We completely overhauled the 3D Character Assets for Monsterfreunde. We built GPU accelerated dynamic rigs for animation in broadcast quality on a budget. We built a USD pipeline which inludes lookdev and shotwork. The lookdev including textures was done from scratch using Houdini Karma XPU shading to fully utilize every resource our studio has to offer for render power.
We deliver formats that fit huge screens in the Wiener Stadthalle and also Brucknerhaus Linz. The screen resolution is a massive 6144×896 which is quite heavy to render at, so we did a hell of optimization to make it possible to iterate and do the final render of this 2minute short. Besides the widescreen format, we needed to aim for a 16:9 version, which we planned for also during layout and animation. Clever layout and efficient rendersetup allows for rendering once and comp 2 formats at the same time.
Further we developed FX which is fully procedural and can be reused on every shot now, without doing anything other than setting the start and end frames of the FX in Houdini.
Animation
Full Length: 02:19 min
2 Versions for Stadthalle Wien & Brucknerhaus Linz
Redisinging „Sol“
Besides various Model Updates for the 7 characters for rigging, the biggest overhaul was done on Sol. The stylized groom setup is done procedurally in Houdini, including proper UVs and fully dynamic hair in rigging.
Rigging
7 fully dynamic Rigs were created from scratch, using GPU accerleration for best performance possible.
Texture & Lookdev
All 7 monsters are fully textured and shaded to be rendered in Karma XPU, utilizing the power of Pixar USD concepts and materialX shading.
FX
