Six of us started our studies with Professor Michael Coldewey in the 2020 winter semester. Thanks to his extraordinary commitment, we were the first VFX class at HFF to start giving free rein to our ideas early on. When Professor Jürgen Schopper took over as head of the specialisation in spring 2021, we were confronted with realistic project planning, which meant that the projects could be completed in July 2021. For the most part, we succeeded and it was an extremely important experience for us.
by Chris Kühn, Nicolas Schwarz and Christian Geßner
Jonas Kluger, Pipeline TD at HFF Munich, set up the Shotgrid software for us to manage the projects. With regard to time tracking, which is common in the industry, we quickly realised how much time is actually needed for some “small” changes. We received cinematographic input from Rodolfo Anes Silveira, who also supported us in all audiovisual matters.
The two films 01 of the new VFX class at the HFF Munich
Jürgen Schopper took over the professorship of the VFX specialisation in April 2021. The first students have now completed their film 01. The result is the animated short film "Sleep Tight" and the fully animated fictional teaser "17 Souls".
Jürgen Schopper started as head professor of the VFX specialisation at the Munich University of Television and Film (HFF) at the beginning of April. The specialisation is anchored in the HFF Department of Visual Design (headed by Prof. Tom Fährmann). The first VFX students started there in the winter semester 20/21.
Prof. Jürgen Schopper: "I really enjoyed planning the VFX specialisation and supervising the very first two films in this new degree programme. I would like to thank our President Prof Bettina Reitz, without whose support this new direction at HFF Munich would not exist, Prof Tom Fährmann, who has always supported me in the planning, and above all Prof Michael Coldewey, who was such a great mentor during the first semester before I was appointed to HFF Munich. I would also like to thank Prof Dr Peter C. Slansky, who was a great help with all the technical aspects. With Petra Hereth (Team Assistant), Rodolfo Silveira (Artistic Associate) and Jonas Kluger (Pipeline TD), we have now set up a great VFX team in our department, which is supplemented by external lecturers. This ensures the most up-to-date references in the curriculum and the exchange of students with the VFX industry from the very first day of study. We have opted for an end-to-end VFX workflow - from brainstorming to the finished film - which is also state of the art in the industry. But it's best to let the students themselves have their say and describe their impressions and experiences in the process of creating their first two films."The first film and an immediate crash
What do “Der Schimmelreiter” by Theodor Storm and a missing passenger plane from the 1940s have in common? The teaser “17 Souls” tells the beginnings of a mystery story about a ghost ship based on true events.
At the end of the 1940s, several “Avro Tudor” aeroplanes disappeared over the Atlantic Ocean in the infamous Bermuda Triangle. To this day, it is still not clear how these crashes could have happened despite the best weather conditions. Based on these events, the 3D animated teaser “17 Souls” was created at the HFF Munich, supervised by professors Jürgen Schopper and Michael Coldewey. We were very fortunate to be supported by people with industry experience from the VFX and animation film industry departments.
Brainstorming and conception – the visual claim
The long-standing tradition of the HFF Munich actually stipulates that the students’ first film must be shot in black and white. The various areas of VFX bring with them many innovations, which means that HFF Munich has finally created a link between analogue and digital. As a result, we were lucky enough to introduce a bit of colour into our film.
We initially pursued a visual ambition rather than a profound narrative. As pioneers of the new VFX programme, we knew at the beginning of the semester that we wanted to create images that would impress our viewers. We already had enough material for initial concepts from our research. With the first storyboard, we were able to cut together a pre-visualised film and use an initial sound design layout to better capture the mood and direction we wanted to take. We used the weekly meetings with Prof Michael Coldewey, Prof Jürgen Schopper and Rodolfo Anes Silveira to get suggestions and feedback. From this point on, we moved up a dimension from the flat 2D drawings to the 3D software.
Modelling – design first, history second
Due to the coronavirus pandemic, we were unfortunately unable to visit the nearby aircraft museum in Schleißheim for research. Nevertheless, we stuck almost exactly to the original model of the “Avro Tudor IV” for the external shape. Thanks to blueprints and discussions in aircraft forums about the Avro Tudor series, we were able to get a good idea of the aircraft and block out the first settings with a rough model.
As the pre-visualisation gave us an accurate picture of the perspectives that would be seen of the aircraft, the focus of the model was placed more on the front and side views, which allowed us to save unnecessary work on details that were not visible.
For close-ups of the engines, the outer turbines were moved a little further towards the bow so that they are easily recognisable in the blur. The interior of the aircraft is very different from the original and is largely based on our own design, as the original aircraft interior nowadays is more like that of a train compartment. Nevertheless, we have always orientated ourselves on the designs of the time. The cockpit is a combination of modern spaceship seats, control elements from various aeroplanes and several duplicated elements.
Texturing – You snooze, you lose!
The assets were then all given a used look through texturing. It was important to create a dilapidated surface without telling the story of a completely destroyed aircraft. Different camera angles meant that different levels of detail were required on the aircraft. For example, a single wing and the foremost metre of the aircraft nose each have their own 8K texture for base colour, bump, metallic and roughness.
Rigging & animation – a turbulent affair
Due to the stormy environment in which the aircraft is located, we were aware that it had to be shaken up properly. This meant that the aircraft rig had to have several controllers in order to be able to control the shaking independently of the aircraft’s direction of movement. We then implemented the interior in a similar way. Assets such as the seats in the cockpit and passenger area were given their own controller for each seat, which could be animated in the classic way or procedurally.
Problems only arose when changes were made to the geometry of the aircraft, which usually led to less than pleasant surprises in the rig. We were very lucky to work with Prof Melanie Beisswenger from the Ostfalia University of Applied Sciences via Zoom on specific problems in the animation.
Light(n)ing – Let there be light!
Most of the film takes place in a wild thunderstorm. For planning purposes, we created a light sheet under the guidance of creative director & CGI artist Kathrin Hawelka in order to pre-define the right lighting mood. The indirect lighting of the lightning between the different layers of clouds created a special atmosphere. As most of the clouds were actual volumetrics, we were also able to place the lightning, which was generated in Houdini using L-systems, freely in the 3D scene.
In addition, a very transparent volume over the whole scene created an impressive weather glow when lightning struck. To create a gloomy mood, the entire film is lit low-key and is often limited to a single edge lighting. Inside the aisle of the aeroplane, we used flickering neon lights and occasional bright flashes to maintain the basic nervousness.
FX – Smoking heads and burning engines
To keep our finger on the pulse, Houdini was our first choice for all simulations. The industry standard software demanded a lot from us and has become a real asset, especially with the help of our lecturer Felix Hörlein.
The animations of all shots were exported as Alembic from Maya. To keep the simulations as stable as possible, the aircraft was animated at the origin of the coordinate system and not moved forwards at cruising speed.
The climax of the tension in the film is the burning engine. Fire and smoke were created using the sparse solver “Axiom” and controlled with a particle simulation. The time advantage provided by the GPU acceleration of the plug-in was the decisive factor in our decision.
The rain that hits the windscreen consists of particles that are measured to form a water surface. To do this, we created clusters that generate several particles simultaneously and shoot them at the cockpit’s collider geometry. The windscreen wipers do not interact directly with the individual particles, but generate a force field that is responsible for the streak-like distribution of the droplets.
We have created proxy geometries with a significantly reduced number of polygons for all rigid body objects. The collider geometries also only consist of rudimentary geometry such as cuboids. We used Vellum for all pockets in the interior and soft bodies. As it was not possible at the time of production to have Vellum objects and RBD objects collide with each other, we also opted for Vellum for the suitcases in the luggage rack net.
Rendering – If you don’t render, you freeze!
The rendering was carried out using the in-house render farm – a network of 7 workstations. For reasons of time and cost, a CPU render with Arnold or Mantra was out of the question. The original plan was to render in Maya with Redshift. In the end, however, Houdini (also with Redshift) became our lighting and rendering software.
In addition to the classic back-to-beauty layers, we also rendered a depth channel and the cryptomat for all shots for compositing. The distribution of the individual render jobs was monitored with the Deadline Monitor software, which woke us up a few times during the night if a rendering was faulty. The result was wonderful 32-bit multilayer EXR files.
Compositing – Cloudy with a view of rain
For the compositing we were able to use additional layers of rain as well as self-created matte paintings to give our images more depth and realism. For the clouds in the storm, we opted for a mixture of rendered volumes interacting with the aircraft and 2D plates of procedurally generated noise. Compositing artist Heike Kluger showed us the endless possibilities of noise algorithms, which we used for rain, haze and clouds, among other things.
Colour grading – showing your colours
We also noticed the freshness of the course in colour grading, when the in-house colourist, Claudia Fuchs, was very pleased with images with a colour depth of 32 bits. You don’t even get that with the raw codec from RED. Together with the colourist, we created an aesthetic black and white look with a few colour accents.
Sound design – boom, crack, hiss
When we marched into the HFF sound studio with the finished film, we didn’t realise how important the sound design would be for our film. Together with sound designers Gerhard Auer and Rodolfo Anes Silveira, we filled the images with sound. When the first thunderclap was set, a broad grin spread and suddenly the film felt like great cinema. Pattering rain, a burning engine and the distant rumble of the storm resounded through the cinema. The trembling of the low tones and clinking of the flying glass provided the final immersion of the teaser.
Happy accidents & virtual meetings
Virtual feedback loops, digital beer drinking and lectures in all kinds of transport: This is what life was like during the project. Review rounds initially took place exclusively online. We were all the more surprised when we got to see an interim result on the HFF cinema screen for the first time. The initial anticipation quickly evaporated in view of the amount of work that still needed to be done. That evening we also realised that the films were designed for the cinema and not for the monitors we were working on. The joy was all the greater a few weeks later when – back on the screen – we realised what had happened in the final stages. The biggest hurdles had now been overcome.
One example of such a hurdle was moving the 3D models from Blender to Maya. This tended to work smoothly via an FBX export. Only the naming made the Maya file almost unusable. Dots in object names were replaced by a long string after the import and all constraints were included in the object name. The solution to this was a self-programmed Blender add-on that replaced dots with underscores and a checkbox in Maya to hide the name spaces.
Outlook
The first film of our studies is finished. But what are we going to do with it? The teaser and the collected material are perfect for a pitch-vis to push the development of the feature film, which shows the whole story around the mysterious disappearance of the plane. A series of festival submissions is also planned to network even more closely with other filmmakers and gain new experiences. And if you want to see it all in motion, you can find the making-of at is.gd/hff_17souls.
The team
Cast: Maximilian Klampfl, pilot voice
Crew:
Producer: Michaela Mederer
Director / Script / Modelling / Texturing / Rigging / Animation / Compositing: Chris Kühn
Director / Concept / Matte Painting / FX: Nico Schwarz
Director / Concept / Modelling / Texturing / Lighting: Christian Geßner
Project Supervision: Prof. Michael Coldewey & Prof. Jürgen Schopper
Project Consultant: Rodolfo Anes Silveira
VFX Pipeline TD: Jonas Kluger
Line Producer: Ina Mikkat
Team Assistant to Line Producer: Jenny Freyburger
Team Assistant: Petra Hereth
Colour Grading: Claudia Fuchs
Sound Design: Gerhard Auer & Rodolfo Anes Silveira
Postproduction Supervisor: Christoffer Kempel
Technical Support: Benedikt Geß & Florian Schneeweiß
Conforming: Martin Foerster
Department Mentors:
Melanie Beisswenger (Animation)
Kathrin Hawelka (Lighting & Shading)
Felix Hörlein (FX)
Heike Kluger (Compositing)
"Super" Dirk Mauche (Modelling & Texturing)
Moritz Rautenberg (Camera)
You must be logged in to post a comment.