FX Showreel | Philipp Dörrer

Introduction

Mutation - Wall Crack FX

VFX Supervision

I shot a lot of reference (using my director for scale as you can see in the image below) and did a photoscan of the room to provide all the data I needed to create a reliable base for my simulation. Shooting an HDRI and reference plates with a greyball, chromeball and a macbeth colorchart was also very helpful for this shot.

Wall Crack FX

The main idea behind this effect was to tell how heavy the creature was and to really make its impact feel strong and heavy. I used an RBD simulation to create the cracks in the wall using the creature as my collider. Afterwards I emitted smoke / dust  and debris through particles using the cracks as a source.

Lighting

For the lighting I first normalized the HDRI using the macbeth chart, then I extracted the lights from the HDRIs to use as an image texture for area lights that I positioned within my shot.

Compositing

My compositing work included tracking marker removal, the integration of the 3d elements, matching them to the plate and adding post effects like glows on the eyes, blurs and defocus.

Mutation - Creature Dissolve FX

Concept Art / Storyboard

The concept art / storyboard was done by Melanie Schnaidt. Aside from that the main reference for the dissolve effect was the death scene of the three eyed raven from Game of Thrones.

VFX Supervision

I created a standin for the actor to touch and interact with on set which helped to ground his touch of the creature in reality. I also shot an HDRI, cleanplates and reference plates with a greyball, chromeball and a macbeth colorchart.

Creature Dissolve FX

I first tried using vellum to simulate flakes but it became clear that those results would not fit to the coal and bone look we had settled on. Therefore I set up a new simulation, using RBD fractures, particle emission and pyro to create 3 stages of detail which had to feel connected: main fractures, debris and smoke / dust. This was necessary to find the sweetspot between our reference and our concepts of cracking coal.

Lighting

Using the same technique as in the prior shot I first normalized the HDRI using the macbeth chart, then I extracted the lights from the HDRIs to use as an image texture for area lights that I positioned within my shot. 

Compositing

The compositing included removing the standin using the cleanplate, roto of the hand, creating an interacting shadow, the integration of the 3d creature / effect, matching defocus, colors etc.

CODE RAT - Beam FX

Layout

I did the layout for the short film which was based on the storyboards created together with Melanie Schnaidt and Matthias Strasser. This included basic animations such as the beam you see in this shot and the digital camerawork.

Satellite Modeling

The satellite was based on a wide range of reference, including the death star, basic satellite discs as well as the ISS. I used simple polymodeling in Maya to create the satellite, which was necessary to match it to our film's artstyle.

Beam FX

The beam was an homage to the infamous death star beam. Therefore it had to follow very simple shapes whilst still carrying enough detail to look believable and appealing. It was set up using multiple particle systems and two pyro systems in Houdini. 

Compositing

Through compositing a lot of the beam could be exagerated to our desires. I added glows and camerashake and did some relighting of the shot.

CODE RAT - Aurora FX

Concept Art

I was responsible for the concept art of this shot as well as the matte painting that originated from it.

Layout

The Layout for this shot was very fun to set up, as we wanted to achieve a very skewed look with deformed trees and a very spherical hill - everything to support our directors rule of avoiding parallel lines. I also chose to go for a wider focal length with this shot as it adds to the distorted look.

Aurora FX

The aurora set up had to allow for a lot of iterations and had to be very art directable, which is why I decided to base the entire setup on a handful of curves which could be shaped and randomized using the setup's controls. From there geometry was created procedurally, resulting in several layers of bands, particles and volumes I could further dial in to my needs.

Compositing

The compositing for this shot consisted of some relightig of the scene, cleaning up specularity artifacts, adding glows - trying to match the concept art. Matthias Strasser also added the beam you see at the beginning of the shot transitioning into the aurora.

DARKER SKIES - Green Comet FX

Concept Art & Storyboard

This was a first year project I directed together with Benjamin Gätzschmann. I did the concept art and storyboard for the film using photoshop.

Green Comet FX

The green comet had to look very stylized but was only visible for a handful of frames. At first I attempted to do a full set up in Houdini but quickly came to the realization that it wasn't necessary to simulate for just a few frames. Therefore I animated multiple geometries, some sculpted, others deformed through various noises and played arround with shaders and rendersettings within Redshift to create the desired look.

CODE RAT - Chemical FX

Concept Art

Before even going into shotwork I was responsible for the concept art of the second scene of our short film, giving a first look at how the clouds should be shaped, how the glow of the volcanic ridge could look like as well ase some basic colors for our scene.

Layout

Since I was responsible for almost all of layout of the project I also set up the camera for this shot.

Chemical FX

The liquid chemical proved to be quite challenging as smaller fluids behave differently using FLIP fluid solvers in Houdini in comparison to larger fluids. To overcome this issue I instead used the vellum fluid solver and iterated using wedges. After I was happy with my result I created a little deformer rig for the small cheese and animated it in Maya. Then I morphed the geometry of the droplet into the cheese geometry using blendshapes and brought it back to Houdini for some final morphing adjustments.

CODE RAT - Cheese Bubble FX

Layout

I animated the floating cheesebubbles to get the timing and feeling of the shot right before moving on to my fx work, this also included the camerawork, which had final tweaks by our director Matthias Strasser.

Cheese Bubble FX

For the cheese bubble I used a FLIP fluid without gravity, then adding viscosity, surface tension and friction to create a cheese that would behave like it would in outer space, whilst also beeing art-directable enough to tell the story we wanted to tell.

Star Animation

Originally planned as an exegerated joke I created a very simple setup of spheres with varying sizes created using a MASH network in Maya following a drawn NURBS curve of a heart. Rendered as an additional AOV I was able to touch up the stars and give them their proper glow & streaks in Nuke.

The compositing was mainly used to do minor relighting, remove some rendering errors like flickers or unwanted specs but also to add post effects like glows to the stars and to fuse all elements into one coherent image.

Special thanks to my mentors & friends

Hendrik Pranz

Dennis Müller

Pirmin Filz

Simon Blüthenkranz