CG/VFX showreel 2013

Here goes my new demo reel showing some projects I had a pleasure to work on in the span of the last few years. I shifted focus from compositing to more 3D/VFX work compared to the last reel from 2008. There are also more of the interesting shots left behind this time, but I do believe in brevity when it comes to presentations.


3D/VFX show reel 2013 from Denis Kozlov on Vimeo.


A breakdown following:

Intro sequence exploits one of my favorite techniques – moving millions of single pixel particles with gradient forces.

For this commercial, aside from VFX supervision I created the flamenco sequence graphics, few pieces of which are presented here. Assembling procedural setup in Eyeon Fusion allowed for interactive prototyping with the director on site. Setup involved mockup 3D geometry rendered from the top view into a depth map on the fly, which in order (after direct 2d adjustments) was feeding a displacement map for the ground grid with individual boxes instanced over it. After laying out the background designs for the whole sequence, setup was quite seamlessly transferred into 3DSMax (using displacement maps as an intermediate). Rendered in Mental Ray and composited with a live action dancer plate in Fusion again. Matte pulling was mostly done by Jiri Sindelar, the rest of the digital work on the sequence is pretty much mine.

A little piece utilizing the same approach as intro. Will probably make it available as a stock footage soon.

My entry for the Costume Design Contest held by Mixamo, SideFX, Polycount and cmiVFX earlier this year. Complete video, which eventually received a “best custom character” prize and few lines on the concept are shared here. In accordance with the contest rules, I am responsible for all visual elements except for autorig and animation, provided by Mixamo. Cloth simulation, texturing, shading, rendering and compositing – Houdini. Character modeling – Blender and 3D-Coat.

A piece from my stock portfolio with a little breakdown. No external textures or other elements were used – all visual elements created within Eyeon Fusion from scratch, driven a lot by particle systems.

A piece from an older spot we did at Avion Film & Sound Postproduction few years back. Hands, shot as greenscreen sprites, are driven by particle system again here. We were trying out several setups for this spot, this shot is based on one by Jiri Sindelar. Elements pregraded by Geoffrey Case. I am to be held responsible for putting it together.

Another stock clip I did at leisure. Available at major databanks like here and there. Results from Blender's ocean simulation exported to Fusion and rendered there.

Among other compositing work and some volumetrics, this matte-paint shows yet another example of ocean simulation data rendered in Fusion. The fun part were the shore waves of course, I almost literally (though quite procedurally) painted the RGB displacements animation for this area. Resulting base setup allows for camera animation.

Would it be a show reel without an exploding helicopter? This shot started three years ago as a technological test for fire simulations in stereoscopic 3D. The helicopter sketch and most of the building geometry were provided by the client. The rest of the visual elements come from my side. Some time later I decided to finish this quickie in terms of texturing and compositing. Geometry and animation stayed intact since the first incarnation.

A personal project which made it here from the previous reel. Vray and Nuke originally. Recomping for this compilation done in Fusion though.

3D raspberries for a commercial shot. Shading was really enjoyable part for this job, which I accomplished solo. Mental Ray.

Some compositing goes here. Interesting part was the approach we took for the product, which featured several different labels. Shooting a green element allowed to separate the lighting data, thus with some matchmoving and compositing work I was eventually able to replace labels on the bottle with a button click.

I don't think this shot has a single VFX owner within our team. List of people involved includes Denis Kosar, Paolo Gerosa, Victor Tretyakov, Marek Duda, Jiri Sindelar and myself. Among the things I contributed are 3D railing and 3D proxy setup with matchmoving (latter allowed me to get proper contact shadow and damage texture projection), color matching and compositing.

A second shot borrowed from my previous reel. Here I’ve integrated a bluescreen car (keyed by Victor Kudryashov with rig removed by Nataly Chernysheva and Irina Basina) into a 3D environment rendered by Michael Litvinov.

Closing shot is yet another piece of stock footage I did in Fusion. Typically, all elements are generated within the software from scratch, relying heavily on particle systems.

An audio track is a piece from American Seizure album by Sour Jazz – I wrote a little review on the album at www.rock-is-dead.info


Guess my self-introduction can be considered finished now, so next time I'll do my best to post something useful ;-)