3D animatic. We regularly updated this hybrid with our progress until we had finalised all the shots while maintaining the painterly style in a symbiosis of 2D and 3D.

Character design/model

We wanted to keep the look of our main character relatively simple, but with plenty of room for manoeuvre in her expressions. Her cartoon-like design, with lots of round shapes and a large head, contrasts with our second character, the long, skinny monster.
During the whole process of sculpting and rigging, Benc Orpak was at our side as a tutor. The girl’s body is sculpted and rigged in Blender and her mouth can be moved using a combination of different shapekeys.

The eyes were hand-painted on her head in all shots. This method gave us more freedom in her facial expressions, whereas modelled eyes would have restricted us.
Various combinations of animals immediately came to mind for the design of the monster.
In the very first concept drawings, it still had a very bug-like appearance, but gradually more animals were added. Sometimes it had a beak, sometimes a huge mouth and rabbit feet, until we finally came up with the moth as the main inspiration.

This insectoid model led us to the wings and the fluffy chest area. The long, scrawny arms are modelled on stick insects and the monster’s paws with pointed claws give the whole thing a heavy and terrifying look.

The flowing Art Nouveau design is also reflected in the shape of its antlers. They snake along its head and give the monster an elegant recognisable feature: when it first appears, the creature emerges from the shadow of an ornamental coat stand. It retains this design in its antlers until the end, while its body undergoes various metamorphoses.

Environment

We wanted to convey the character and age of the house through the furnishings and interior design. So after we had built the rough layout and basic model in Blender, we distorted the walls, furniture and windows so that there were hardly any straight lines in the background. The painterly style we had in mind should also be reflected in the modelling itself: To achieve this, we built almost all the assets ourselves, we distorted all the objects and for the curved details we worked a lot with curves.
The biggest challenge for us was the fabric simulation of the curtains on which the final shadow play showdown takes place. The shader initially caused the materiality and drapery of the curtains to be lost. We were able to counteract this by lavishly draping the folds and selectively sculpted the light. The girl interacts with the curtains, with her hands acting as hooks. There is also wind that moves the fabric slightly. For the shadow animation on the fabric, however, the sheets had to remain as still as possible to avoid intersections with the Grease Pencil.

Shading

At the beginning of the project, none of us had any experience with shading, which didn’t make our complex idea of the painterly style in 3D space any easier. We used Alan Wyatt’s Painterly Shader, which worked very well for still images, but gave us problems as soon as the camera moved. We were finally able to prevent the textures from running by reworking the node tree. Our 3D mentor Berter Orpak helped us in particular to adjust the shader for the main character and to integrate it uniformly into the environments. To break up the corners and edges of the individual assets for a painted look, we used geo-nodes. As geo nodes are generated anew for each frame, we customised them individually for each shot. The particular challenge of the shader was that we could only set one shadow colour and one light colour each, so we had no midtones, which severely limited the choice of colours and made it difficult to set the lighting. We were finally able to solve the problem during compositing in Nuke, where we had much more opportunity to manipulate the colouring and the image looked less flat. Claudia Fuchs added the final visual touches in colour grading, giving the film a coherent look.

Animation

To bring our characters to life, we used different animation styles to convey the essence of our characters. We received great help from Prof Melanie Beisswenger, who supported us for months to dive deeper into the art of character animation.
For the little girl in our film, we developed a mixture of traditional hand-drawn animation for eye and facial expressions and 3D animation. This hybrid approach allowed us to give her a unique charm. We animated her by hand throughout the film, using the reference videos we filmed as a guide.

As we didn’t narrate any dialogue, the body language of our protagonist became all the more expressive and small details such as a brief shrug of the shoulders made her and her emotions seem much more human.
The monstrous antagonist, on the other hand, required a completely different approach. The monster goes through three phases in the story: It transforms from a static and two-dimensional shadow on the wall to a dynamic purposeful shadow to a manifested 3D monster. During this process, we also changed the style of the animation to a grotesque one. Through this stylised aesthetic and its exaggerated proportions, we locate the monster in the world of fantasy and shadows animated by fear.

Music

The close collaboration with composers Victor Ardelean and Julia Chen in the early development phase led to a creative partnership. We discussed the musical perspective on our story with them and had the opportunity to fill in small gaps in the story before the production phase began. We received the first drafts and musical ideas soon after. At that time, only a few shots had a finalised look. The composers had a colourful mixture of drawn 2D animatic, Greyshade blocks from the Previs and filmed references as a template. It was all the more impressive to see how the music even took scenes at this rough animation level into account and turned them into a film. This allowed the composition of the music to influence the animation throughout the film and vice versa. The prerequisite for this was that the timing of the shots was as accurate as possible. We discussed the final fine adjustments to the music and timing together in the recording studio at the music academy.

Language

Although we have no dialogue in the film, we had to record sounds such as breathing, laughing or monster noises in the recording studio. Nedda Denk lent her voice to our child as a dubbing artist. Her voice, which already sounded very young, was later slightly enhanced in the sound mix by our sound designer Gerhard Auer, making it indistinguishable from real children’s voices.
Severin Denk provided us with great scary monster noises, which were later also pitched and integrated into the sound design. The voice recordings were a new challenge for all of us because – unlike with dubbed films – all the sounds and emotions had to be improvised without a visual template or even lip movements. It was important to think about all the sounds that we might need later in some way in advance. We also included snippets of dialogue that we didn’t have in the script at the time, because we wanted to leave room for changes for the later animation process. In the end, we finished the voice recordings
with a seemingly disproportionate amount of takes and variations. We were all the more grateful in the end during crunch time when we wanted to add and replace some expressions for clarity and were able to draw on our archive without any complications.

As there is no original sound in the animated film, Gerhard Auer built a “radio play” for it. He created the sonic atmosphere for all the rooms and recorded follies, such as the crunching of leather for the monster or the rubbing of fabric when the curtain or the girl moves.

An essential chapter of the story was the enchanting world of shadow puppetry. Carola Kärcher, a professional shadow puppeteer, supported us in this endeavour. We brought her into the team in April, at the very beginning of the production phase. We talked about our idea in Zoom meetings and showed her our animatic. Together with her, we thought about how we could design our shadow plays, both visually and dramaturgically. Mrs Kärcher developed some ideas and sent them to us as reference videos.

Of course, we also had to consider the special features of our protagonist. For example, our character has four fingers on each hand and one of them is stuck in a dinosaur hand puppet the whole time. These details had to be incorporated into the shadow play performance. Despite these limitations, Mrs Kärcher presented us with numerous impressive ways in which we could make use of them. This ultimately enabled us to create shadow puppetry scenes that could only come from our main character and her unique imagination.

All shadow play is hand-drawn frame by frame. We used the Grease Pencil feature in Blender for this. We were able to easily draw shadow plays that take place on a flat wall in our 3D space in the 2D animation workspace and then insert them as objects in our environment. Grease Pencil was particularly helpful for animating a shadow play in perspective directly in the 3D scene, which spreads over several levels.

The post Shadow play in Blender first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by HFF Hochschule für Fernsehen und Film München.

World VFX Day will now be celebrated annually on 8 December around the world to recognise the achievements and contributions of the VFX community in the world of entertainment and beyond. The event was created in 2023 by a group of VFX studios, organisations and professionals to raise the profile of the VFX industry, promote unity and contribute to greater overall global recognition.

There will be live streamed talks, talks and panel discussions throughout the day from Victor Preez, Ian Failes in conversation with Joans Ussing (Space Office FX) and Paul Franklin (Dneg), the Ocean Tools from Important Looking PIrates, Unnreal in use at Framestore, Virtual Production Showcases and many more topics around the “human” side of VFX.

If you are in Munich (or Bavaria), you can watch the short presentations from all over the world live in the HFF cinema during the day from 9 am to 7 pm and in the evening from 7 pm there will be a get-together with VFX artists from Munich – snacks and drinks will be provided. Click here to register for free – please forward!

https://anmeldung.hff-muc.de/vfx/worldfvxday2023/

For everyone else, here is the livestream, which starts from Hugo’s Desk.

The contributors to ‘World VFX Day’ are ready: Framestore, DNEG, Ghost VFX, MPC, Pixomondo, ILM, Mavericks, Moonraker, WētāFX, Untold Studios, Cinesite, beloFX, Milk FX, Blue Bolt, Afro VFX, Territory Studio, Important Looking Pirates, Jellyfish Pictures, Firebrand VFX, Access VFX, View Conference, FMX – Film & Media Exchange, Escape Studios, The Rookies, NextGen Skills Academy, Foundry, Corridor Digital, Befores and Afters, Humans of VFX and more – it’s going to grow, we reckon!

Why 8 December? It’s a tribute to the birthday of George Méliès, a filmmaker who was one of the most prolific early pioneers of visual effects.

The post WorldVFXDay 2023 im Livestream! first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

Some time has passed since our first report on “The Element” – at least in the fast-moving world of software. But now version 2.0 is available for download – and here is an excerpt of the latest features – whether it was worth the wait or whether you should simply switch your asset management to this system now is up to you.

Together what belongs together!

The outstanding feature of the 2.0 release is that the element now brings together all parts of a 3D asset – not just the geometry, but also textures. In everyday life, this means that searching for textures and their maps is now done in seconds.

Even if assets from other sources are used, they can be organised and found in a clear standard – and nobody has to try to assign sloppily named folders any more! But not only textures – render layers, normals and roughness files are also combined, categorised and made searchable.

And just to remind you: the element manages, indexes, analyses, searches and presents images, icons, image sequences, 3D assets, 3D SceneFiles (Houdini, Maya, Blender …), project files (Nuke, After Effects, Photoshop …), HDRI images, 360° videos and even PDFs.

Infinite scroller

In principle, there are not “too many assets” – but it can be difficult to find them. The new element offers a corresponding view for this: In the “infinite window” you can simply browse through everything without distraction – also good if you don’t know exactly what you want yet and just want to have a look at what’s available in the library.

As everything is AI-based nowadays, the element naturally also includes this – here in the variant that similar assets are found – be it to tidy up the database, for variations of a shot or simply because you can’t get enough of a motif, it’s up to you!

Users who have footage and plates with different elements that are similar in their initial state – I’m just saying explosions – will find the new video player handy. Within the element, you can see what happens beyond the preview frame – and rotate, flip or fold the image with just one click – and see whether the plate is suitable for the special “upside down” application.

Anyone who collects HDR spheres – and let’s be honest, who doesn’t – needs a preview where you can see exactly what is happening – which is why there is now an exposure slider for quickly adjusting the brightness. Handy for everyday use, but why don’t the other tools have this too?

Other features, such as an enhanced ingest for all possible formats, a tidier (or customisable by you!) interface, as well as better error descriptions for ingest and pipeline, and lots of bug fixes and minor adjustments are of course also included.

If you’re feeling nostalgic or want to get an overview, you can download the first article from DP 22:02 as a free PDF here . And if you want to give it a try, have a look here: das-element.com

The post A new element is here! first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

In autumn 2021, six of us, as the second year of VFX students at the University of Television and Film Munich, started to find ideas for our first film exercise and met weekly under the direction of Prof. Jürgen Schopper. Planet B began with the story of an old man who breeds biotopes and discovers a small human in one of his biotopes. Once the teams for the realisation of the films had been formed, however, this idea soon developed into a futuristic sci-fi story with the aim of commenting on the man-made decay of the environment and presenting the urgency of a solution to this.

by Alexander Hupp, Franziska Bayer, Ines Timmich

After further development, the old man who created a biotope with a human became a young woman who, together with other scientists, wants to create an entire planet in order to save humanity.

The rough story was finalised at the beginning of 2022, after which the implementation began. Consequently, the next step was to find the resolution of our scenes in the various environments, for which storyboards, animatics and blocking were created in a fluid process over several weeks. Our pipeline TD Jonas Kluger worked with us in parallel to create an efficient working environment and pipeline. In addition, a lot of concept art was created, as finding our style, which is explained in more detail below, was also a challenge.

Storyboard

In the storyboard phase, we worked on the visualisation of our script with great support from Prof. Michael Coldewey. During this week, we worked intensively on how we wanted to tell our story visually. It was clear to us early on that our camera language should be static and calm, which also benefited our 2D look.

The storyboard was revised several times, so that in the end we only moved on to the pre-visualisation phase with the fourth version. There, together with Dr Rodolfo Silveira, we converted the finished storyboard into a rough pre-vis. This consisted of 2D animations that helped us to define the mood and timing of the shots and their sequence more precisely.

Concept/design

We were certain from the outset that our film should contain a combination of 2D drawn elements and 3D animation. The style templates included the games Valorant and Borderlands, the League of Legends series “Arcane” and various episodes of the series “Love Death & Robots”: “The Whitness” and “Jibaro”, both directed by Alberto Mielgo. The aesthetic of our film ran through many episodes: Initially we wanted to make everything steampunk-style, in the meantime we had focused on a retro-futuristic look, but in the end it became a mixture of grunge and pre-apocalyptic aesthetics.

To “nail” this look stylistically, we designed many different concepts for the two planets, the environments and our protagonist – who still bears the mysterious title “Creator”. Not only the look, but also the practicality of the various assets and environments was important. For example, the Creator’s robotic arm had to be anatomically similar to a real human hand so that it could be rigged realistically. For reasons of effort and time, we opted for a slicked-back short haircut that moved little or not at all, and a breathing mask that covered most of the lower half of her face. For the two planets, we concentrated primarily on colour concepts. The old Earth, destroyed by climate change, was to be bathed in dry, desert-like ochre and toxic sulphur yellow, while the new Planet B shone in rich turquoise, teal and blue tones.

We based the design of the giant satellite dish on a real giant dish, the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, which was the largest single telescope in the world until 2016, but collapsed in 2020 (similar to our dish). To get a feel for the framing and colour mood of our film, we created key concepts for the individual key scenes.

Modelling, texturing & rigging

For the modelling, we worked on the 3D models with great help from our external lecturer Helmut Stark. He showed us how we could model the biotope or the bunker corridor, for example, in a detailed and topologically sensible way. Initially, we had a complete model of the bunker including a detailed interior, but this was later replaced in many scenes by matte paintings, which better matched the style of the 2D look. To give our shots the drawn look, we often took a frame from the camera’s point of view, painted over the existing texture of the model in Krita and projected this drawing back onto the models. By focussing on this texturing method, we ended up only needing simple models that had the right silhouette and dimensions. But not everything was textured in this way.

Some models, such as the Creator’s work interface and the space capsule in which our protagonist later flies into space, were painted by hand in Adobe Substance Painter. This allowed us to show the models from several perspectives without having to project something new onto them each time. The creator herself was also painted by hand in Substance Painter. We added several lines and hard shadows, especially around her eyes and ears, to enhance the comic/2D look. The rigging was done under the very helpful supervision of our external lecturer Benc Orpak, who showed us how to rig our protagonist realistically. For her facial expressions, we used shape keys to animate her eyes and eyebrows in particular.

Animation, motion capture & simulation

Overall, it would be far too time-consuming to animate the entire character “by hand”, so we decided to record the body movements using motion capture. We used the Xsens system available at the university for this purpose. With motion capture, we also had to get the interactions right that would later be seen in the film. That’s why we built a similar environment on set so that our motion capture actress could interact with it. We made sure that the scaling was correct so that we could use the data without making too many changes.

However, we were unable to record two components of the character using the motion capture system. The hand movements, including fingers and facial expressions. With the support of Prof Melanie Beisswenger, these were created in Blender using keyframe animation. We animated the rest using shape keys for the facial features and a controller for the eyeballs, which was created using the Auto-Rig Pro plug-in. As the character’s face below the eyes is covered by a static mask, the facial expressions could only be shown via the eyes and eyebrows, which placed high demands on the animation.
To make the collapse and the behaviour in the storm look as real as possible, the hanging elements of the satellite dish were implemented as a simulation. We took the dimensions from the Arecibo observatory and then used these parameters to calculate the mass of the respective fragments. Using simple wind force fields, we were able to simulate the interaction between the pillars and the storm. The pillars were fractured, i.e. broken up into small individual pieces in advance. This allowed us to better control the collapse of the pillar.

To save time, we also simulated the land masses flying away from planet B, whose surface consists of hexagons. To do this, we detached certain hexagons from the planet. By deactivating the gravity, we were able to cause the parts to detach using a single force field in the centre of the planet. We then converted the simulation into keyframes in order to make individual changes.

Shading and rendering

By projecting the textures, the shader was easy to adjust, but only for objects that were not changed in perspective. Our character was therefore the most difficult part of the shading. It had to be able to move and the light had to behave accordingly. We set the light itself in three-dimensional space instead of painting it directly onto the textures in order to achieve realistic behaviour. CGI artist Kathrin Hawelka and cinematographer Moritz Rautenberg were particularly helpful in this process.

Overall, our desired look is very dependent on the shading. It has to be able to combine the 2D (drawn) with the 3D (animation/shading) well. We decided in favour of the LightningBoyShader, a layer-based shader. This has the advantage over conventional cell shaders that we can more easily control the influence of the light sources. The look is also defined by the broken edges. For the objects themselves, we were able to break them all up in 2D, whereas we also had to break up the light edges using the shader. The shader also allows us to use light sources selectively, i.e. we can separate the surroundings from the character and light them individually. We received great support from our 3D mentor Berter Orpak with the complex shader setups. It was also important that our 3D objects matched the background, as the lighting moods had already been defined in the 2D painting.

Another advantage of the LightningBoyShader is that it works with the Eevee real-time render engine integrated in Blender. Being able to see the “finished” image in real time while working offers a number of advantages. Above all, this has greatly accelerated the lighting and shading. Thanks to Eevee, we were also able to render intermediate states in full quality without any problems. We appreciated the fast rendering times more and more towards the end, as the complexity of the shader meant that “real time” sometimes turned into a good 15 seconds per frame. We rendered with a colour depth of 16 bits, which we had to specify early on, as all drawn textures had to be created with the same colour depth.

Compositing

The compositing part of our film was relatively small, as we had some restrictions due to the shader. Due to time constraints, we decided to do most of the compositing in Blender. The challenge was mainly in the capsule scenes, as the beam can be seen in the reflection of the disc. The problem with this is that our real-time render cannot render reflections and we therefore had to add them afterwards. The final touches are often added to the film during compositing. However, we were already able to define our look through our drawings and did not have to make many adjustments afterwards.

Sound design and language

In our first animatics, we put together a provisional mix of sound-only and atmos, but it wasn’t until May 2022 that we really got to grips with the sound design and, above all, the film music. It was clear that we needed something epic, preferably in the “Hans Zimmer style”. Our producer, Felix Mann, contacted the film composer Victor Ardelean. After a meeting with Victor, where we explained our ideas for the mood of the music, he created the perfect composition for our film within just a few weeks, based on our three-minute blocking.

Foley sounds were created in a recording studio at the HFF. For example, we created footsteps on a concrete floor and the sound of the robot hand touching the glass biotope using jewellery rings and a beer mug. The voice recordings were also made in the studio by Moritz Segura Kanngießer and Ines Timmich. The 5.1 mix for the DCP, which was created by Martin Förster, was created from the film music, Foley and voices by sound mixer Stefan Möhl.

Conclusion

We worked on the films for two semesters and half a summer with a lot of support and were able to show our finished results at the VFX Reel 2022 at the HFF on 24 November 2022. We owe the planning of this event and other events within the VFX department to our team assistant Petra Hereth. After this very successful evening, we are looking forward to the next opportunities and festivals where we can present our film
film. We hope that all viewers will enjoy our film, but also that
film will inspire viewers to rethink their own actions and how they treat the environment. Ultimately, we are still faced with the fact that there is no Planet B.

The post Planet B first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by HFF Hochschule für Fernsehen und Film München.

The year is 2029, we live in an ageing society. What will the world look like when younger people can no longer pay for the pensions of older people? Will they still have to work? Who will look after them? These are the kinds of questions we asked ourselves when creating the story. In essence, it’s about an old, frail lady who controls a robot for a living, which she uses to collect rubbish. A bit like modern bottle collecting.

This woman, or rather her robot, then finds a tape recorder, which rekindles her love of music and dance. Instead of the boring, repetitive work, the robot she controls dances. She uses her working hours, somewhat subversively, to experience again what her situation now prohibits. In order to finally arrive at this idea, we first collected a large pool of ideas and small stories, roughly sketched them out and expanded them.

Realisability was not yet a decisive factor at this stage. It was more about generating lots of ideas quickly. Thanks to this pool of ideas, we had the decisive advantage in the next phase that we were able to part with stories that didn’t work so well without any pain, whereby some discarded ideas could flow into further development in the form of details. Over several rounds, the respective stories were further enriched with character sketches and smaller scenes. In the end, the basis for the film was a human-controlled robot that collects rubbish at night. The original idea came from the carelessly discarded masks lying around on the streets during the coronavirus winter of 2021. The dystopian tale of poverty in old age and loneliness is given a positive twist, celebrating the power of memories, human resilience, music, dance and fun.

Concept

This development should also be reflected in the look. The aim was to create visually exciting images from the story. What should the film look like, what does the robot look like, what kind of city is it set in, what time of day is it, how does the positive twist manifest itself in the environment. During this phase, we mainly used the drawing programme Procreate to create sketches and images for inspiration. There was also a Miro board on which we could save and organise our ideas. Basically, we had a Pixar-like look in mind – with high standards.

The robot went through many iterations. It had to be able to collect rubbish as believably as possible as well as dance freely in a human way. In the end, a cold robot should develop human traits. We also decided on a design that was as humanoid as possible in order to be able to use motion capture in the animation later on. The robots from Boston Dynamics served as a great inspiration. New York, with its tall buildings and small neighbourhood parks, was our template for the urban design. The environment contrasts gloomy streets at night with a park at dawn, and an interior space also had to be created for the limited world of the old working woman.

Storyboard

Once the story and look for the film had been found, the next step was to combine them into a convincing storyboard. Together with Prof Michael Coldewey, we looked for key frames such as the encounter between the rubbish collector and the tape recorder, the old woman in the wheelchair or the dancing robot in front of the sunrise. Ideas were discarded, developed further and sometimes reintroduced.

We tried to break the story down to the most important plot steps without losing any of the substance. The keyframes helped us to find effective shots. We then sketched these roughly before drawing them in more detail in Procreate.

Animatic & pre-visualisation

Now it was time to convert the storyboard into a moving film. To begin with, we took the previously created shots and added slight movements and a rough sound concept using After Effects and Premiere Pro. The addition of the sound in particular helped us to get a better feel for the timing.
It also allowed us to decide what should be shown visually and what would be better told on the audio level. With this knowledge, we moved on to the three-dimensional in the next step. For the previs, the settings were roughly blocked out in Blender, cameras were set, animations were added or used from Mixamo and the timings were taken from the animatic.

Then Eevee was used for rendering and the result was cut in Premiere Pro. This allowed us to recognise which settings worked well in three dimensions and which needed to be framed differently or fundamentally changed. From there, we gradually made the Previs cleaner, adjusted the camera movements, increased the level of detail in the environments and animated the Smoother animations until we could be sure that the film would come across to the viewer the way we wanted to tell it.

Pipeline & Workflow

Our great pipeline TD Jonas Kluger had set up a pipeline for us via Shotgrid for Blender, so it was possible not to get bogged down in chaos even with a project of this size. As we had almost 250 assets in total, it was necessary to work in a clearly organised structure. We created three environments from the assets: grandma’s home, the city and the park. We could then load these into the respective shots again and again and be sure that continuity was maintained. Nevertheless, it was still possible to adjust the size and position of individual assets in certain shots.

We were also able to use the pipeline to change and publish assets and then update them in the environment or in the shot using the Shotgrid add-on in Blender. This made the division of labour within the team much easier and eliminated misunderstandings about versions or file names from the outset.

Modelling & Shopping

It was clear to us that the amount of work involved in modelling all the assets or an entire city would far exceed our capacities. That’s why we decided early on to only create the really important models ourselves and to buy in all the others.

As we didn’t want our style to be photorealistic, we had to search a little longer to find the right models. We finally decided on a package that already included an entire city. We built our hero models, the robot, the “router” and the station from which the robot emerges ourselves, with valuable tips from Helmut Stark, and we were able to create the grandma with the help of Reallusion’s Character Creator. It was important to us that the robot should look as if it had really been built to collect rubbish, but it also had to have enough freedom of movement to be able to dance. For the grandma, we decided to change the proportions of the head and body to avoid ending up in the Uncanny Valley.

Texturing

Once the models were finished, it was time for some colour, using Adobe Substance Painter to give the robot, station and router the right finish. By using textures with less detail, we were able to get closer to the goal of a cartoon-like style.

A mix of procedurally generated and hand-drawn masks for wear and tear and dirt emphasises the history of the models, for example, it became very clear that the robot has been keeping the city streets clean for a long time and has picked up a few scratches along the way. We then imported all the textures created in Substance Painter back into Blender and the models were ready for the next step.

Rigging

Our two characters, the grandma and the robot, finally wanted to move. For the grandma, we were able to use a Blender add-on, Autorig Pro, and with the help of our lecturer Benc Orpak, we were able to generate a functioning rig quite quickly. Fortunately, this saved us the manual rigging process and therefore a lot of time. Unfortunately, things were a little different with our robot: although it has human-like proportions, some of the joints worked a little differently. That’s why we had to rig the robot manually. The aperture and the cylinders on the legs were particularly interesting, as they visualise the mechanical character of the robot well. For remapping the data recorded during motion capture to the respective rig, we were able to use Autorig for both models.

Once the mapping, i.e. the definition of which bone receives which keyframes, had been set, it could be used again and again. In the end, only one click was needed to transfer all the data from the mocap to the target rig. It was a truly magical moment when you could see a robot moving almost by itself for the first time.

Motion capture shoot

When we were developing our story, it was already clear that we didn’t want to animate the dancing movements of the robot by hand, but to record them using motion capture. Katharina Hein, our producer, discovered Nicole, a professional rollerblader who showcases her roller dance skills on Instagram (@rollin_me_softly) and has even founded a Munich roller dance group (@munich_rollerdance_squad). Nicole was quickly enthusiastic about our film idea and was keen to lend her movements to our robot as a motion-capture actress.

A few days before the actual shoot, we made some preparations so that the motion capturing could run smoothly. For example, we measured our digital
digital sets so that we could recreate them in a very rudimentary form in the studio. We also developed a detailed shooting schedule for the three days of filming. For the actual motion capturing, we used a suit from Xsens and the associated software MVN Animate. On the first day of filming, we mainly recorded Nicole’s dance movements on the roller skates. As Xsens is not an optical motion capture system, but a system that works with acceleration sensors, we had the following difficulty: Xsens calculates the position of the suit in space based on ground contact and the distance travelled by the actress while walking. Due to the lack of ground contact because of the rather high roller skates and the “floating” movement above the ground, we did not receive any position data from the performer, but only her own movement data. This wasn’t a problem, however, as we were planning to manipulate the recorded routes to our liking during the animation phase anyway. In addition, we always filmed the entire set from two different perspectives with witness cams so that we could better reconstruct the movement in space later.

Animation

With the motion capture data recorded, we were able to continue with the animation. Firstly, all the selected motion captures were selected and exported to MVN Animate as .fbx. Retargeting in Blender was relatively simple using the AutoRig Pro add-on. Of course, the pure motion capture animation was not precise enough, or we wanted to change certain movements afterwards. For this we used the Blender add-on Animation Layers, which enabled us to do just that. This meant that the original mocap movement data was on one layer and we had the option of manipulating the movements on a second layer. This was particularly important in moments when the characters interacted with objects. We were accompanied by Prof Melanie Beisswenger, who not only provided practical support but also explained the basic theoretical principles of animation.

Lighting

Before we started lighting ourselves, we first looked for mood images with colours and lighting that matched our ideas for Clean Aid. For example, we analysed still frames from Pixar films for their lighting design. From these images, we developed a lookbook and colour palettes for each of the three environments.

With this inspiration, we went about lighting our shots. We used various HDRIs, on the one hand as a “natural” light source for the scenes, but also to tell the story of the transition from the night sky to the morning mood.

In one shot, in which we show a time-lapse, we even used an HDRI sequence to allow the different stages of the sky to run smoothly. Of course, we didn’t leave it at the HDRIs, but set the lights individually for each shot to achieve our desired look. With backlighting, for example, we were able to isolate the characters shown from the background. These lights were rendered in Blender on separate layers so that we could adjust them again in compositing. The use of volumes in the shots made the robot’s light cone visible. Creative director and CGI artist Kathrin Hawelka provided us with active support.

Rendering

As we had two internal render engines at our disposal in Blender, we used both. We rendered with Eevee during the entire Previs phase. This allowed us to render almost in real time, which accelerated our creative process enormously. However, as it was still important to us to have a realistic interaction with light, especially because of the robot’s light beam, we decided to use Cycles as our render engine. In order to be as flexible as possible when compositing in Nuke, we used Blender’s own compositor to export a multilayer EXR sequence in which all render passes and masks were saved. For hero objects, such as the robot, the granny and the boombox, we create one mask per shot. We realised that the denoiser works much better if we don’t apply it to the whole image, but to each render pass individually. This allowed us to denoise the volume, for example, and reduce artefacts to a minimum.

At the same time, this procedure enabled us to save all passes in the EXR without noise. However, we had to realise that the denoiser also has its limits, and it was difficult to denoise asphalt, for example. As the reflections that inevitably result from the structure are very similar to digital noise, this desired structure was often transformed into “mud”. Although we had to do without the denoiser in such cases, we were still able to significantly reduce the render time. An average render time of approx. 45 min/frame was possible.

Compositing

With the exported EXR sequences including all layers, it was time for compositing. In Nuke, we used a “back-to-beauty” workflow to merge the layers back into the overall image. However, this gave us the opportunity to adjust all the selected passes individually and manipulate them to our liking.

Depending on the environment, we set up a comp setup that allowed us to go even further in the direction of our lookbook. To achieve the most authentic camera look possible, we used chromatic abberation effects in compositing, for example, or to further emphasise the dreamy overall mood during the dance sequence at sunrise, we worked with various types of glow effects. We also had the opportunity to retouch render errors or other minor details in the compositing. Senior compositing artist Shayan Sharegh provided us with lots of helpful tips and tricks
Artist Shayan Sharegh was at our side.

Grading

Then it was off to grading with the composited shots. Together with colourist Claudia Fuchs, we fine-tuned a few small details, completed our look and checked the settings for colour accuracy. A selected grain rounded off our sequences.

Sound design & music

No film without sound. This is all the more true for our animated film. Very early on in the development process, we were looking for the right piece of music for our robot to dance its way through the streets to. As the film is set in 2029, the grandma in the wheelchair is 80 years old and her wheeler dance career is at its peak in young adulthood, it was clear to us that the song should fit in with the 70s and the disco genre.
After extensive research, we came across “Dance Like Crazy” by the artist “Ikoliks”. Mykola Odnoroh (alias Ikoliks) was enthusiastic about the idea of his piece of music making our robot dance, and that’s how the collaboration came about.
But not only the music has become an elementary component of our animated film, but also the sound design. Sound engineer Andreas Goldbrunner and artistic collaborator Rodolfo Anes Silveira used the raw sound design that we had created for Previs as a basis and used it to conjure up an auditory backdrop that brought our environments and the movements of our rusty robot to life.

Retrospective

And voilà, about a year later it was finished, our first animated short film. Who would have thought that it could take so long to develop a coherent story, to go through all the production steps of the animation pipeline until you end up with a finished film of three minutes and fifty-five seconds? We certainly didn’t – but it was worth it. It’s been a very instructive year with many hurdles and challenges overcome, so we can now look back on Clean Aid with pride and look forward to sharing it with as many people as possible.

Producers Comment by Katharina Hein and Felix Mann

After the exciting and inspiring lecture on VFX by Michael Coldewey in the first semester, we were gripped by enthusiasm and curiosity for VFX producing. The offer to support our year’s animated films gave us the opportunity to get to know a completely new way of producing. As students in our first semester, we had no previous experience in the production of animated films. So we began a period of constant learning about the workflow, the software required and how long rendering times can really take. One of the highlights of the production for both of us was the motion capture shoot, where we were able to make the best use of our previous experience from previous shoots. After all, a motion capture shoot is essentially only slightly different from a live-action film shoot. As producers, we tried to take on all organisational tasks and be available at all times to answer questions. After the shoot is before the shoot and we are very much looking forward to producing the VFX students’ first live-action film in 2021 together with WennDann Film next year. We would like to thank the entire VFX department and especially Ines, Franzi, Alex, Valentin, Hannes and Felix for this trust.

Team

• Directors: Valentin Dittlmann,Hannes Werner, Felix Zachau
• Producer: Katharina Hein
• Motion capture Actors: Nicole Adamczyk, Katharina Hein, Hannes Werner
• Music: Mykola Odnoroh (Ikoliks)
• Project Supervision: Prof. Jürgen Schopper
• Project Consultant: Berter Orpak, Rodolfo Anes Silveira
• Vfx Pipeline TD: Jonas Kluger
• Line Producer: Ina Mikkat
• Team Assistant to Line Producer: Jenny Freiburger
• Team Assistant: Petra Hereth
• Scheduling: Beate Bialas, Sabina Kannewischer
• Technical Support: Benedikt Geß, Florian Schneeweiß
• Studio Management: Peter Gottschall, Andreas Beckert
• Conforming: Martin Foerster
• Colour grading: Claudia Fuchs
• Sound Design & Re-Recording: Andreas Goldbrunner
• Lecturer: Prof. Melanie Beisswenger (Animation), Prof. Michael Coldewey (Storyboarding), Kathrin Hawelka (Lighting), Benc Orpak (Rigging), Moritz Rautenberger (Camera work), Shayan Sharegh (Compositing), Helmut Stark (Modelling & Texturing)
• Thanks to: Jonas Bartels, Franziska Bayer, Christian Gessner, Alexander Hupp, Christoph Kühn, Malte Pell, Jonas Potthoff, Nicolas Schwarz, Tobias Sodeikat, Ines Timmich

The post Trash, Dance & Robots first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by HFF Hochschule für Fernsehen und Film München.

And above all: how will we look back on our mistakes today? In Adjourned, our contemporary climate summits are already a historical relic, a classic theatre play from the past. Having failed to fulfil their actual task, their former existence now serves only serves to amuse a few survivors. In the dystopia, our present-day climate theatre becomes a perfect source of satire. We realised this in our second film at the HFF Munich under the direction of Prof. Jürgen Schopper as follows.

In the second year of our training, as visual effects students at HFF Munich, we had the opportunity for the first time to develop a short film idea together with other departments at the university, such as production, camera and screenplay, which had to be realised with the help of visual effects. The advantage of this co-operation was that the effort and feasibility of potential visual effects shots could already be planned down to the smallest detail during script development. We tried to work as closely as possible to the principle of virtual production, for which close co-operation with the other departments was a prerequisite. This collaboration was extended by VFX industry professionals, who supported us again and again during the course of the production. Petra Hereth was responsible for team coordination.

by Christian Geßner, Nicolas Schwarz, Chris Kühn,
Malte Pell, Tobias Sodeikat and Jonas Potthoff

From the first script version in October 2021 to the start of shooting in April 2022, we were involved in the preparation of the film in many ways: in parallel with the script development, we created the first concept art, which we used to design the look for our world together with author Larissa Dold and director Matthias Zentner.
At the same time, we constantly updated the VFX calculation with the latest findings from the joint meetings from the start of the script work in order to guarantee the feasibility of the visual effects. In this way, we were able to ensure that the VFX effort was in line with the time frame available to us during book development. It also gave us the opportunity to prioritise during development which parts of the story would benefit from visual effects and where they were not absolutely necessary. In addition to storyboarding and concept art, this process was accompanied by us with the support of Luis Guggenberger. With the help of 3D mentor Berter Orpak, we created a 3D pre-visualisation in a very short time, which not only showed roughly blocked scenes, but already included tracking shots, animated characters and a rough sound layout.

Production: University of Television and Film Munich 
Duration: 07:51 min (25fps)
Resolution: 2K (Aspect Ratio: 2:39)
Render Engine: Redshift, Mantra
Texturing Software: Substance Painter
3D Software: Blender, Houdini
Compositing Software:  Nuke

Once the script was largely finalised in February 2022, we were able to focus on the actual filming preparations. As we already had a very concrete idea of the shots to be filmed based on the 3D previs and the entire shoot was also very VFX-heavy, the shooting schedule was developed directly in the VFX department in close consultation with the producers Luisa Eichler and Michaela Mederer. In various production meetings and shooting schedule discussions, we also planned the concrete realisation of each shot with the other trades – for example, we were able to determine exactly where the real studio set would merge into the digital world with the art department under the direction of Katja Severin and how we could make these transitions as unobtrusive as possible. It also took some coordination with the costume (costume designer: Katharina Ost) and make-up (key make-up: Sabeth Kelwing) departments in order to be able to shoot VFX-compatible costumes and SFX make-up, such as burning hands, as sensibly as possible.

During filming (camera: HFF graduate Teresa Renn), we as VFX students were represented in various positions on set, with the role of visual effects supervisor being swapped on a daily basis so that every student had the opportunity to experience this function for themselves. We were supported by professionals from the industry (Jan Stoltz and Dietrich Hasse). But we were also very busy outside of this position: Both the set and the actors* had to be scanned and data also had to be collected from the set after each take.

After the end of the shooting week, it only took another week until we were able to lure the first VFX shots from a rough cut and start editing (editing: Michael Dervenski & Matthias Zentner). To do this, we updated the latest cut version in DaVinci Resolve with the online material and exported the shot plates and references in 16-bit Linear EXR sequences for editing.

Order in the chaos of assets – the modelling

Hopefully it will still be a few years before it looks like the Vertagt universe here in Munich. As the only thing that already existed during the production period was an empty stage, the world around it had to be created from scratch in the computer. We used a combination of specially created, purchased and scanned assets.
This resulted in a total of over 50 different models, some in up to six different versions. The largest of these was a broken container ship. We reworked the purchased 3D models with our own textures for our film in order to adjust the level of detail for the project and the individual shots. The realistic replica of a whale skeleton, shipping containers and oil drums are some of the many assets that were added to the interior and exterior of the wreck.

Image references of possible shipwrecks, damaged cars, aeroplanes, harbours, pipeline systems and materials affected by sand and weather formed the basis of our research. From the references summarised in mood boards
References summarised in mood boards, we were able to pick out new ideas throughout the project and recreate them in detail. The interior of the shipwreck was continuously filled with first large, then smaller and smaller objects.

The 3D models were modelled and “UV unwrapped” in Blender. In order to cope with the large number of differently coloured and dented containers, we created various textures and models, which were assigned procedurally in Houdini. To ensure that accessories such as cables, ladders and rubbish could still be placed on the containers and that the AO map could be calculated correctly in Substance Painter, the scene was initially blocked with cuboids.

In addition, we modelled a second interior, which is revealed to us in the long return journey as the ruins of an engine room, gradually adding information about the location and the dystopian world. The centrepiece is an old, oversized ship’s engine. The difficulty here was to combine the realistic depiction of the working environment in an engine room with as open an environment as possible to show the size of the wreck. Some elements run through both areas of the ship in order to connect them as seamlessly as possible. Both the rust shader and the cables hanging from the ceiling serve as a link here.
“Among other things, a model looks realistic when the eye and brain cannot grasp all the elements at once, but discover new things bit by bit”. To follow this advice from Dirk Mauche (our active support in the modelling area), a tangle of cables, chains and rope ladders provides the necessary details (and disorder) in the picture.

A crawler learns to fly – rigging & animation

The main CG character, a cockroach called “Despair”, was already delivered with various animation cycles and a rig, but first had to be fed into the pipeline. To do this, we created a motion cycle system in Houdini that could be used to efficiently fade between the various animation cycles. With the help of several controllers, it was possible to run the CG cockroach on a spline curve at different speeds. It only became problematic when more complex movements were required. A rotation around its own axis, when the cockroach has to perform a somersault to escape from a tricky situation, became an endless search for the right point of rotation. The problem was solved using the good old “brute force” method. A second locator served as a new anchor. Despite using ready-made animation presets, we were once again lucky enough to be supported by Prof Melanie Beisswenger as an animation lecturer. We learnt that even the smallest changes in the running speed of a cockroach can provide a lot of information about how it can affect the viewer.

Continuity of light and shadow

We realised early on that we needed low key lighting on set. The only source of light was to be the extremely bright lightbeams that would shine through small holes in the outer wall of our shipwreck, but from whose scorching heat the ship’s inhabitants were to hide. The darkness surrounding them was only to be discreetly brightened up by their bounce lights. However, as is so often the case, it turned out during pre-production that the reality was different. We couldn’t completely do without a few bright accents in the form of artificial light lamps on set in order to capture the mood and create enough detail in the blacks for the camera. This resulted in an interplay of lightbeams, which have a daylight and therefore cool colour temperature, and practicals, which emit artificial light and therefore have a warmer colour temperature.

In order to get as close as possible to the properties of real sunlight in our studio environment, our head lighting technician Torsten Baier organised a large PAR spotlight, which was directed into the right paths using mirrors and whose light cone was suitably shaped. Thanks to the parallel beam path of this spotlight, it hardly loses any brightness at a distance and thus corresponds to our perception of sunlight. A lot of artificial fog on set also ensured that the beam of light was visible in the air and that our surroundings looked appropriately dusty. Now it was time to digitally match the lighting from the set..

The long shots were particularly challenging, in which we had to extend our shot set outwards in order to be able to tell the interior of the shipwreck credibly. The transition between the filmed stage and the digital set was concealed by 3D-scanned scrap parts and models, but the lighting mood had to match exactly for both. The light beams also cross the “boundary” between the filmed and digital plate, which is why they had to be partially supplemented, but also completely retouched and digitally replaced. The aim was to recreate the correct angle, diameter, intensity and colour temperature of the real light beam. This was done in Houdini and then rendered with Redshift. In compositing, we added further details such as animated fog and particles floating in the air to the light beams, further blurring the line between real and computer-generated footage. We received a lot of support from our lecturer Frank Dürschinger, who provided us with the final food for thought to create a realistic image.

Other shots had a smaller CG component, but this had to be all the more seamless. As a completely digital character, our cockroach needed lighting that was as true to the original as possible, including refraction, reflection and shadows, in order to fit exactly onto the plate being shot and integrate itself into the real world. And that in every setting size – whether it appears large in the picture or only takes up a few pixels. To achieve this, we used a 360° camera to take exposure series of the respective location and its lighting during the shoot and then stitched them together to create HDRIs. The HDRIs served as the basis for the lighting of the respective 3D scenes, but were often supported by additional spot and area lights. Finding the right balance between too much and too little additional lighting was a challenging fine-tuning task, but it was also a lot of fun.

FX simulations: Sand and bone dust

The requirements for the FX simulations ranged from simple setups like the main title crumbling into dust and a cockroach kicking up sand, to big challenges like the skull shattering on the ground and a photorealistic desert that had to work in both close-up shots and a super long shot. We were once again lucky enough to have Felix Hörlein on board as a lecturer for our second project at the HFF and were therefore able to draw from the full range of possibilities.

In the final shot of the film, we establish a vast, open desert landscape swept by sand and wind. The biggest challenge in realising this haze was the enormous size of the terrain. With an area of three square kilometres, a simulation approach was needed that could simulate different resolutions for different areas. Thanks to the help of Felix Hörlein, an LOD system was created based on the distance to the camera. In the first step, a point cloud was generated at three different points in time using Mantra’s ray tracer, which subsequently produced a representation of the entire visible geometry.

In combination with the LOD system, this resulted in a significantly reduced footprint that could be used to generate the volume. All parameters that have an influence on the volume must also be controlled globally in order to ensure that the edges of the individual LOD areas blend into each other as much as possible. To save computing power, time and storage space, the simulations on the individual wedges only start shortly before they are visible in the camera. In addition to the volumes, we used a particle simulation in the foremost areas of the field of view to get as close as possible to the “sandstorm” target. This was controlled by the Vel field from the volume simulation.

Despite all the cost-saving measures, one workstation per version took an average of around six days to simulate all the individual parts, generating a cache size of 5 TB. This is largely due – at 1250 frames – to the length of the shot. Mantra became our render engine for all simulations. Rendering was always done with mattes, IDs and cryptomattes to give the compositing specific access to the individual simulations.

The skull crashing to the ground and disintegrating is the dramaturgical highlight of the film and demanded a lot from us due to the size of the shot. The basis of the effect is an RBD simulation with custom constraints for the three areas “skull”, “jaw” and “teeth”. To make the breaking more interesting, the option “switch constraints when broken” is also active for a selected area that contains the main features of the skull. Using a second constraint type, the selected geometry is held together for longer before it finally breaks. The skull has been acquired and prepared for the simulation. Three separate “rbd-fracture-nodes” are used to divide it into fragments in order to get as close as possible to the real properties of the different bone thicknesses.

To save memory space and optimise performance, the RBD simulation was only cached as points. This allowed us to remesh the geometry of the skull only after the simulation and thus determine the final resolution of the mesh. A growth solver, which is initiated by changing the distance between neighbouring points when breaking, starts the “disintegration” process. All infected polygons are passed on to another solver, which freezes them at their position and feeds their centre as a single point into a POP network. After the simulation of the POP solver, the polygons are linked to the animation of the respective points using an ID. This allows the dissolving parts to be simulated and saved in a very computationally and data-efficient manner. The individual points are controlled by a velocity field that was generated with the RBD simulation.

In order to intensify the shattering, we have also added two further particle simulations, which on the one hand provide more volume, but more importantly create the appearance of a dust-covered floor – and thus correspond to the rotated plate. We were also able to use a similar but significantly simplified technique for two shots in which the hand and arm of an actor are burnt by the sun and disintegrate into dust.

Digital film set

The use of the Faro laser scanner provided great technical support for post-production. Purchased especially for the Visual Effects degree programme, we were able to create 3D scans of the entire set, which later enabled us to read off accurate distances and create precise match moves. Our initial expectations that tracking would not be a problem with smaller camera pans were quickly dashed by the bitter realisation of how important a good match move is.
Thanks to Matchmove lecturer Ando Avila, however, we were also able to overcome this challenge. The scans also form the basis for the digital replica of the film set. An initial rough reconstruction provided information on the position and tilt of the camera, and details such as wooden struts, chairs and lamps were subsequently added. The recording of the actors was rotoscoped and projected onto the geometry. The projection of the recorded stage onto 3D geometry was used several times. Especially to create subtle
3D projection was an important tool, especially for credibly narrating subtle camera movements with parallax shifts. Of course, it was also helpful to use rudimentary geometry.

Pipeline

In the previous year and during the course of the project, we learnt a lot about effectiveness and workflow. Many shots with the same environment led to the decision to integrate Houdini digital assets into our workflow. This allowed us to tackle steps such as modelling and animation at the same time. But that alone is not enough to keep a cool head and keep things organised. Our Pipeline TD Jonas Kluger, who supported us in the workflow with Shotgrid Studio and modified the pipeline according to our needs, made sure of this. This enabled us to keep a better overview of the tasks and stick to our production schedule.

Compositing

The final step in post production was compositing. As the production offered everything from simple retouching to elaborate full CG shots, the six students had to finalise the more than 40 visual effects shots in a short space of time. Deadlines are deadlines and they don’t wait any longer than our climate. The comp work took place exclusively in Nuke and for some of us, working on the project was a good introduction to the software. Fortunately, we were able to rely on the support of Christoph Zapletal and Jens Schneider, who were able to teach us better Nuke structures and advanced techniques. This was the only way we could work on many different shots at the same time.
At the end of the film, there were also several shots in which we had to digitally add ash flying through the air. The “Das Element” software helped us enormously here, as plates can be organised and found quickly. These
Plates were inserted after they had been created on the last day of filming and thus supplemented the library of purchased stock footage. From a large ladder we threw dust particles, torn paper or we blew mist through a hose into a rubber glove. As everything was filmed against a black background, we could simply use these elements in Nuke and add them to the shot plates on the stage.

Nice and dirty – the colour grading

Once shooting, editing and visual effects were complete, the film was given its finishing touches. Andreas Lautil from Pharos created an individual look to match the eccentric style of the dystopian theatre. Although the grading is based on fairly classic teal and orange lighting on set, it was pushed in a much dirtier direction here. The dark areas were made dirtier and greener so that the audience could put themselves in the shoes of the run-down world and better empathise with the society in the film. Once again, it became clear how much influence each department has on the final project. Originally, a rather desaturated style was planned – clearly recognisable in our concept drawings. However, this was greatly varied in the grading. Now the contrasting cold tones in the depths harmonise with the warmer highlights and thus also with the absurd events in front of and behind the stage.

The sound design and funny background conversations

The quiet murmuring, the sound echoing from all directions and the creaking of the rusting steel transported us to the gigantic wreck in the middle of the desert for the first time in the making of the film. Thanks to Dr Rodolfo Silveira’s work in sound design, the silent shots that accompanied us for months became an atmospheric experience. In several sets, vocal ranges and positions, we students were even able to lend our voices to the digital audience ourselves and push our vocal chords to their limits. What do old, injured people who are on the verge of dying of thirst sound like when they nevertheless enter a bizarre theatre? The HFF’s in-house recording studio demanded a lot from us in terms of acting, but also brought to light a hidden passion for some of us. As the film was shot entirely in a studio, it was necessary to place all the metallic sounds of a ship in the very first shot of the film.

Thus, the entire opening sequence, which takes place in a corridor on the side of the theatre stage, was completely resonated to convey the echoes, vibrations and thus the dimensions and weight of an abandoned oil tanker. Through this strategy, the sound information creates a new level of understanding that complements and enlarges the film for the audience and prepares them for the climax and the central conflict of the story. The sound design was supported by an atmospheric composition by musician Meredi, who was able to capture a unique mood for the film using specially created sounds.

Outlook

Above all, working with industry professionals has shown us that even a little insight and practical experience in all departments helps us to gain an understanding of other departments. The mentality that visual effects is just a part of post-production is a thing of the past, because film-making begins for visual effects during script development. Virtual production is becoming increasingly relevant for well-planned productions with a visual effects component. The first internal presentation took place as part of the “VFX-Reel” 2022 exhibition in the Audimax of the HFF Munich.

Team

• Script: Larissa Dold
• Director: Matthias Zentner
• Producer: Michaela Mederer and Luisa Eichler
• Director of Photography: Teresa Renn
• Gaffer: Torsten Baier
• Production Designer: Katja Severin
• Costume Designer: Katharina Ost
• Key Make-Up: Sabeth Kelwing
• Composer: Ina Meredi Arakelian
• Editor: Michael Dervenski, Matthias Zentner
• Colorgrading: Andreas Lautil
• VFX Supervisor: Jan Stoltz and Dietrich Hasse
• Project Supervision: Prof. Jürgen Schopper
• Project Consultant: Dr Rodolfo Anes Silveira
• VFX Pipeline TD: Jonas Kluger
• 3D Mentor: Berter Orpak
• Team Assitant: Petra Hereth
• Technical Tutor: Moritz Rautenberg
• VFX Producer: Chris Kühn, Jonas Potthoff
• Modellers: Christian Gessner, Chris Kühn, Malte Pell, Tobias Sodeikat
• Texture Paint Artists: Christian Gessner,
• Chris Kühn, Malte Pell, Tobias Sodeikat
• Simulation Artist: Nicolas Schwarz
• Animators: Chris Kühn, Tobias Sodeikat, Malte Pell
• Compositors: Jonas Potthoff, Chris Kühn, Nicolas Schwarz, Malte Pell, Tobias Sodeikat, Christian Gessner
• Visual Effects Editor: Jonas Potthoff
• PreViz Artists: Christian Gessner, Chris Kühn
• Sound Design/Re-Recording Mixer: Dr Rodolfo Anes Silveira
  • VFX Mentors
• Concept: Luis Guggenberger
• Modelling/Texturing: Dirk “Superdirk” Mauche
• MATCHMOVE Ando Avila
• FX: Felix Hörlein
• Mattepainting: Jens Schneider
• Animation: Prof. Melanie Beisswenger
• Compositing: Christoph Zapletal
• Lighting: Frank Dürschinger
  • Cast
• A Chancellor: Viola von der Burg
• A Conservative Party Member: Claus Peter Seifert
• Green Party Member: Ronja Katharina Brusa
• A Prompter: Patrick Bimazubute
• The Choir Singers: Emil Vorbrugg

The post VERTAGT – VFX for a dystopian satire first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by HFF Hochschule für Fernsehen und Film München.

In nuce: Two student Oscars in the Narrative category go to the HFF Munich this year. The graduation film Almost Home and the training film Eigenheim (Rooms) were able to secure the award trophies. Almost Home tells the story of a mother-son conflict in space and draws parallels to the pandemic, while Eigenheim deals with the topic of forced eviction. The two Student Academy Awards were won by the HFF Department of Feature Film Directing, headed by Prof Julia von Heinz and Prof Marcus H. Rosenmüller. A total of seven student short films from all over the world were among the finalists. A total of three winners were chosen in the Narrative category. The award ceremony will take place live for the first time since 2019: on 20 October at the David Geffen Theatre in Los Angeles. The winners of the Student Academy Awards in gold, silver and bronze will also be announced at this event. This year marks the 49th time that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences has presented the Student Academy Awards to up-and-coming filmmakers.

Film plot synopsis for Almost Home: When space explorer Nico and her pubescent son Jakob learn of an outbreak of a highly contagious virus shortly before their arrival on Earth, they struggle with the decision to land or return to space indefinitely. HFF team: Nils Keller (director), Georg Nikolaus (cinematographer), Philip Hofmann, Jonas Lembeck, Robert Richarz, Carolina Oswald (production with lehof Media), Lukas Väth (VFX)

Short description of the film plot for Eigenheim: The elderly couple Monika and Werner Baland live in a small three-room flat on the outskirts of the city. One day, their new landlady hands them a notice of termination for personal use. The young mother wants to move in with her family. But the search for a flat proves to be extremely difficult for the elderly couple. HFF team: Welf Reinhart (director), Tünde Sautier (screenplay), Matthias Kofahl (camera), Louis Merki (production with Merki und Reinhart Film GbR), Giorgia Germeno (production manager)

Click to continue: Press release on hff-muenchen.de

The post Two student Oscars go to HFF film projects! first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Patrick Poti.