Johannes Diekmann - 3D Projects

Whistler's Voldemort

This rendition of Voldemort was the final exam for one of my 3D classes during my exchange semester at Howest University. Our task was to choose a famous painting and, while keeping the composition, replace the subject with something from a popular movie.

This piece is based upon the painting Whistler's mother by James Abbott McNeill Whistler. In my opinion the very calm and contemplative mood of the original clashes strongly with Voldemorts character. I thought it would make for an interesting juxtaposition to have him portrayed in this way.

Original painting and my own rendition.

Before doing anything, I gathered some references. These helped me to stay consistent when I started modeling/sculpting the different assets. The references also help me to evaluate the feel and mood of the subjects I'm trying to combine.

Since the goal of this project was to only render a single image I didn't need the clean geometry that is required for animation. So I used Zbrushs zremesher function instead of doing a retopology to save some time. Afterwards I used Substance Painter to texture all of my assets.

Using the references I tried to approximate the pattern of voldemorts cloak from the movies as best as I could. I originally designed the garment on a default avatar provided by marvelous designer. Afterwards I made a rough pose using one of the human models provided by ZBrush to be able to simulate the cloak in the required pose. Finally I added all of my sculpted and modelled assets to the scene to start working on the final simulation. 

Once all of this was done I started building the scene in Maya and made some first render tests. I then iterated on shading, lighting and composition until I was happy with the result. During this process, I simulated the cloak multiple times to try and get its shape as close as possible to the painting.

Finally, I edited the render in Photoshop to try and push it a bit further.

Audioboard

For this excercise our task was to design and render an Audioboard. Once again the first thing I did was to put together a reference sheet.

After deciding which elements I wanted to implement I started modelling the necessary pieces and later textured them in substance painter.

diffuse, roughness, normal and final result in substance painter of various assets

To design the lettering on the plate, specifically around the dials, I used illustrator and then combined the lettering with the texture maps that I made in substance.

UV, Diffuse and Roughness Map of the Baseplate

Forest clearing

This small project was meant as an exercise to practice quickly putting together a scene. The main focus was on lighting and composition. I used quixelmixer to generate the ground and filled the scene with assets from quixels megascan library.

To scatter the leaves across the ground and the air I used two instances of MASH.

The Invisible Dancer

This private project started as a simple exercise in marvelous designer but I ended up expanding on it.

Thank you for taking a look at my work :) I hope you enjoyed some of it!