Demo Reel Andreas Niederhofer 2023
Hey! I'm Andreas Niederhofer and after recently graduating from PixlVisn, I'd like to share and explore my recent projects with you.
Demo Reel Andreas Niederhofer 2023
Demo Reel Andreas Niederhofer
ORC
For my latest project I originally wanted to try and create a photorealistic human. After giving it some thought however, I decided to go along with something more fantasy-like yet still realistic.
I found a bunch of very nice concepts to choose from, but decided to create my own rendition of an orc that could exist in the LotR - Universe.
Reference
Good reference is always necessary to create something plausible and believable, so it is the starting point of all my projects.
LotR - Orcs were an obvious choice but more grounded concepts were useful to keep the sculpt more realistic.
In the end I had a decent variety of reference which I would use as a guide through the sculpting and texturing process.
Sculpt
I started by blocking a very humanesque bonestructure to have a general silhouette.
As the sculpting progressed, the similarities between the bones I started with and the later mesh changed significantly until I arrived at what you see today.
The whole process was very iterative with weekly feedback by Henning Sanden, who mentored me during this project.
After about 4 weeks I got to a mesh with larger secondary details and decided to move to Maya for retopology and UV creation. Looking back I should have added more of the larger wrinkles, especially around the eye, into the retopology. With a better edgeflow in those areas, possible deformation would be better.
To make the orc "my" orc, I started experimenting with scars which I sculpted on layers to be able to nondestructively try out multiple combinations.
Below is a pictures which shows all layers with scars active.
With the scars selected and in place, I started detailing the skin.
In hindsight, I should have decided on their position before retopologizing the mesh, so they would have been integrated in the lowpoly mesh and have proper edgeflow.
To get skinvariation and the overall weathered look, I used a surface noise from zBrush as a basis to find patterns, to sculpt knots and wrinkles that make up a large part of the sculpt.
Texturing
Texturing started with a lot of experimenting on the basecolor since I was not entirely sure If I wanted either a "classic" green orc or something that took more after a human.
Looking back at the first iterations I can see now that the colors I used where way too saturated to look natural for skin.
After I had a good idea how I wanted the basecolor to look like, I tried different arrangements of warpaint and colorschemes, until I settled with an homage to the white hand of saruman from LotR.
Lookdev
While I did some lookdev on my own, I realized the project could look much better with the help of someone focused on lookdev and lighting.
I asked Julian Buettner, because I knew he wanted to do a lighting/lookdev study on a realistic character and he was happy to join. After creating a lookdev layer to add dirt, fresh blood and even smaller wounds, he did the scene lighting and compositing to tell a visual story.
The cinematic shot turned out awesome and I am excited to see what else he will do with the orc.
Thraex
For my second Demoproject, I wanted to create a full body human with some hardsurface elements, to learn more about anatomy aswell as hardsurface modeling in zBrush.
Due to those parameters my choices where already kind of limited.
I looked at scifi concepts, knights and soldiers but ultimately landed on a concept that immediatly interested me. ("Glory in the arena - Jospeh Qiu")
The helmet gave me the opportunity to focus less on the face since this was something I wanted to dedicate an entire project to, which is reflected in my latest project. The armor on the legs allowed me to invest less time on the feet and toes.
Reference
As with all projects I started by gathering reference for multiple things to make my journey easier.
Sculpting
To save some time I started this project with the zBrush human basemesh but heavily modified it to fit my concept and vision of the gladiator.
I then extracted parts of the mesh to get a general layout for the hardsurface assets and used the zModeler brush to further refine the helmet and shoulder. (creating the edge part on the shoulder armor and the brim of the helmet).
Afterwards I exported this blockout to Maya, where I continued to refine the assets to get good topology, edgeflow and UV's.
With a decent baseline established I returned the assets to zBrush to sculpt in some finer details, damages and ornaments.
Texturing
The skin was a very interesting experience to texture since the only time previously, I had use Mari to project skin detail and color.
Although projection is now an option in Substance Painter, I opted to handpaint most of it to better understand colorzones, skin thickness and its behaviour close to bone.
The tweaking and polishing of the textures continued far into the lookdev process and I utilized the comparable fast export speed of Substance Painter to quickly update and iterate in the Arnold IPR.
A realization that came quite late however, was that the skintone of my gladiator should be more reminiscient of the area, which I envisioned to be the mediterranean. Therefore I isolated the chest area in the IPR and went back and forth between Substance Painter and Arnold to determine a realistic and appropriate color. I played with different ethnicities since the roman empire had quite the diverse population. Below you can see some examples of my attempts.
Here I focused primarily on the skin around the arm and the side of the torso since those are the areas where compression and stretching would primarily happen.
Additionally I sculpted in some damage and dents on the hardsurface parts with the help of various brushes (e.g. TrimDynamic; Hpolish; Move) and alphas, making sure to break up straight edges.
After exporting the posed mesh and the zBrush displacement, I checked for displacement map errors in the Arnold IPR and painted them out using Affinity Photo.
With the pose and lookdev being dialed in, I started to think about how I wanted to present the gladiator.
The concept had a large arena with additional gladiators and a large audience in the background.
Since time started to be an issue I did not want to try and replicate the large arena; instead I opted for a more pitfighter style arena, which would allow me to hide large areas of the sky and surroundings.
In Nuke I added defocus, grain, chromatic abberation and lens distortion to make the shots more realistic.
Irin's Mount
For my first Demoproject I wanted to sculpt a creature that I would then texture using a combination of Substance Painter and Mari.
Since I had no deep knowledge of grooming I decided that the creature had to work without fur/hair.
I chose "Irin's mount by -grosnez-" as concept because I really liked the aura the animal conveyed, a large gently giant with quite the destructive capability.
Reference
A good selection of reference images helped me immensly to visualize and begin the sculpting and texturing process.
A black Rhinoceros seemed the optimal choice for the body, while the head resembled that of a porcupine. With the anatomy set, I thought about what kind of skin such a creature should have and came to the conclusion that rhinoceros skin would work quite well. This also allowed me to use my anatomy references for how the skin should behave in certain poses and where folds would naturally form.
Since I wanted to keep the colors of the concept, I used another species of rhinoceros as my primary reference.
With the removal of the fur I was also able to shift the habitat of the creature further south and into a jungle environment.
Sculpt
I started the blockout in zBrush, trying to match the overall body to my reference.
Initially I wanted to include the hardsurface assets on top of the creature and even modeled and textured them, but ultimately removed them because I did not reach the quality I wanted within the timeframe I had set myself.
The overall sculpting was a very iterative process that involved a lot of feedback and changes until I arrived at a neutral pose mesh which I would then retopologize and build UV's in maya.
Afterwards I subdivided my new mesh and reprojected it in zBrush to recapture some of the detail that I had lost during the process and started to create some finer details before moving onto texturing.
Texturing
To start my texturing, I first created some masks in Substance Painter via the Geometry channels like curvature and AO.
Afterwards I imported my lowpoly and highpoly mesh into Mari. There I started with a procedural basecolor which I refined with alphas and tileables.
I started with basic displacement painting, using alphas and scans of rhinoceros elephant and frog skin.
For the specular map I used a variant of my desaturated basecolor, which I kept working on during the lookdev phase of the project.
Finding the right balance in the basecolor turned out to be a bigger challenge than anticipated but after trial and error, aswell as invaluable feedback from my teachers Giorgio Lorenzetti and Tom Herzig, I managed to end up with something I am not totally unhappy with.
Looking back at this project in terms of texturing now, reveals some apparent flaws that could have easily been avoided, such as mushy gradients in the color and quite isolated displacement in some areas.
Nevertheless it was a very valuable experience and showed me the power and potential of Mari's node based system.
Posing
I looked at a couple of different animals such as rhinoceros, horses and hippos, to find an interesting and dynamic pose. This process was made considerably easier due to the use of zSphere rigging, which allowed me to quickly iterate and implement feedback.
Below are some examples of the different poses that I considered for the final shot.
Presentation
Lastly I tried different lighting scenarios to see what works best with the creature and settled for a slightly overcast but warm environment.
I struggled quite a bit with the decision in what physical environment I wanted to put the creature and which parts of it to showcase. With the help of Tom Herzig, I was able to get acceptable cameras and decided to build a small excerpt of the environment where I would put the creature.
In general I am happy with how this project turned out. I think it is a good reflection of my knowledge at the time and I was able to learn from the mistakes that came up during its creation.
Among other things it serves as a reminder to properly plan out a project first, set myself deadlines and plan more time for presentation.
On some of these points I have already improved on in later projects and the rest will be remedied aswell.
Conclusion
Even with the setbacks, the crashes, the errors, I enjoyed working on these projects a lot. While sometimes stressful, most of the time I just got to enjoy the process of sculpting and texturing. Being surrounded by people like Denny Diel, Julian Buettner and Lyon Rosenblatt also helped a lot, with good feedback aswell as jokes and banter during the more tedious times.
Each project showed me shortcomings and new things I want to learn. I especially liked working on the orc and it has made me realize how much I enjoy sculpting faces and facial anatomy.
As for the near future I am currently finishing up a creature concept sculpting workshop with Marco Menco. Once that is finished I will have a short personal break and R&R, so that I can jump right back into learning new things. First and foremost I want to learn Houdini for grooming, aswell as Marvelous Designer for better garment and cloth.
This will also start the process of sending out applications and applying to studios, which is quite exciting and daunting simultaneously.
Thank your for reading and having a look at my work!
Should you have any questions or just want to have chat, I will leave my contact below.
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