Debora Hirsch - 3D Student Portfolio 2024

Introduction

Hi everyone!
My name is Debora and I recently graduated from the 18-month 3D & VFX education program at PIXL VISN media arts academy, where I mainly focused on 3D props and environment creation.
I'm happy to show you two of my demo reel projects for The Rookies - Let's get started!

Project 01 | Herbalist's Kitchen

When I was looking for concepts for my first demo reel project, I found Kiara Leneuf's kitchen concept art on ArtStation and immediately fell in love with it.
Right from the start I was passionate to recreate it in 3D.

References

I started my project by looking for references and planning.

First of all, I made a list of all the props that are visible in the concept art.
Then, I searched for several real life and stylized references for the individual props and made a PureRef file for them. After having a rough plan for the creation of props, I also made research for the artstyles I wanted to fit. 
My art style and mood are heavily inspired by Pixar's movie "Luca" and other Disney movies.

To get started in modeling, I imported the concept art by Kiara Leneuf into the software "fspy" where I could create a camera for my scene true to the concept and it worked very well.
With this camera, I made a blockout of the kitchen layout and the most props.

These are the main concept references I used by Kiara Leneuf: 

Below you can see the environment breakdown: 

Modeling

Once I had my blockout ready, I started modeling the props one by one in Blender.
After modeling and UV unwrapping everything in Blender, I switched to Autodesk Maya to create my cameras and do the basic lighting here for having a feeling for the textures I'll import later on.

Texturing

Then, I started texturing in Substance Painter. 

I didn't have much experience with stylized "Disney" textures, so I studied a lot of references for that before texturing.
After researching, I set up the materials in SP with a simple base color, roughness, metalness, etc. and then tweaked everything step by step with color & roughness variations.
Moreover, I made some alphas for my textures to make them more unique. For example, I wrote the notes on the paper by myself & I created some patterns for other props.

It's important to mention that the food & vegetation was not done my myself.
Because of my strict demo reel deadline I could not create them by myself, so I used Quixel Megascans for this part.
For my next projects, I definitely want to learn how to create them from scratch.

My first time in Substance Designer

For the floor tiles, wall tiles and the wooden ceiling I used Substance Designer for my first time. I am very passionate about learning Substance Designer and this was the perfect chance for trying the software. The materials may not be polished, but I am satisfied with the end result for my first practise and it was much fun for me.

Lighting Setup

Regarding the lighting, my main light was a directional light which I enhanced with an area light from outside the window.
I also placed some area lights here and there (e.g. in the foreground or behind the door) to have less dark spots in my render.

Rendering & Compositing

I was planning to do my rendering with Redshift.
Before rendering my shots, I made sure I had all my AOVs created to make my compositing easier and more accurate (e.g. AOV passes, lightgroups, , zDepth...).

My compositing was done in Nuke. Here, I did the basic compositing & color correction.
This includes e.g. bokeh, lens distortion, chromatic aberration and color correction.

From raw render to final render & a comparison to the original concept by Kiara Leneuf:

Project 02 | Terrain Runner

For my second project, I was looking for concepts for a hard surface project. I knew that I wanted to do some kind of machine or vehicle. When I came across ALJER's Terrain Vehicle concept on ArtStation, I knew I had found the one for my portfolio, because its look is very unique.

References

These are the concepts by ALJER:

Modeling

To get started with modeling in Blender, I first blocked out the concept vehicle with basic shapes and aimed a camera as close to the concept as possible. 

This was important for my further modeling process because it allowed me to stay as close to the concept as possible.

I modeled the car with a reasonable amount of polygons to have a lot of details already modeled in because I wanted to improve my modeling skills.
So I modeled the parts of the car step by step until everything came together well.

Once I'd finished my modeling, I started unwrapping and laying out the UVs. I ended up with 16 UDIMs, but after finishing the texturing I realized that it could have used a lot fewer UV tiles.

Screenshots from my turntable:

Texturing

After finishing my models and UV unwrapping, I started texturing in Substance Painter. 

I spent a lot of time tweaking the textures to get it to match my environment at night.

The texturing process was pretty straightforward. I started by blocking out my colors and roughness in Substance Painter and then broke it up more and more to get the look I wanted.

I also created some alphas in Figma, which I painted on my model to make it more unique, like for the tires.

Unreal Engine

I imported my vehicle into Unreal Engine 5 and created some other cams to roughly block out my shots and get a feel for my set dressing later.

The idea for the environment mood came mostly from UE’s short film “Rebirth”.
I had the idea of the environment mood with the volumetric lights while trying several things out, there wasn’t a specific concept that led to the mood.
The set dressing was a pretty creative part because I mostly used my own creativity for it.

I rendered real-time in Unreal Engine 5 with Lumen and Ray Tracing.

Compositing

The compositing was done in Nuke. I mostly did the basics of compositing, such as color correction and lens effects (e.g. lens distortion, chromatic aberration...) and other compositing aspects like bloom and haze.
For the color correction, I liked to use cinematic LUTs.

Conclusion

This is the result of my 3D education at PIXL VISN media arts academy.
I'm very happy with how far I've come, and I'm even more excited about what the future holds! :)
Unfortunately, I can't show you my third demo project because it's a short film I'm still working on as a group project with other artists.
Check out the teaser: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7108571605823303680/

Thank you for taking a look at my projects and their breakdowns.
Feel free to leave a high-five, comment or feedback below - I appreciate any feedback you have!

Good luck to anyone entering The Rookies and don't forget - It's only the start of our journey!

You can get in touch with me via:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/deborahirsch/
ArtStation: https://www.artstation.com/deborahirsch