Sinan Hoffmann - Demo Reel 2023

Hello everyone.

In my Rookie Entry 2023 I show a glimpse of my Demo Reel projects, which I made during my time at the Pixlvisn Media Arts Academy.

Break for a Lion

This project I made together with my sister Lara Hoffmann, an animation artist. It was my second project that I worked on for my reel. My sister wanted to animate a lion, so I offered to create an environment and add life to the scene through composition and lighting.

After my sister found a rig, we put it into Maya, where we also added a low resolution tree from the Quixel megascan library, which was then used to make the animation.

This is where the question of the best camera angle and composition started for me.

I found an African environment best suited for the lion, whereupon I looked for a lot of references. To get a better feel for the mood and camera shots, I also watched documentary films. I also oriented myself a little on the real film version of the lion king.

Nevertheless, i wanted to be responsible for the composition of the shot.

It quickly became clear that unreal engine was the best way to implement this project. After the animation was cached in Maya, I inserted it in unreal.  Then I looked for suitable megascans and built an environment with the help of the refrences. Tools that helped me a lot for this project were the plugin Ultra Dynamic Sky, but also Easy Fog. Both gave me more possibilities to create a realistic atmosphere.

Especially for the back part of the shot these tools were very advantageous, because I could create a feeling of depth much better.

After that, it was just a matter of finding good assets and putting them into the scene, with my biggest concern being the layout and composition, of course. When all the models were ready, I used Foliage to fill the scene with vegetation (grass and plants).

My motto was: less is more! So that the composition and the main actors of the scene are in the center and the scene is filled at the same time. Working in layers was also very important to me.

Finally, I finnished the render once in unreal using the post process volume, but also in Nuke to get more details out of the render and to give it the final touch.

Italy Courtyard

In my first project, which I created for my show reel, I wanted to be responsible for everything myself. Except for a few individual models, I was responsible for the whole shot.

The main concept for the idea of the scene comes from the concept artist Yap Lu Song.

As soon as I saw the concept I knew I wanted to implement it. The composition immediately jumped into my eyes. But since I also wanted to show something of myself, I decided later on to fill the scene with more assest to go more into the storytelling aspect and bring the scene to life.

Another influence on my project was the movie Luca from Disney. So my goal was to take a little bit of everything and combine it to create something new.

Since I wanted to mostly match the concept, I first built a blockout of the scene using Maya, with realistic aspect ratios. I noticed that instead of the fountain, which is in the foreground, I wanted to place something else in order to have more space to breathe. Because I wanted to keep the shadow on the ground, I decided to insert that of a tree later in the progress.

So when I had a rough idea of the revised composition, I thought about the colors of the textures, especially those of the walls, because they really stand out. I found the combination of yellow and red/pink very suitable for the light mood. warm tones, which harmonize wonderfully together.

After the UV unwrapping I started texturing, which I did completely in substance painter.

The breakup I create with pale spots on the walls, but also dirt, which sticks more to the floor. Darker dots on the texture give it more detail as well.

At this stage I had finished modeling and texturing of the scene.

In order to create a visual hierarchy and a beautiful light composition, I took flags to help me realize my vision. To get more control over the shadow of the tree on the ground, but still be able to work quickly in the viewport, I loaded the tree with arnold standIn into the scene, and placed the tree so I could get a nice shadow cast.

I only used 2 main lights to illuminate the scene. So I had full control and  the possibility to very quickly change the position.

At the end and thus an important part for this project came the compositing, which I did in Nuke.

I started with the beauty-building. Since I had rendered a lot of light aovs and other channels out of Maya, there was no limit to me in compositing.

First I added fog, which I had rendered in a separate renderlayer from Arnold. Then I used cryptomatte to go over selected objects again. The plants got more saturation and a glow, while the rest generally got more contrast to get a visually nicer looking result.

After that, I focused particularly on the atmosphere. With particles and additional lightrays I wanted to add even more detail and get realistic effects, which are even more dynamic.

To be even closer to realistic camera effects, I added lens effects like lens distortion or a vignette. Also chromatic aberration and lens dirt are not omitted.

Mysterious Interior

This project was created by my classmate Corinna Griesche, who is responsible for all aspects. Only the lighting and compositing was done by me.

When it comes to lighting, I paid particular attention to the mood. By the contrast of warm and cold I wanted to create a feeling of comfort, but at the same time also a mysterious atmosphere. I used Arnold as my render engine.

Because the compositing of the Italian courtyard was so successful, I had a good template, so I built the comp for this project similarly. Here I also started with the beauty rebuild, whereupon I made cryptomatte adjustments and added some lens effects.

One difference with this comp, however, was that I wanted to direct the focus more to the center of the picture, where the carmine and the desk are located to be more envolved in the scene. For this reason I made the right corner a little darker and finally used a vignette.

Pumpkin Farm

This project comes from a production training, which is done in the academy. It serves to prepare the students for the demo reel, after which we had 1 month to implement a fantasy house.

I am also responsible for everything myself, except for the sunflowers, the bush on the right side and the texture for the ground. Of course, I brought the project for my demo back to the level I had reached at the end of my training.

The concept and idea of the scene came from Pedro Henrique Placido Silva. His 3d implementation inspired me so much that I absolutely wanted to do it. But to have variance, I decided for a night version scince the concept took place at day time.

Since I had to do not only lighting, but also modeling and texturing for this project, I started with a blockout. For this project I paid great attention to keeping realistic sizes, so that I have a simpler job, as I created the trees in speedtree and could estimate exactly how big they need to be.

In the end, when I finished modeling, my scene looked like this:

I had the grass generated with the help of paint effects in Maya. Even the Ivy that go up at the house are made like this. For this I ran a curve along the facade and then assigned it the parameter of the paint effect.

The textures are not only made in substance painter, but also in Mari. Especially with the house wall that gave me the opportunity to decide for myself, where I want dirt and cracks to be located

With the lighting I worked with flags again. I gave this one a black surface shader so they don't carry specular information, so they don't have any effect on my scene apart from the shadow.

I played a lot with the lights and their position, and finally got a consistent looking result. After I found a base with a dome light, I focused on the key light, in my case the moon light. Since I already had a fill light with the dome, I took care of a nice rim light, which makes the objects stand out.

I did the compositing again in Nuke. A special feature here was the lightning effect, which I wanted to pack into the scene. With the help of expressions I have generated a curve, which I connected to the multyply of a grade node. This was my base to control the Lightning.

To determine the timing of the hits, I came up with the idea to key the mix. This gave me a more realistic result, since the curve did not have to be created by me peer hand, while at the same time I still have full control over the distances and timing of the lightning.

Finaly, I added color corrections, glows and lens effects. After I had inserted everything I wanted, my finished shot looked like this:

I'm glad you got to watch my entry to the end.

And a big thank you to the Pixlvisn team for all your support.

I hope you enjoyed it and are ready for more projects in the future!