Loris Eck - Demoreel 2023 - CG generalist
This is my 3rd year Artfx demoreel as a CG generalist.
1- Airship
The goal of this project was to include all the technical skills I have gathered during the year.
The first step was to gather a lot of references for the airship procedural modeling. I had to build the inside too so I studied how the structure of those mastodons was made.
For de destruction of the airship, I have gathered a lot of references from the Hindenburg accident and some Battlefield 1 cinematic.
Airship HDA creation
I built a procedural setup in Houdini to create the airship.
I started with a simple line to control the length and the shape by a ramp parameter which controls the scale of the points.
Then I built all the structures with curves. I then created another digital asset to convert those lines into the steel structure I needed in my final shot.
After that, I built the propellers. I just had to place the propeller, and the HDA would find the 3 closest points on the airship to build the structure.
Finally, I built the tissue based on the main line that I extruded. And I haded the fins on the back. All the UVs are procudural.
A- Lightning shot
The challenge for this shot was to create High contrast for the lightning. Most of the work was done on nuke.
The only 3D element is the airship. I exported passes for each light to animate the lightning effect in Nuke and avoid useless render time.
Big Ben is a photo I took from Pexels, and projected on basic geometry.
I used cloud photography to add them in front of the airship. I put them on a 3D card in Nuke to have the camera movement. For the cloud, I used several mask and combination methods to create the lightning passing through the cloud.
Finally, for the lightning, I used a stock video, keyed it out, and put it on a 3D card.
I also animated an exposure node to add the overexposed effect.
B- Crash shot
London city
To recreate London, I used Google map data. But some buildings were too recent. So I deleted them. I copied some buildings from an older part of London and pasted them to cover the holes. I removed the bridges and replaced them with my modelizations.
Westminster Bridge
I built it inside Houdini and textured it in substance painter. I download the street lights online to buy some time.
I used google earth data to measure the length, width, and height to respect the scale as much as possible.
Simulations
This was the first time I had to deal with a lot of simulation interacting with one another. In this shot there are RBDs, Flip, Smoke, Fire and vellum.
I had to make choices and have think the order of the simulations an wich simulation affect an other.
I started with the vellum simulation for the airship. I cut some holes with the curve draw tool. I then painted a mask to drive the "attach to geometry" parameter.
The next one was the bridge RBDs. For the collision, I used the proxy of the airship. I fractured each element separately and repeated the fracture on the collision point to have more debris. I then split the cache into two streams: one for the bending metal and one for the concrete pieces.
For the fire simulation, I created a velocity field to force the flame to leave the inside.
For the flip simulation, after some failed simulations, I used a "pop speed limit" to avoid too splashy results and have a more slow motion.
I simulated only the part that was needed, so I had to extend the boudaries of the water.
I then created the mesh surface and the mesh volume and shaded them in Arnold. I used an ocean spectrum to add detail to the simulation.
Then for the water smoke, I used a failed splashy simulation of the flip to emit the smoke and to my surprise, it worked quite well.
Compositing
2- Abandoned train
For this one, the goal was to learn Unreal Engine 5.1.
I was responsible for the Layout, the set dressing, the lighting, and the compositing.
I used an HDA I made in Houdini for the train tracks.
The train car model is from Lucas Legrand and the assets are from Megascan.
Train tracks HDA
The HDA works with a curve and heightfields. You can choose to cast the curve on the terrain or do the path manually. The HDA will create bridges and tunnels, based on the threshold parameters set by the user. The HDA will also cut the terrain or create elevation to follow the track.
I created the catenary, and you can change every aspect in the HDA parameters (spacing, height, curve shape, thickness).
I also added an option to create single tracks and double tracks.
3- Car in the desert
I did this project to discover the camera mapping process.
I am responsible for all aspects except the car modeling.
I created the projection model and camera animation in Maya and imported them into Nuke to do the final compositing.
I did a quick smoke simulation for the wheels of the car in Houdini. It is very subtle in the final shot, but it is there.
4- War of the worlds
The main goal of this project was to erase the main character of this shot from the 2005 movie war of the worlds, directed by steven spielberg, and comp me in.
I supervised the shooting to have dynamic lighting in camera to have more ease in nuke and render the best shot possible.
The tracking of the shot was tedious because the video had not the best quality. So 50% of the shot was hand tracked.
Then I had to rebuild the ground, and the dynamic lighting made it quite difficult. I animated some grades and color correct to match every frame.
Finally, for the green screen color grading, I built 3 color grades:
I had one for the beginning with the blue lighting, one when it switched to the orange lighting, and finally, one when the white spotlight came onto the character.
I animated the mix between them. It allowed me to change each grading without the need to worried about automatic keyframes being placed because I was not paying attention.
5- Polar Express
This one is a group project.
I was responsible for the environment (mountain & ground), the rig, the animation, the layout, the wheels particles FX, the lighting, the lookdev, the render setup, and the compositing.
I worked with Lucas Legrand and Reza Raissi.
Lucas was responsible for the train modeling/texturing and the locomotive smoke.
Reza was responsible for most of the FX: the ground break, the splashes, the storm, the snow particles.
Ground full procedural material with Arnold
To add more artistic control I had a mask control to let me draw the place where I wanted snow.
The mountain had a similar setup to separate the rock and the snow by using the slope and the AO to drive the mask.
Wheels cracks
The first version used VDBs to have a detailed mesh, but it was too heavy.
So I used two particle systems to simulate the cracks and it was much more easy to control and render.
Left Image: VDB version | Right Image: Particles version
Render Setup
This was the first time I had so many elements to render. I built render layers to have more freedom in compositing, optimize ram usage and split the render between our 3 PCs.
The heaviest one was the ground because it is quite reflective and almost all the elements were reflected. So I choose to remove some elements to optimize it a bit. (we checked the original polar express scene and we were surprised to see that the smoke of the train and other effects were invisible in the reflection).
Conclusion
I learned a lot of stuff this year and I am so proud of the evolution.
I know I have still a lot to learn, and I am looking forward to work with all kind of people to share our knowledge and keep improving to deliver the best shots possible !
Thank you for your interest. I hope you enjoy your reading.
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