Environment Demo Reel - Jan Fülöp

Cyberstreets

PLANNING AND LAYOUT I getting started

For this project I really wanted to do something scify and I wanted to lean more into VFX aspects then in my other projects.

The Idea for this project was to do a cyberpunk / bladerunner inspired shot that would be dark and griddy and at the same time bright, colorful and full of neon signs. After the initial Idea, the next step was to collect reference material for the project. I then blocked out the scene, playing around with different camera moves, focal lengths and compositions. I soon began to record the first test footage and quickly comped everything together to get an Idea how the final look could be as well as how to go about it.

SHADING AND LIGHTING  I  establishing the look

Having the Idea and the blockout for the shot and some standin footage I started working on the scene.

Since modeling and texturing wasn`t the focus of this project I worked with some KB3D city models. After adjusting the shaders I imported them as Arnold StandIns to keep my scene light and render times quick. On top of that I made some neon signs and screens and illuminated some of the windows from the buildings. To bring some life into the empty city I also added some mixamo characters, one leaning against a pole and one I shaded to be a dancing hologram, inspired by the hologram lady in bladerunner2049.

Since almost all of the light sources in the scene are artificial, the lighting was mostly done by the neon signs and screens. I also used a HDRI to lift everything up a little bit and used some area lights to highlight and shape some parts of the scene.

FILMING I capturing the footage

Capturing the footage I didn´t have any fancy studio and I had to deal with what I got. So I hung up a greenscreen, gathered all the lamps I could find and slapped together a costume using a leather jacket, gloves, a painted nerf gun and some workshop respirators. Then I tried to rebuild the 3d scene by matching the lighting (as good as possible) and position of the counter and camera. Matching the camera I also took things into account like the hight and angle of the camera, as well as the focal length frame rate etc.

COMPOSITING I bringing everything together

Since I split the shot in multiple render layers I could now compose them back together and integrate the footage inbetween them. Then I adjusted the lights and grading for the rendered layers and added dof with the new bokeh node in Nuke. After that I merged the keyed plate in the shot by placing it on a card in 3d space behind the counter.

For the hologram my goal was to get a star wars like effect. To achive that specific look I took the captured plate, keyed it, then faded out the lower part with a ramp and multiplied it with black and white stripes to get a CRT tv look. Following I color corrected the plate, making it a uniform light blue, added cromatic aboration and a lot of glow. To get the hologram in the right position and to get belivable parallax I also placed it in nukes 3d space onto the hand of the main charakter and tracked the hand so the hologram would follow along.

To get realistc spill lighting from the hologram I added some blue light, masked by tracked rotos onto the main plate.

Because I wanted the kitchen to look lived in I wanted to add some steam coming from the cooking pots. So I multiplied the rendered fog from the kitchen lights with stock footage of steam, that I placed on cards in Nukes 3d space. To get accurate parallax for the steam cards and give each of the light sources individual footage I rendered the two lights in green and blue to be able to seperate them in comp.

the last step of the comp was adding lens effects like flares, aboration, vignetting, distortion, filmgrain and the final color grading.

Fantasy environment

If you are interested in how I made this shot, feel free to take a look at my entry from last year!

To create this version of the temple I teamed up with Gunnar Schelhorn, character, and Dominik Benz, lighting .

Alhambra

The last time I went to spain I visited the beautiful Alhambra in Granada. With this project I wanted to capture and reinterpret the effect Alhambra had on me. To bring the vision of the shot I wanted to create to life I used a lot of reference images, from the internet, but also ones I have taken myself.

After thinking about a rough idea for the project, I started to blockout the room, lighting and cameras.

I knew that I wanted to go in the direction of my main ref, but also bring in the awesome looking wooden door and pillars which are also found in the original temple.

After the blockout I finalized the camera movement and modeled the parts of the room visible in the cameras.

Then I created UVs for the LP models and exported them to Zbrush, keeping every piece seperate so I could subdivide them more in Zbrush.

After the sculptover I exported the second subdivision back to maya and reunwrapped the UVs.

Then back to Zbrush to reproject the detail of the sculptover and bake them.

I had to do this workaround because otherwise the textures on the Zbrush LP were streched at the edges after subdividing eventhough they were fine on the LP from maya.

Since I had one room consisting of multiple wall pieces I wanted to have one material controlling all of them. But I also wanted to be able to texture them individually, especially in cause of performance reasons because I had to make a complex material for over 40 Udims of 4k textures. Because of that I layed out the UVs on 40+ UDIMS so they wouldnt overlap, then I assigned a different material to each piece.

In substance I now could Isolate them per material and texture the wall pieces one by one and have everything running smoothly all in one scene.

I created one smart material for one of the pieces containing a lot of layers and masks driven by anchor points. With that very procedural material I could now paste the smart mat on other pieces, repaint a few masks and adjust the settings so it would fit the piece and my concept.

To create some of the tilable hight details on the model like the arches, I modeled them in maya on a 1x1 plane using simple shapes.Then I assigned a surface shader with a black and white ramp having black on the lower parts and white on the peeks. I rendered it out and used it as a tilable displacement map in substance.

In Substance I also created a floor material and a material for the wooden door.

Since I went for a sandstone look for the walls I added a little bit of sss using a curvature mask to only have it affect the edges.

For the door I introduced coat to get a clearcoat look on the wood, using a modified hight map to control its intensity.

To give the scene a bit more detail I subdivided some planes, moved some verts around and shaded them to look like sand with the help of some sss. I also used a ramp broken up by some noises for the opacity to blend the sand with the ground instead of having a hard unatural looking edge.

I took some little stones and dry plants from Quixel, shaded them, converted them to aistandins and scattered them around the scene.

Then I finished the lighting, added a bit of fog which I rendered on a seperate layer and adjusted the render settings.

Next it was time for compositing in Nuke. I split up the render, adjusted lights, and shader properties, added the fog and a matte painting I created in Affinity.

Last I added some cc and lens effects.

Thank You for reading the breakdown of my reel!

If you do have any questions or comments, feel free to reach out to me

https://www.linkedin.com/in/janfueloep/

https://www.artstation.com/janfueloep

[email protected]