We developed the story with our professor Jürgen Schopper back in October 2023. Dr Rodolfo Anes Silveira, Jonas Kluger, Berter Orpak and our team assistant Petra Hereth enriched and strongly supported this intensive process. During the weekly meetings, we were able to discuss our concept ideas and aesthetic approaches with each other. Our shared love for 2D animation also brought our film team together, consisting of Vanessa Ramovic, Sonja Latussek and Elena Rid. We wanted to work together on a story that would make everyone’s “inner child” shine again.

by Vanessa Ramovic, Sonja Latussek and Elena Rid

At an internal meeting, we came up with the idea of using the stars as a medium for a look into our own past. The film should not only be family-friendly, but also appeal to an emotion that touches older audiences. “Little Star” revolves around astronomer Mina, who rediscovers her lost passion for the stars through a magical encounter with her younger self. The encounter – an emotional climax to the story – also reflects our journey while working on the film. We also went back to our roots in animation and used that to create something new. To better understand the depth of our character and further elaborate the story, we received great support from psychologist Dr. Walter Stehling, who led a seminar on the hero’s journey and character motivation.

Concept Art: Night-Time Desertadventures

We decided to choose a solitary setting in an observatory that was deserted except for one workstation, to better represent the extent of Mina’s overtime impact on her daily life. All the lights except for her PC screen should be off while Mina sits alone at her desk and works away. Our producer Pearl Fröhlich organised for us to spend a day together with some students and research assistants from the Munich University Observatory in Bogenhausen. Field trip!

They gave us great first-hand information about the daily routine and everyday life in an observatory. We designed thick tube monitors for an authentic depiction of the 80s in our film, a desk littered with instant noodle cups and paper litter and – naturally for an observatory – a gigantic telescope in the middle of the room. There were also piles of boxes filled with documents, star analyses and star observations. Posters and a diploma at Mina’s workplace are intended to tell part of our character’s story visually. The observatory was to stand alone in a desert landscape. For the interior and the desert colours, we looked for references week after week, which we used as a template for our drawings until we were completely satisfied with the look of the film.

Two character designs for one character

In the character design of Mina, as an overworked workaholic, we specifically wanted to visually emphasise the influence of her monotonous everyday life on her life. Character development also played a major role here: How much importance does she attach to a well-groomed appearance? What does she eat during her breaks? Does she take breaks at all? It was important for us to be able to read her basic behaviour from her appearance.

While Mina is exhausted and overworked, her younger self, whom we have affectionately christened “little star” to keep her apart, is a playful child who doesn’t shy away from big adventures in nature. In the earliest concept drawings, Mina still had long blonde hair and a white coat – Little Star, on the other hand, wore glasses, braces and a bright red superhero cape. After a few variations, we came up with a warm, everyday outfit for Mina instead and a hairstyle that doesn’t require too much styling in the morning. For the little one, we chose a wide and airy jumpsuit that she can jump around in.

To emphasise the visual similarity between the two characters, we gave Mina a small scar on her cheek, which she once got on her childhood adventures. Little Star, on the other hand, has a plaster in the same place. After many different concepts, we gradually found the right designs for Mina and Little Star that successfully reflect their character traits.

Animatic: Bringing drawings to Life

Starting with tiny sketches on our tablets and mobile phones, we drew the first visual storyboards based on rough script ideas. These evolved week by week with various ideas and changes to the camera angles. We discarded some shots in order to achieve a final result that better reflected our message and the character of Mina.

With the support of Prof. Michael Coldewey, we finalised our storyboards, created a 2D animatic with the help of Dr. Rodolfo Silveira and, thanks to the great mentoring of Berter Orpak, turned it into a 3D animated pre-visualisation. To do this, we built rough models of our desert in Blender to determine the focal lengths of our camera. Our preliminary Mina model and initial experiments with the magical star swirls that appear later in the film also found a place in the desert. We then merged our renders with hand-drawn 2D frames in Adobe Premiere. We quickly found the first solutions for having a 3D character interact with a 2D character and decided on a mostly static camera language for the sake of feasibility. We ultimately used the final 3D animatic as a reference for our final film shots.

Mina: Character Modelling and Rigging

The first step was to model Mina completely ourselves. As we were all beginners in this field, we were initially surprised by the amount of work involved in the process. However, after a few concepts, we found our feet and worked our way towards Mina’s design using a prefabricated base model from Blender.

Editing her face proved to be particularly time-consuming, as she had to retain her sharply stylised lips exactly as in our concept artwork and still look like her younger self, for example. Sonja adapted the proportions of her face to our drawings, first from the front and then from the side, and also gave her a round nose and reworked her ears. She worked on the hair at the end: each strand of hair consists of two curves, which we edited into meshes shortly before rigging. Elena Rid designed and modelled Mina’s clothes herself from scratch.

Desert Horizons and Offices
– Environment design!

The special thing about our film is that it only takes place at night and in front of and inside a large observatory in the middle of a desert. We wanted to tell the story of the character’s everyday life through the furnishings of the office and a vast, empty stone desert. So it was a task to fill the vast space and Mina’s workplace with a few objects. First, Vanessa Ramovic built rough shaders for the round walls and metallic grids in Blender. In the meantime, Elena modelled some objects herself – such as Mina’s table lamp – and gave them the finishing touches in the subsequent matte painting.

A layout that was considered during the design phase helped us to set up Mina’s office and stack all the objects on her desk in a harmonious yet chaotic way. Through the hand-drawn reworking, we also managed to make the room look fuller, darker or dirtier.

We also worked by hand on all the posters and the diploma that hangs above Mina’s desk. Elena built the basic model of the desert using Geometry Nodes in Blender. We chose a painterly surface, which we didn’t create in Blender’s shading process, but also laid over the desert using Elena’s hand-painted matte paintings. Vanessa used noise textures in the “World” shader to depict a starry sky at night. When the sky moved, she placed the star shader on a sphere and animated it using keyframes.

Stardust Effects in FX

To bring Mina’s childhood passion and love for the stars to life, we worked on a colourful interplay of stars in the sky. As the film progressed, these were to build up into a whole vortex of stars that revolved around Mina and Little Star. We designed a 2D-like aesthetic for the vortex that would fit into both Mina’s 3D world and Little Star’s 2D world. After some experimentation, Vanessa simulated the animated star effect in a geometry node tree. This uses a curve that defines the path of the vortex. She made design decisions such as the density or direction of the vortex in Blender’s shading mode. We always turned to our 3D mentor Benc Orpak for suggestions and questions. He helped us to rework overlapping edges or unclean areas of the vortex. Basically, Vanessa used two differently developed versions of the simulation, which were configured, detailed and scaled differently. She manually reworked the vortex in each shot, depending on the perspective and distance from which it was viewed.

For individual shooting stars, she reduced the geometry nodes to such an extent that instead of a vortex, only a colourful starburst was visible, which we could place at different positions in the sky. We generated the particles with an invisible particle emitter that follows the path of a spiral curve, the radius of which became larger and larger as it progressed. We used emission shaders in the colours of the star vortex for each component of the particle system. Sonja made further corrections per frame afterwards in the 2D animation.

Embodying characters in MoCap

We had the opportunity to familiarise ourselves with the technology of motion capture suits and were then able to apply this to “Little Star”. We received a lot of support and a great introduction from our lecturer David Emmenlauer. After an intensive casting process, initiated by our producer Pearl Fröhlich, we found the perfect actress for our character in Franzi Frey. Once we had attached the motion sensors to our actress, the one-day shoot could begin. We collected all the data on movement, acceleration and orientation in Movella’s Xsens system, which is available at our university.

The software reconstructed every movement into a virtual 3D world so that we could transfer it to our 3D character in Maya and Blender. We used animation layers to refine the movements and make corrections. Franzi Frey provided us with many versions of individual shots so that we could understand what kind of movements were recorded more precisely than others. She moved like a real cartoon character herself and breathed life into our character with deliberately exuberant body movements. Meanwhile, the rest of our film team alternated between different positions. We also acted as partners in the film scene or directed the shoot ourselves.

Animation in 2D and 3D

As hand movements and facial expressions could not be recorded by the motion capture system, we animated some of the shots. Using the Blender add-on Animation Layers, we were able to move Mina’s body parts in different layers, set keyframes and thus animate them. We used the Blender add-on Auto-Rig Pro for our character’s rig and corrected complications in the rig with Sonja’s elaborate weight paintings. Inconsistencies from the motion capture could be corrected with our own animations. Frame by frame, we moved our character’s rig to the right place and set our keyframes piece by piece. We received great support from our lecturer, Prof Melanie Beisswenger, who explained the basic theory of animation technology to us before we started the practical application.

For the little girl, we drew each individual frame in the traditional way. We used the ProCreate and Krita apps on our digital tablets to do this. In the group, we split up any film shots so that Elena could work on 2D keyframes and Sonja on her inbetweens at the same time.

For the 2D animation, we orientated ourselves strongly on Elena’s reference videos that she had previously recorded. Finally, we placed great importance on a distinctive body language that would give Little Star character even without dialogue. The biggest challenge for us was the interaction between Mina and Little Star. To achieve this, Sonja and Elena split the previously generated 3D animations into individual keyframes and drew Little Star into the scene frame by frame. Vanessa supported them in the lineart and colouring process.

Lighting under a starry sky

The special feature of our film is that it only takes place at night. We worked on various lighting concepts to tell the visual story of the look we had conceived. After consulting with the group, we used these to create a colour sheet for our film. It was clear that almost all the lights in the observatory should be off, while a bright moonlight should shine into the building. Thanks to great support from our lecturer Kathrin Hawelka, we gained a deeper insight into master lighting and shot lighting.

With a mixture of the changed sun position in Blenders Sky Texture and a strong spotlight, Vanessa simulated a soft moonlight at night. Using Area Lights, Sonja lifted our character from the background and gave her more definition in the face. Inside the observatory, Vanessa also worked mostly with area lights, for example on the PC screen. The moonlight in the opening of the observatory was created using a spotlight.

Finding the right light colour and temperature proved difficult at first. Our concept was to start the film with the coldest and darkest colours possible. However, as soon as Mina meets her little self, a warm colour appears for the first time in the film with the girl’s striking red jumpsuit. With the help of the fantastic starry vortex, which we designed in shades of cyan and purple, the colourful tones take over Mina’s surroundings and the astronomer herself. The colours represent a return to her inner child and her deep enthusiasm for the stars. Thanks to the amazing colour grading by Claudia Fuchs, we were able to highlight some parts of the film even more and give the film a final polish.

Melodies of Magic: Sounds and Music

Even in the earliest sketches of our animatics, in which Sonja had already incorporated existing film music as references, it was clear that we wanted to go in a direction with the music that would strike an emotional chord. We found great inspiration in many works by Pixar. Back in April 2024, we discussed our musical perspectives and ideas with our composer Julia Chen, whom we met as part of a collaboration between the HFF Munich and the Munich University of Music and Theatre. Working with her was a unique experience, as our wishes and ideas immediately went in the same direction. Shortly afterwards, we received the first musical sketches for our early and unfinished 3D animatics, which already impressively summarised the dimensions of our film.

After a lively exchange, we jointly decided to place a major climax in the music on the embrace of Mina and Little Star. We also asked Julia Chen to personally record the vocals for the credits. We are over the moon with the end result and were very happy to bring them together with our film sounds. Even without dialogue in the film, it was important to record sounds such as breathing, laughing or groaning in a sound booth. Our team member Elena lent her voice to both Mina and Little Star in the final film. All the voice recordings were made in a recording studio at the HFF and the music academy. Many of our sounds could be taken from our internal sound library at the university, and additional Foley sounds could also be recorded in the studio if necessary. The final 5.1 mix of sound, music and voices for our final mix was created by our sound mixer Gerhard Auer.

Magical Adjustments in Compositing

The compositing was created by Vanessa and Elena in DaVinci Fusion. The core of the work was the merging of 2D matte paintings and hand-drawn 2D animations into the three-dimensional Blender scene. The interactions between Mina and Little Star had to look fluid and not leave any gaps, which was a big challenge for a short time. In some cases, we corrected every single frame by hand. We placed the matte paintings as PNGs with an alpha channel over the 3D renders. Vanessa gave the star swirls in particular a major compositing polish. She corrected some of the colours, added blurring and enhanced the lighting effects. We made the particles shine all the brighter. One of the biggest challenges for us was to place 2D matte paintings in a scene with a moving camera – as is the case with the meeting of Mina and Little Star. As a solution, Elena added her drawing to the Blender scene itself instead of compositing it. By drawing the matte paintings several times, she found out where the most parallax occurs when the camera is moved more strongly. Based on this, she divided the background into eight different layers, which we inserted as planes in Blender and moved over the 3D desert. The process resembled staggered stage elements in terms of perspective and turned out to make sense in retrospect.

Starry Adventures in retrospect

Life is through and through a collection of many experiences and adventures that shape us into the people we are today. Many of us probably also know what it feels like to be frustrated or on the verge of burnout. However, only very few of us talk about it, which is why we want to take the big step with our short film of addressing people who may be struggling in their job or everyday life, or even those who have lost sight of their own preferences, hobbies and passions. After working on “Little Star” for two semesters and half a summer, we were finally able to show the film to a larger and more diverse audience, including some professional eyes from the industry, on 28 November 2024 at the VFX Reel 2024 at the HFF. We would like to take this opportunity to thank our team assistant Petra Hereth for organising our premiere and the numerous support from all the visitors. It would be a pleasure for us to be able to present the film at other occasions such as festivals afterwards. We hope that the audience will enjoy Mina’s adventures – but also that they will give their own inner little star a big hug after seeing the film!

Summary and Producer’s Notes

The “Little Star” project was already in its infancy when I approached the team consisting of Sonja Latussek, Vanessa Ramovic and Elena Rid. Having just arrived at the HFF, it was my heart’s desire to be able to take part in an animated film within reach. The VFX department and the students of the 2023 class worked closely together in weekly meetings (weeklies), which I was able to attend for the first time in November and then experience the development of the film throughout the year.

by Pearl Fröhlich

The filmmakers impressed the supervising chair and myself with their precise and creative
brainstorming phase and quickly moved on to script development. The team was quickly joined by our composer Julia Chen, who had also worked on “Schattenspiel” from the previous year. The proximity between us and the music academy made it easy to work closely together, which gave everyone an instructive insight into the work processes of both trades.

For the design of the space and the characters, we went on a joint research trip as a team to the university observatory in Munich, which Dr Oliver Friedrich organised and designed together with us. On site, the scientific staff shared their knowledge and enthusiasm for the field of astronomy with us, which gave us deeper access to Mina and Little Star.

Mina was brought to life by actress Franzi Frey on a day of motion capture filming in the HFF’s in-house studio, supervised by David Emmenlauer. The three filmmakers took it in turns to act in the role of the starlet. After a steep learning curve, the motion capture data and reference recordings made it easier to realise the final animated version.

The chair of the VFX degree programme, consisting of Prof. Jürgen Schopper, Dr Rodolfo Anes Silveira, Berter Orpak, Jonas Kluger and Petra Hereth, supported the entire process with their expertise. The project and all those involved went through many intensive phases in its creation and there was a shared anticipation of the final premiere of the film at the VFX-Reel 2024 in November this year at the HFF.

I would like to thank you for the many learning opportunities and experiences gained, which have given me further training for future projects and left me with an enthusiasm for digital production.

From the production side, I would like to personally thank Lissy Giglberger, Ina Mikkat, the production manager of the project, and Daniel Zitzer, the production assistant, who have strongly supported and strengthened me through the first year of this project.

Team

A Film By: Vanessa Ramovic – Elena Rid – Sonja Latussek
Script / Modeling / Texturing / Rigging / Lighting / Compositing By: Vanessa Ramovic – Elena Rid – Sonja Latussek
Musical Score, Song & Vocals By: Julia Chen
Produced By: Pearl Fröhlich
Mina Actress: Franzi Frey
Project Supervision: Prof. Jürgen Schopper
Project Consultant: Dr. Rodolfo Anes Silveira
Visual Effects Pipeline TD: Jonas Kluger
Mentor 3D Computer Animation: Berter Orpak
Line Producer: Ina Mikkat
Team Assistant Line Producer: Ron Sikkes
Team Assistance: Petra Hereth
Colour Grading: Claudia Fuchs
Sound Design & Re-Recording Mixer: Gerhard Auer
Audio Consulting: Andreas Goldbrunner
Audio Consulting: Stefan Möhl
Editing Support: Yuval Tzafrir

Studio Management: Peter Gottschall
Studio Management: Andreas Beckert
Scheduling: Beate Bailas
Scheduling: Sabina Kannewischer
Voice Acting: Elena Rid

Thanks To Our Tutors!
3D Animation: Prof. Melanie Beisswenger
Storyboard: Prof. Michael Coldewey
Motion Capture: David Emmenlauer
Lighting: Kathrin Hawelka
Modeling & Rigging: Benc Orpak
Characterbuilding: Dr. Walter Stehling
Cinematography: Dr. Rodolfo Anes Siilveira
Rendering: Jonas Kluger
Overall Management: Prof. Jürgen Schopper

Special Thanks To:
Jim Obmann – Emil Pogolski – Vanessa Chu – Ina Mikkat – Edgar Bauer – Paula Wodniok – Mayra
Ebensen – Silvia Loose – Franz Stoecker – Felix Zachau – Yuval Tzafrir – Mika Angeli – Lissy Giglberger

Creatures made of tree branches and roots seem to have a firm place in the history of
VFX. Just think of Treebeard in The Lord of the Rings, Guillermo del Toro’s Pinoccio, Groot or the creature in Seven Minutes Past Midnight. In this tradition we created woodland – an animated short film that we produced under the direction of Prof. Jürgen Schopper in the VFX programme at the HFF. Even though our forest creature may look rather frail next to many of his wooden colleagues, he more than makes up for it with his musical talent.

In search of ideas

Even before active story development began in October 2023, our team had come together. Woodland is the result of the creative work of Jim Obmann, Emil Pogolski and Vanessa Chu. We wanted to create a film in a fantastic, surreal environment, far removed from the world we know. For months we played through different scenarios, wrote countless script drafts and created concepts of fantasy creatures and environments. Our ideas took us from the deep sea to the highest mountain peaks, caves, abandoned cities and desert planets. In these Lived whales, golems, basilisks and other fantasy creatures – including a “moon calf”, which played the leading role. Among these figures was a rough sketch of a gnarled forest creature playing a flute… However, in view of the countless options, we didn’t immediately recognise the potential of this character.

Although the settings and characters of our designs were very different, there were fortunately
also many similarities: Survival in a desolate world, a melancholic, sometimes gloomy mood, the contrast of light and shadow, the magical effect of the music – all of these elements appeared again and again. In the end, we were able to agree on a final film plot that united these motifs. The old forest creature reappeared as the main character. In months of work
Woodland took shape in this way: The story of a wooden creature, who, as the protector of nature, must save his forest from endless darkness. His only hope: a fragile flower flute. For only the music of this flute can dispel the clouds that block out the life-giving sunlight.

From text to image

It all began with a spontaneous pencil sketch. The bent, asymmetrical posture of the drawn figure, as well as her melancholy expression. Numerous digital drawings followed, which refined the design more precisely. The aim was to develop a clear design language without sacrificing seemingly natural elements. The aim was to find a balance between heaviness and fragility. This is why the final Concept Pieces of bark layered like scales on the head and torso alternate with flexible root strands that form the creature’s arms, neck and stomach.

Vanessa Chu and Jim Obmann designed the concept of the “flower flute” according to a similar principle: the wafer-thin petals are arranged in a spiral around the stem which functions as a sound box. In order to play the flute, the petals have to be pressed shut so that the knotholes in the stem of the flute are covered – similar to the keys of a clarinet. This allowed us to combine an interesting design with functionality.

Storyboard & previsualisation

Prof Michael Coldewey and Dr Rodolfo Anes Silveira supported us in creating the storyboard. We created pencil drawings for each shot, which we cut out and rearranged again and again. This gave us the opportunity to play with different editing variations. We drew the final version digitally. Here we fine-tuned the Composition and an initial colour script that would later help us with the lighting.

Before we started with the 3D previs, we decided to take an additional step as preparation: we filmed a “real film version” in the Ebersberg forest. Our storyboard served as a template. By filming with a real camera, we got a very good idea of which pans and movements were realistic. In doing so we moved more in the direction of more static camera work, away from the often unrealistic possibilities of a 3D camera. This calmer concept lent more authenticity and clarity to the story. Storyboard and live-action film together created a stable basis for the 3D previs. A rough animation of the character and the first sound concept soon made it possible to assess the overall effect of our film and to make final changes to the pacing.

Pipeline & workflow

Jonas Kluger was always on hand to help us plan an effective workflow. He explained how to use Shotgrid and Prism software, which made Project management a lot easier. Even in the deepest jungle of linked Blender scenes, rigs, FBX files and textures, we were able to keep an overview.

A forest creature is created

The challenge now was to realise our drawn concepts in 3D. Emil Pogolski used Zbrush to sculpt the forest creature. Our character went through a series of metamorphoses until we finally succeeded in sculpturally reconstructing the expressiveness of the drawings.

In addition, the model was edited with regard to the animation. We opted for a mixture of ball joints and mouldable elements to give the character enough freedom of movement despite its sometimes rigid wooden structure. This also applies to the facial expressions: while the eyelids, nose and mouth are united in a single mesh, the eyebrows move separately from the head as a mosaic of fixed wooden panels. All of the figure’s blendshapes were created (also in Zbrush) using sculpting layers.

We built the flower flute in Blender, also using Blendshapes for the wilting of the petals. A rough reference model of the flute served as a template in Zbrush. The hands and fingers of the forest creature were adapted to the final model. This ensured that the character and asset were a good match. For the modelling of the bud from which the flute was to be modelled, we took a close look at the growth of real plants.

In the virtual forest

The most challenging task during the creation of our film was the environment. The aim was to build an ancient forest whose trees were slowly decaying from lack of light. Here, too, we attached great importance to a detailed elaboration of the tree bark, leaves, roots and undergrowth.

This task would have been almost impossible to complete using traditional modelling methods in the time we were given. As a solution, Jim developed a system of geometry nodes in Blender with which we were able to procedurally design a large number of unique trees.

Curves were used to define the basic shape of the trunk, while the leaf density, number of branches and structure of the bark could be controlled with specially created parameters.

In addition, we allowed clusters of tree fungi to grow on the bark, including procedurally variable fungal size and density.

We also had the same flexibility with the shape and thickness of the tree branches (which we could let hang down sadly if required). Depending on the layout, we distributed self-made 3D scans of rotten tree trunks, rock formations and roots in the environment. This completed the overall impression of a dark, mystical forest.

Texturing

We wanted Woodland to be a tactile, detailed film. That’s why we decided early on in favour of PBR shading with high-resolution normal and displacement maps. In Zbrush, Emil modelled larger details such as the eye wrinkles and coarse Bark structures of the character. In the next step, we projected this highpoly Model in Substance Painter onto the lowpoly mesh, which had previously been cleanly retopologised in Maya. We distributed the texel density of the lowpoly mesh over several UDIM-tiles in order to maximise the good performance of the blender scenes despite the high level of detail.

Rigging

The humanoid proportions of our character allowed us to use the Blender add-on Autorig Pro as the basis for the rig. Vanessa manually adjusted the weights to anatomical features, such as the forest creature’s flexible neck.
After a few iterations and the support of Benc Orpak, the body rig was ready. For the facial expressions, we built a control panel to quickly control the character’s 20 blendshapes quickly. This also made it easy to create combinations of several blendshapes. Jim rigged the flower flute completely by hand. Its complex rig made it possible not only to manipulate each petal individually, but also the overall shape of the flute. So the growth of the flower from a bud to a fully unfolded flute.

Performance capture

Before the shoot, we had already tried to empathise with the role of the forest creature and
possible movement sequences. It quickly became clear that Jim would be best suited as a MoCap actor. David Emmenlauer was on hand on the day of filming with valuable Advice on the day of filming. He explained how to use the Xsens suit and the associated software so that we could get the most out of Jim’s performance. We used sandbags, elastic bands and a heavy rucksack to restrict our performer’s freedom of movement. This allowed us to bring our idea of a frail forest creature even closer. The foundation for the animation was laid.

Animation

Retargeting turned out to be a challenge: the bones from the MoCap data had to be manually transferred to the final rig. The edited motion data provided an initial starting point for the long animation process that followed. Only the Blender add-on Animation Layers allowed us to bring the forest creature fully to life. We first corrected all imperfections in the MoCap data in order to edit them using manual animation. All the nuances of the flute playing, the the intricate hand movements and the expressiveness of the facial expressions were animated by Vanessa and Jim by hand. They received feedback from Melanie Beisswenger, who also taught us the theory of animation technique. Seeing how, step by step, a vivid character with convincing emotions was a fascinating experience with every new shot.

Light and shadow

Light is one of the most important elements in the story of Woodland. What mattered to us was a strong contrast between light and dark. The oppressive mood of a dying Forest was to be set against the dawning of sunlight. But how do you tell the absence of light without plunging the film plot into darkness?
We decided to solve this problem with a clear colour scheme. The dark forest is bathed in a cold blue-green colour, with a tinge of violet in the shadow areas. In contrast, warmer colours return to the forest with the sunlight – the blue-green is replaced by light ochre and orange tones. To achieve this effect, Emil used numerous area lights in Blender in combination with a volume.

This volume allowed us to create a depth effect and make the rays of sunlight visible. We also sorted all the lights into light groups so that we could adjust them later in compositing. This enabled us to visually separate the character from the environment even in the densest tangle of branches and to bring out all the details even in the dark forest.

Rendering & compositing

We decided early on to render with Cycles. This allowed us to achieve the desired Quality of all transmission, subsurface and volume effects. For the necessary flexibility in compositing, we created masks for the forest creature and its flute for each shot. Nevertheless, we struggled with rendering errors – which were eventually overcome with even more patience. The effort was worth it: the final renders lived up to our expectations. We now put all the render passes together in Nuke to create the finished overall image. Here we came a lot closer to the desired look. We increased the visual clarity the visual clarity of the shots, directing the audience’s gaze to the important image elements. In Nuke we also animated the sunlight, which we had always rendered in a separate light group.

Colour grading

Together with colourist Claudia Fuchs, we achieved the final look, corrected minor rendering errors and added grain. With a subtle radial blur at the edges of the image, we underlined the sometimes dreamlike mood of the film. This put the finishing touches to all the scenes – the work on the visual part was complete.

Wood creaking and flute music

As our film manages without any dialogue, the music plays a very special role. In Woodland, it is not just “background music”, but a fundamental part of the film’s plot. It guides the audience through all the emotional states of the forest creature: from Self-forgetfulness to sadness to hope. This music is the work of our great Composer Lukas Stipar, who, in addition to film music, writes pieces for video games and theatre plays. The sound design took place under the direction of sound engineer Stefan Möhl. The forest was now given an atmospheric sound backdrop, while the gnarled joints creak and crackle with every movement. All animations and textures suddenly seemed even more believable as the sound gave the film a whole new depth.

Retrospective

Working on our first animated film at the HFF demanded a lot of perseverance from us. It was an instructive, exciting journey to the final version with one or two unforeseen twists and turns. We spent almost a whole year in the virtual forest of Woodland, so that in the end we found it difficult to detach ourselves from our work. It always seemed just one or two opportunities for improvement. But the finished film comes closer to our expectations than we initially thought possible. Now we can look back with satisfaction on a long, successful teamwork – and are already looking forward to the next VFX project!

The team

Munich University of Television and Film presents: A film by Vanessa Chu, Jim Obmann, Emil Pogolski

Woodland

Screenplay / Modelling / Texturing / Rigging / Animation / Lighting / Compositing: Vanessa Chu, Jim Obmann, Emil Pogolski
Producer Konstantin Kunze
Composer: Lukas Stipar
Overall management: Prof. Jürgen Schopper
Project supervision: Dr Rodolfo Anes Silveira
Visual Effects Pipeline TD: Jonas Kluger
Mentor 3D Computer Animation: Berter Orpak
Production Management: Ina Mikkat
Team Assistance Production Management: Ron Sikkes
Team assistance: Petra Hereth
Assembly supervision: Prof Beatrice Babin, Prof Michael Palm, Yuval Tzafrir
Colour Grading: Claudia Fuchs
Mixing: Stefan Möhl
Postproduction Supervisor: Christoffer Kempel
Room scheduling: Beate Bialas, Sabina Kannewischer
Editing: Christine Schorr, Yuval Tzafrir
Technical support: Benedikt Geß, Florian Schneeweiß
Equipment HFF Munich: Rainer Christoph
Studio management: Peter Gottschall, Andreas Beckert
Conforming: Martin Foerster

Sirius string quartet, clarinettist Eve Georges

Thanks to our lecturers Prof. Melanie Beisswenger, Prof. Michael Coldewey, David Emmenlauer, Kathrin Hawelka, Benc Orpak, Dr Walter Stehling.

Special thanks to Edgar Bauer, Mayra Ebensen, Paula Wodniok, Silvia Loose, Franz Stöcker, Felix Zachau, Hannes Werner, Alexander Hupp, Ines Timmich, Franziska Bayer, Valentin Dittlmann

Producers Comment

When I started at the HFF, I wasn’t even aware that there were animated films in addition to documentaries and feature films that we production students were allowed to accompany as producers.

by Konstantin Kunze

In the first few weeks of my studies, however, I gradually found out that we could get this opportunity and be allowed to produce an animated film. I approached Vanessa and offered to help her and the team with the production. The offer quickly became a reality and I became part of Team JEV: Team Jim Obmann, Emil Pogolski and Vanessa Chu.
Every week we met with the other team and the lecturers from the VFX department for weekly meetings in which the film was shaped step by step. Starting with brainstorming, script development and then everything to do with the animation and completion of the film. What I’m describing here so casually and briefly was a process that took months and ultimately lasted a year. A process in which I learnt what in-depth character and story development means and what it means to track the progress of an animated film in Shotdeck, to get to know and understand general terms and the workflow of an animation project.

I can only repeat it again and again and take my hat off to Vanessa, Emil and Jim. What you three have achieved over the last year is incredible and I am deeply grateful to you for letting me go along for the ride. Your skills and abilities have made my jaw drop more than once. Seeing how you have grown together as a team and how everyone in the team has found their role based on their skills makes me proud. Proud of your work and especially proud of the three of you.

A big thank you to everyone in the VFX department for their commitment and time, and to everyone else involved, especially the production manager Ina Mikkat and her assistant and good soul in the production department, Daniel Zitzer. If there’s one important thing to take away from the last year, it’s a newfound understanding of what it means to work in VFX. Even if it was only a small insight into the big VFX world, you can now better appreciate what it really means to produce visual effects or animations and that it is not just a ‘job on the side’, as it is often seen in the film industry. Vanessa, Emil and Jim, it was a pleasure to produce this film with you, and if this is your start, then we can’t help but look forward to all the wonderful things to come from you.

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Digital production professionals, mark your calendars for an evening of cutting-edge visual storytelling at the “VFX Reel 2024” on November 28, hosted by the Department of Cinematography at HFF Munich. This event is set to spotlight the fresh and experimental work of visual effects students in both animation and live-action productions, giving audiences an in-depth look at the skills and creativity driving the next generation of digital artists.

A Program of Animation and Realfilm Projects

Starting at 18:30 in HFF’s Audimax Cinema, the VFX Reel 2024 promises a varied selection of digital productions from HFF’s up-and-coming talents. These screenings include animations and realfilms (hybrid productions combining live action with CGI elements) that delve into themes of self-discovery, resilience, and the mysteries of light and darkness. Among the notable entries:

• “Little Star” – A journey of a young astronomer reconnecting with her inner child. This animated piece uses intricate VFX to blend real-world elements with whimsical space visuals, offering a unique look at personal discovery through the lens of astronomy.
• “Woodland” – A visual narrative centered around a mystical forest creature seeking to bring light to a darkened world. With heavy emphasis on atmospheric lighting and textural VFX, “Woodland” stands as an immersive animation that emphasizes the power of hope and transformation.
• “Wohin” – This second-year student project brings the audience into the world of a young pianist grappling with her aspirations. Using minimalistic but expressive VFX, the film explores her dreams and the struggles of artistic expression in a realistic setting.

Behind the Scenes: Making Of and Student Q&A

The program doesn’t end with the credits. Attendees are invited to stay for a Making Of session, which promises an insightful look at the creative processes, challenges, and technical choices behind each production. This segment will include presentations from the students themselves, offering a rare opportunity to hear directly from the creators about their inspirations, workflows, and tools.

Moderated by Prof. Jürgen Schopper, the event also provides a platform for audience engagement, where viewers can discuss the creative process with the students in person. Prof. Schopper’s involvement brings an added layer of expertise, setting the stage for thoughtful discussions on the evolving role of VFX in narrative cinema.

Reserve Your Spot

The event is free, but seating is limited and entry is by online guest list only. Those interested should secure their spots by registering via the official HFF Munich VFX Reel page (link includes a QR code for entry). Doors open at 18:00, with the screening beginning promptly at 18:30. Afterward, attendees can enjoy a casual reception in the foyer, ideal for networking and connecting with others in the field of digital production and visual effects.

Our first ideas emerged from this sketch: What characterises the robot, what is the relationship between it and the dog, what kind of world do they live in? We are in the near future. People and seemingly all life have disappeared from the city and countryside. Posters, camps, cars and facilities left behind bear witness to the vanished culture.

By Edgar Bauer, Franz Stöcker and Felix Zachau. They are studying image design at the HFF Munich, specialising in VFX. All three found it exciting to tell the story of such different characters coming together, which is why they joined forces as a team.

The rusty old household robot has also been left behind. It still works and seems to mechanically fulfil its old routines. The dog is playful, it eats and seeks closeness.
In doing so, he gradually brings the old, cumbersome, stuck machine to life. He takes it out of its routine and humanises it. The robot becomes a humanoid that can care, play and feel. You watch as the years pass, the dog grows older and the robot becomes more human. It all ends with one last special evening when they watch fireflies together.
This sets the cornerstones of the story, focussing on their relationship and the development of the robot.
In weekly meetings with Prof Jürgen Schopper and Dr Rodolfo Anes Silveira, we presented our respective progress and discussed how best to proceed. Team assistant Petra Hereth coordinated the project organisation for us, including the lectures and all associated seminars and workshops.

Storyboard

With the script ready and a precise idea of the aesthetics, it was time for the storyboard. Professor Michael Coldewey helped us to break the story down into a few images, which we then drew in the “Procreate” drawing programme. The focus was on the comprehensibility of the images and not on details, but at the same time we were also able to think about the camera settings.
The aim was to tell and structure the script visually in such a way that an outsider could look at the storyboard and understand what was happening.

Animatic and pre-visualisation

The animatic can be divided into two phases. First comes the drawn animatic and then the PreVis, a rough 3D animated version of the film. The drawn animatic is an animated version of the storyboard. We used the images from the storyboard in the “Premiere Pro” editing programme. We also tested how long we should leave the shots for and created a rudimentary version of the sound. This allowed us to consider what should be shown visually and what could be told via the sound. That was very good for getting a rough feel for the story. The next step was the PreVis.
We modelled and rigged rough versions of the dog and robot in “Blender” and created very simplified sets. The scenes were then quickly animated and rendered in Workbench to see where the characters were, how well the camera was placed and whether a viewer could understand the film at all. Our focus on speed meant we could quickly see which shots worked and which we needed to rework. Telling a long period of time in a short film was a particular challenge. Over 28 versions, we considered shot sizes, moved characters to different locations and added, replaced, moved in the timeline, changed or discarded entire shots. In the end, we had a plan of how long each shot had to be, how the camera should be placed and what should happen in front of it.

Music

With a rough idea of what kind of tonality we wanted to create in our film music, we were very lucky that the composers Arezou Rezaei and Jiro Yoshioka from the Munich University of Music agreed to compose the score for us. It was ideal that we started collaborating even before the PreVis was finalised.
This allowed us to give each other feedback and they were able to advise us on which scenes we should keep longer or shorter so that the composition could unfold its full effect. The music also provided plenty of inspiration and the insights the musicians were able to give us based on their expertise had a significant influence on the development of the story.

Pipeline & Workflow

Without the help of our Pipeline TD Jonas Kluger, this film would probably still not be finished. He familiarised us with the project management software “Shotgrid” and made sure that possible errors caused by the communication between “Blender” and “Shotgrid” did not affect us as much as possible. We initially created tasks for all environments, characters, assets and shots. We then divided the tasks among ourselves and uploaded the results to “Shotgrid”. This pipeline makes it possible to work on sets simultaneously so that the updated assets are also opened when a scene is opened.

Modelling, Texturing, Rigging

It was important to us that the last dog and the last robot should be archetypes. The robot’s shapes should convey a fascination for its technical abilities and yet still look old and capable of development.

Settings

The film shows a contrasting world. It starts in a destroyed, abandoned city and then switches to a rural, old-fashioned landscape where nature is slowly returning.
Both landscapes were modelled in 3D in Blender. The textures were then drawn in “Procreate” from a camera perspective and then projected onto the model in “Blender”. In some cases, we also used the drawings directly as backgrounds. The backgrounds had to be coherent and picturesque without distracting from the actual action.

Look

The look development is more than just the selection of colours and designs. It defines the visual language of the film, gives it character and lends the story a unique aesthetic. This process is crucial to how viewers perceive the world of the film and how they connect emotionally with the characters and the plot.
The process is iterative and required many feedback loops. In the beginning, we aimed for a photorealistic, Pixar-like look. Partly to save render time, but also because we wanted to focus on the relationship between the robot and the dog, we decided to use a mix of drawn textures and a 3D animated film.

This change was one of the most difficult decisions we made for this film. We had already completed several sets in photorealistic style and had fallen in love with the look of the test renders.
But when we saw the dog in motion with a drawn texture, the decision was easy. It looked much more lively in the new style. We were also able to emphasise the character of the robot better in the new style.

Rotation

To recreate a movement realistically, it helps to collect as many references as possible. We planned a day of shooting for this purpose. Studio masters Andreas Beckert and Peter Gottschall let us use the HFF’s internal television studio for this.
We filmed with a younger and an older dog to cover him in both the younger and older scenes.
For the robot, our fellow student Julius von Diest slipped into Xsens’ in-house motion capture suit. David Emmenlauer explained the correct operation of the suit to us in advance. We only used the data collected with it as a reference so as not to make the robot appear more lifelike than the dog.
We took each shot with three different cameras. Each was responsible for a selected perspective. The first one was placed as close as possible to the camera position defined in the PreVis. With the other two, we filmed from the front and from the side so that we could then jump 90 degrees from axis to axis when animating.

Animation

The animation was a big part of our work process. We wanted to show the slow humanisation of the robot and the ageing of the dog in the animation. The recorded references from the studio shoot came in very handy.
We also got help from Professor Melanie Beisswenger. As an experienced animator, she had a trained eye for our animations and was able to give us very good suggestions for improvement, especially for the dog, which made it appear even more natural.

One thing that made animating technically much easier was that both the dog and the robot had a very detailed model for rendering and a less detailed one for animating. When animating, we could deactivate the body responsible for rendering the characters at the touch of a button. Thanks to the saved computing power, we were able to animate in real time in the viewport.

Rendering

The film is rendered in Blender via Cycles. We used the HFF render farm to save rendering time and stay on schedule. We also rendered out masks for the dog and robot so that we could edit them better during grading.

Grading

We were very lucky to have Claudia Fuchs, a professional grader, at our side. Together we made some colour corrections and matched the colours of the shots to each other.

Sound design

For animated films, in which every visual component is created from scratch, the creation of realistic soundscapes is a major challenge. Stefan Möhl took on the sound design for us. We discussed our ideas with him about how the robot and the world should sound. We felt it was a great privilege to be able to look over his shoulder as he worked. It was fascinating to see how he creates a soundscape from different sounds that seem to have nothing to do with each other and breathes life into the film. He surpassed all the expectations we had beforehand.

Retrospective

A strongly humanoid robot leans against a car, smoking. A year has now passed since this sketch was made. A lot has happened in that time. We have spent many days and nights at the university and have grown together as a group. The collaboration led to creative solutions and a film that we are proud of. Only now do we realise how many steps and how much work is actually involved in the development of an animated film. It was a long process with many ups and downs. We have learnt a lot from it, we would like to thank everyone involved and look forward to the next project

The challenge for the visual effects design was to achieve a photorealistic visual aesthetic that blends seamlessly into a real film with real actors. A Portuguese courtyard, built in the HFF studio in the summer of 2022, served as the central set for the dystopian narrative of a family drama.

by Franziska Bayer, Valentin Dittlmann, Alexander Hupp, Ines Timmich and Hannes Werner

The plot unfolds on an isolated island in the middle of an endless ocean and thematises the conflict between the spirit of discovery of youth and the entrenched convictions of the older generation. Although officially listed as a “VFX film 02” by the visual effects students, “Wind Up” is a joint project. For example, screenplay student Tamaki Richter wrote the script, while the production was handled by WennDann Film GmbH, which was founded at the HFF, and students from all departments took on additional roles – wenndann-film.de.

The professional expertise of the film industry complemented the work of the HFF students, with Matthias Zentner(velvet.de) acting as director and Moritz Rautenberg(moritzrautenberg.com) as director of photography. The synergy between various educational institutions in Munich should also be noted, with contributions from the Academy of Music, the Academy of Fine Arts for the set design and the August Everding Drama School, which used some of its students for the make-up design. The studio building, which provided the basic setting, was also created as part of the “Entwerfen und Gestalten – Architectural Design and Conception” programme at the Technical University of Munich. The cooperation within the departments of the HFF and with other art academies not only marks an impressive short film, but also emphasises the power of interdisciplinary exchange. “Wind Up” stands as a testament to the creative fusion of talents from different disciplines at the HFF and its partner institutions in Munich.

See for yourself:

• Munich Film and Television University hff-muenchen.de
• VFX Breakdown is.gd/vimeo_windup_vfx
• Making of is.gd/wind_up_making_of

Brainstorming and script development

What is hidden behind the boundaries of a studio courtyard? A lonely family on an island, in the sea, surrounded by monsters. That was the basic idea submitted by a screenwriting student that would eventually become “Wind Up”. The process of developing the idea was a creative collaboration between several departments at the HFF, which included intensive discussions about the relationship dynamics of the characters, the special significance of a lamp and how a hot air balloon works.

The core, the family drama, remained an important guideline throughout the script versions. The result is a story of a family that grows beyond its limits in the fight against its shadows. Lino (16) spends his everyday life building up the crumbling walls of his home island to protect himself and his family from the darkness that lurks outside the island and swallowed up his mother 10 years ago. Until he learns that his sister Benedita (18) and his uncle Afonso (52) want to flee the island to find his mother: She’s alive? And the darkness is just a fairy tale told to him by his grandmother Madalena (83) to keep the family on the island. Lino now has to find his way between mysterious lamps, home-made hot air balloons and family lies and make a decision: Will he stay on a crumbling island with his family? Or will he set off in search of his mother – into a world of shadows?

Animatic & Resolution

When planning the VFX shots, it was important to break down the entire film into individual shots in advance. That’s why the VFX team, together with director Matthias Zentner and cinematographer Moritz Rautenberg, spent several weeks developing shot plans for the film. The set plans were used to create animatics that could be quickly adapted. In contrast to traditional planning with storyboards, it was an advantage to work directly on the previs, as the space of the set could be taken into account. The characters were generated in readyplayer.me, placed in a scanned 3D model of the set and animated in Blender. Different focal lengths and camera movements were created in this way, with many of the non-VFX shots later being made more dynamic or combined as one shot during the shoot. As the dialogue was also set to music in the animatics, screenwriter Tamaki Richter was able to quickly determine whether her story was working the way she wanted and make changes accordingly.

Concept Art

The realisation of the short film “Wind Up” required a well thought-out, consistent visual look that went beyond the set of the Portuguese courtyard to include the entire island. The layout of the courtyard was the starting point for the design of the exterior buildings and the island. An extensive search for references of remote places, coasts and islands laid the foundation for the development of concept art for the location. The aim was to create a doomed island, with buildings slowly decaying and being maintained by the last four inhabitants in an endless battle against decay. The result is a gloomy look of an island that seems to be drowning in fog, illuminated only by a single light source. The VFX students were supported in designing the concepts by concept artist Luis Guggenberger(luisguggenberger.de).

Another crucial aspect was the design of the “shadows”, which embody the fears of 15-year-old Linos in the film. Dark, abstract illusions that gnaw at the walls of the island and ensure its decay were designed as a visual representation. To realise this concept, ink spreads were shot on paper in various combinations with water, alcohol or glycerine on the first day of shooting. In post-production, these black and white shots were used as masks in Nuke to make the shadows move across the walls of the island. In addition to the design of the island and the shadows, the design of the so-called “barkonaut” was also developed. It is a mixture of a small rowing boat and a hot air balloon, as escaping across the ocean is not possible with a boat alone due to stormy waves.

The composite appearance of the vehicle, made from washed-up components, old planks, nails, fabric patches for the balloon and improvised assemblies in the workshop, gave the “Barkonaut” an authentic character. Artificial intelligence was used to generate construction plans for the barkonaut and maps of the remote island. The images were plotted onto semi-transparent paper and patinated with tea to give the maps an aged look. The door to a secret workshop, a painting of the island, was made especially for the film by painting student Elisaveta Bogushevskaya.

Sculpting the island

As the final island model was used as a reference for the above-mentioned painting in the film and some other parts of the set design, the island had to be ready several weeks before shooting began. The sculpting of the island was done entirely in Zbrush. Depending on the concepts, a rough silhouette was first defined, then smaller details were worked out. With the exception of the details in the rocks, the entire island was sculpted completely by hand and without procedural aids.

As the island model in Zbrush ultimately had a very high resolution of over 4 million active points, a lower-resolution duplicate of the base mesh was created, which contained fewer details and would speed up the further texturing process. This mesh required less computational work in programmes such as Houdini or Substance Painter and thus facilitated the entire work process. In Blender, the low-resolution mesh was UV unwrapped. The high-resolution mesh was then projected onto this reduced mesh in Substance Painter in order to retain all the details of the original model in the maps generated in Substance Painter.

Modelling & Texturing

The story takes place on an island threatened by decay. Wind and water have reduced the piece of land, which was once richly populated, to a minimum. A sparse amount of dilapidated houses are the last thing left on the island, but even these will not last much longer. The house assets were divided into five complexes before filming and arranged based on the set scan. An attempt was made to create a recognisable silhouette by varying the heights of the buildings and a tower whose top had been broken off. After the shoot, the models were refined in Blender and customised with Kitbash assets.

As the houses were almost only shown in supertotal shots, it was possible to keep the models low-resolution with only around 100,000 polygons. The roof tiles, for example, were not modelled individually, but were just flat roofs onto which roof tile textures were projected. However, for two shots in which one of the house walls was used as a set extension, a detailed asset with 338,394 polygons had to be modelled. When texturing in Adobe Substance 3D Painter, the wall colours, as found in the set, were adopted and digitally patinated using various layers. Stains and elements that contributed to the worn, dirty look were painted by hand.

The digital colour and structure of the barkonaut’s balloon also had to match that of the real equipment. The basket could be designed more freely, as the real basket is hardly ever seen in the film, but it also had to look worn and dirty. To achieve this, the layers were first projected using smart masks and then adjusted by hand. For the most part, the software’s own PBR textures were used, but textures from Textures.com were used for the roof tiles.

Shooting preparations

Careful planning is extremely important for a production with around 60 people involved. Especially for the smooth realisation of the VFX shots, it should be as clear as possible in advance what will be seen and what you should pay particular attention to during the shoot. Basically, the filming preparation can be divided into two sections: firstly, the internal VFX coordination of the various tasks and secondly, the communication of the VFX-relevant information with the other departments.

The internal preparation ran in parallel and in close collaboration with the director and the DOP. Once the script had been developed to such an extent that it was foreseeable that there would be no major changes, an initial calculation of the VFX shots could be made. Thanks to the existing Previz, the calculation was quite accurate and there were few surprises, as it was easy to see in the virtual set whether the shots could be realised as planned. Based on the calculation, all assets and shots were created in Shotgrid, divided into individual tasks and distributed to the various people. This resulted in an extremely precise schedule, which enabled a largely smooth realisation. Working backwards from the deadline, it was easy to recognise when which tasks had to be completed in order to have enough time for subsequent tasks and still meet the deadline. The calculation, assets, shots and tasks were regularly revised when changes were made to the resolution or the script.

Communication with the other departments involved was essential to ensure that the shots could actually be realised as planned. The above-mentioned painting of the island was also created as part of the set on the basis of an early rendering of the 3D island, which ensured a consistent and coherent depiction of the island.

Plan B’s production designers were able to make targeted additions to the existing set construction using the virtual model, which meant that set extensions could be largely avoided and the real and virtual sets could be made to match. The special effects department, which was responsible for the destruction of the lamp as well as the inflation of the balloon, also had a virtual simulation to fall back on. Based on the simulation, which clearly visualised the inflation process, the set could be built in such a way that the balloon could actually be inflated with the help of a wind machine and the actors could enter the basket of the balloon.

Set supervision and DIT

The combination of CGI and live-action film presents a few more difficulties than the purely animated film that the VFX students produced in their first year. In addition to thorough planning, realisation is one of the most important steps. The role of the VFX supervisor is responsible for the interface between the director, camera and the final post-production.

The aim is to plan and prepare the VFX shots as accurately as possible so that the post-production schedule can be adhered to. The focus is also on recognising and preventing potential problems that would cost a lot of time and money later on. Another important task of the supervisor is data acquisition on set.

There are many tools that provide helpful information during the shoot and make realisation easier later on. Camera and lens data are extremely important. This information must be known so that a seamless transition between VFX and the original material shot is possible. For Wind Up, a LiDAR scan was also used to improve the tracking of the planned set extension.

This was created directly after the shot was filmed. The key is to capture as much important data as possible at the right moment without holding up the entire shoot. The supervisor is also responsible for finding the best compromise between the valuable time on set and the avoidable additional work in post-production. The students were supported by Prof Jürgen Schopper, 3D mentor Berter Orpak and Pipeline TD Jonas Kluger throughout the filming period.

The different “roles” were rotated daily between the 5 VFX students so that everyone could gain an insight into the different activities. They also took on the tasks of the DIT (Digital Imaging Technician). Thanks to a mobile workstation, not only can the backups be made, but the dailies can also be rendered directly. Another advantage was the ability to process 3D scans on site and create slap comps to identify potential problems.

Simulation

An island in the water and a balloon that inflates and flies away were the two simulation tasks. Several full CG shots were planned, in which the island was to be seen surrounded by water, partly with an expanding and flying balloon. The real balloon was measured, photographed and recreated from these references in Blender.

The basket of the balloon was only created on the side facing the interior based on the real one, the rest was modelled inspired by our own concepts. The idea was a flying lifeboat, a so-called “Barkonaut”. This model was revised based on the advice of simulation specialist Felix Hörlein in order to optimise the resolution and distribution of the topology for the subsequent simulation in Houdini. The size of the opening through which the balloon was to expand, as measured on set, was recreated virtually as a collision geometry to ensure that the CG settings matched the real filmed settings well. After several versions and adjustments of various parameters in Houdini, the fabric finally behaved as desired and the simulation looked convincing.

The loneliness is mainly told through the huge and empty ocean in the background. The interaction between the water and the island was one of the biggest challenges in achieving a realistic end product. Like the balloon, the water in Houdini was also simulated and shaded. The latest FLIP solver was used to calculate the base water.

For high efficiency over the entire process, the simulation area was limited to a small part around the island. This allows a fast workflow even with a high scaling of several million particles. In this area, the input parameters were extracted from the original ocean in order to use them as parameters for the simulation. The level of detail of the water is largely represented by the whitewater, which is then calculated as a function of the water simulation. Not only the water, but also the wind influence the dynamics of the spray. To make the behaviour even more realistic, an airfield simulation was simulated around the island so that the turbulence in the air also works.

Lighting, shading & rendering

The aim was to use lighting to create an atmosphere and mood on set that emphasised a tight and oppressive feeling. To ensure that this mood is not interrupted by the full CG shots, the lighting has to be adapted to the mood. Whilst the lighting contributes a lot to the overall mood, it also plays a crucial role in terms of the realism we are aiming for. To give the impression that computer-generated elements are part of the real world, light and shadow must fall on them correctly. Careful lighting ensures that the island is seamlessly integrated into the scenes and matches the real lighting conditions, some of which are provided by the stock footage.

The professional help of CG supervisor Frank Dürschinger, who supported the students with the basic principles of lighting through to the individual shots, was also important here. However, light alone is not enough to create a photorealistic image. The interaction with the light is influenced by the shaders. As the entire process of lighting, shading and rendering took place in Houdini, the students used MaterialX shaders to guarantee a high degree of flexibility between the programmes. To increase the level of realism, the texture of the island was combined with several PBR materials.

The resulting improved level of detail creates a real look even with closer settings. A modified version of the Houdini shader was used for the water and spray. To maximise the scope for compositing, the image was split into several layers and rendered individually. This makes it possible to adjust areas such as whitewater, the island or the balloon afterwards. Individual AOVs were also calculated in the respective layers, for example to make the light in the balloon flicker or to re-insert the reflection in the water. The use of the Karma render engine enables a very efficient and fast workflow overall. This was also important for the lighting due to the real-time factor.

Compositing

Lino’s anxiety, which is symbolised by shadows, was visually represented using real rotated ink spreads. With the help of Nuke, the recorded elements were used as masks to darken specific areas. To break up the fluid look and give the “shadows” a creepy, organic aspect, the ink shots were also distorted with noise.

To keep objects and actors in the foreground, they were rotoscoped in the scenes where the shadow spread was located. For shadow shots with tracking shots, the movement was tracked to allow for the integration of the shadows; for static shots, minimal camera movement was added in post-production to increase authenticity.

The students integrated the rendered island model in the long shots of the island with real ocean footage to create a more appropriate atmosphere. The overly friendly sky of the original footage was replaced with more dramatic matte paintings to emphasise the sombre mood.

The black and white levels of the digital image were then adjusted to achieve a seamless integration with the original shot. The digital island blended more realistically with the real ocean through simulated white water effects and supporting VFX elements such as fog. Additional effects such as lens distortion and chromatic aberration contributed to the fusion of CGI and real footage.

To add scenes with a visible exterior wall of a building on the island, the students extended the physical set. With the help of 3D equaliser expert Ando Avila, the camera movements of the crane ride were tracked and reconstructed in digital space. This enabled a correct representation of the digital set in conjunction with the original shot, supported by additional VFX elements such as fog and particles for seamless integration.

In the film sequence where Lino’s fear reaches its climax and he goes into a panicked state where he perceives his grandmother as a demon-like being, her altered appearance was also supported with visual effects. The eyes were tracked in Nuke, rotoscoped and coloured black, while retaining the real highlights to preserve the plastic appearance of the eye.

In addition to the main tasks, inattentions that happened during the shoot were also addressed. This included removing the special effects operator including his leaf blower in the background or adding a forgotten oil lamp to the barkonaut’s burner. The finished VFX settings were delivered by the HFF students to the post-production company Pharos. There, senior colourist Andreas Lautil not only gave the entire film the finishing touches with his cinematic colour grading, but also by taking over the VFX shots. For the compositing tasks, the students received support from Nuke expert Martin Tallosy.

Soundtrack & sound mixing

The musical and tonal layer of the film was extremely important, as it not only emphasised the moods of the characters in all the scenes, but also provided a way to make the location and supernatural events such as the shadows more believable and real. The film’s music was composed by film composer Victor Ardelean. As part of his final thesis at the Munich University of Music and Theatre, it was even possible to record parts of the final composition with the Munich Symphony Orchestra.

Rehearsing and recording with such a large and renowned orchestra was a unique and unforgettable opportunity, not only for the composer but also for the rest of the team. The final piece “Ballonflucht” in particular has an epic orchestral sound that emphasises the final scene and its hopeful mood.

The tonal layer had two main tasks: the acoustic unification of the scenes shot entirely in the studio with the narrative location on an island in the sea and the visualisation of the living shadows. Since the entire film had been shot in a studio building, the soundscape of an island surrounded by the roaring ocean had to be added later. Artistic collaborator Dr Rodolfo Anes Silveira took over the sound mixing here and added subconscious sound elements in addition to the obvious sounds. In addition to the sound of waves and the occasional screech of a seagull, you can practically feel the breaking of the waves on the rocks of the island in the form of a deep bass rhythm in your own chest. The acoustic design of a short film is often a creative challenge, especially when the question arises: How can shadows sound at all?

The answer to this proved to be subtle and yet effective. Whispering noises, crackles and pops were mainly used to shape the acoustic identity of the shadows. The audience should not only see the shadows, but also literally feel their presence. The quiet but haunting sounds meant that the shadows were no longer just an embodiment of fears and evil, but also a reminder of actual dangers such as real cracks in the walls.