Demo 2023 - Jakob Klauenberg

Crab Project

July 2022 - September 2022

I wanted to create a small animal with a lot of detail for this project. I first thought of a tailless whip scorpion, a specific type of spider, but I changed my mind because it could scare or disgust some people, and I did not want to risk that. Then I thought of showing a crab with nice colors and stumbled over horned ghost crabs, which I instantly fell in love with.

Motive

There are many different types of ghost crabs. Most of them are colored in a very similar way to the sand they live in, since these crabs can change their color to mimic the color of their environment and time of day. The ghost crab I chose would live on the beaches of Diego Garcia and show a beautiful mix of green and orange tones.

Forest Project

December 2022 - January 2023

In this project, I created a forest environment with an over- and underwater shot and excellent water dynamics contributed by Saad Hassan. We also decided to assemble the scene in Houdini's Universal Scene Description Suite, Solaris.

Photogrammetry

River Caustics

To fake the underwater caustic rays, I generated an animated lighting gobo in Substance Designer by using the program's time variable and generated the image sequence in Substance Player.

Compositing Breakdown

The following part is dedicated to breaking down my Nuke node tree and describing the steps I took to get my final result.

Since I had to render a bit sooner than expected, I had to alter the look of my shots more than I usually do. On the other hand, I now get to show more exciting methods.

Space Project

October 2022 - November 2022

For this project, I decided to join my good friend Johannes Grün, who wanted to model and texture a cool spaceship. We agreed to create an abstract rendering of his spaceship flying through a wormhole that illuminates it in an appealing way. So while he modeled the ship, I prepared two planets, a wormhole and the animation of the shot.

Procedural Erosion

To prepare for the upcoming task of texturing a planet and to challenge myself, I built a procedural system in Substance Designer that imitates mountain erosion. I got heavily inspired by a video course covering this subject by Bohdan Bilous on LEVELUP.DIGITAL. My approach focuses on an iterative and simple node setup and workflow, with a lot of control over the appearance.

Anatomy Study

June 2022

I worked on this study right after I finished my giraffe project, in which I got to work on my quadruped sculpting skills, and I wanted to challenge myself by sculpting a woman in a highly dynamic pose. I also wanted to work with Marvelous Designer for the first time. To present the study, I decided to use a powerful color palette and an abstract texture for the clothing and the lighting of the scene.

Modeling

Since I initially did not plan to show this character in such an extreme pose, I first modeled it in an A pose. After retopologizing the entire body, I posed the model by moving the individual parts by hand until they matched my reference. I used Marvelous Designer to design the shorts and sports bra and simulate the fabric she was hanging from.

Presentation

I chose to keep the presentation very simple by using a few bright stage lights and a volumetric atmosphere. I decided to use an orange and cyan color scheme, which I applied to her clothes, eyes and lights. Then, I animated the cameras, keeping them close to the character and moving them as if they were flying over a large landscape.

Savanna

April 2022 - June 2022

I worked on this project a year ago and sent it off to the Rookie Awards 2022. Here is the original post. There is not a lot to add, but I did work on a small fun Substance Designer tool that could be used to create a dynamic hair texture that would overlay the clean patterns on the giraffe's body.

After a short time, I had a tool which allows you to precisely control the hair's density, length and flow direction. It has many artistic parameters to adjust the shape and color of the hair in many valuable ways. Additionally, I built a user-friendly preview look to help see the flow map in action, change the hair shape and preview the differences in length.

Yawning Tiger

February 2023 - WIP

This is the project I am currently working on. My goal is to create a realistic looking tiger. Since this is only a work in progress, I am very grateful for every bit of feedback, so feel free to contact me via LinkedIn if you have any ideas or suggestions.

Grooming the tiger was quite a big challenge for me. I still have a lot to learn about grooming in Houdini and will try to refine the hair of the tiger to my best abilities in the upcoming weeks.

Thank you for reading my entry. If you have any questions or suggestions about my work, feel free to contact me.

LinkedIn
[email protected]
ArtStation

I am also incredibly grateful that I got the chance to work with my talented colleagues Johannes Grün, Saad Hassan and Nicolas Mejia. It was a great pleasure learning with you.