Starting the exploration of the Uncanny Valley

After the last half year full of trouble and many events, I’m beginning with my doctoral studies at the University of Stuttgart. It is a great honor for me to be in the research group of doctoral students in the collegue “Digital Media” and be part of a scholarship for three years. Subject of my research is the Uncanny Valley and writing a thesis in the next 3-5 years. Unfortunately, I must reduce my freelance work and academic employment at the Stuttgart Media University of course.

The Common Computer Animation Project

This semester the computer science departement of the Stuttgart Media University starts a common computer animation under the working title “Ascension” – a short movie about a little girl waking up on a flying crystal. 5 bachelor and 2 master students, 1 alumni, 3 external students and 2 acedemic assistants work on this common computer animation project. More about this short: https://blog.hdm-stuttgart.de/cg/category/ca/ascension/

A Photorealistic Earth

One of the most complicated shader types in cg are the earth shaders. Although there are only a few 3d spheres with textured surfaces and one sunlight you have to choose unlimited opportunities to design a performant, realistic and detailed scene of the earth, the moon and the sun. There are many different techniques and material properties to design an earth surface model – realistic or abstract. I’ve created a photorealistic earth & moon shader for V-Ray Renderer based on the NASA Blue Marble Earth Maps. You can download this models here.

The Golden Ratio in 3D human face modeling

The freehand modeling of three-dimensional human faces with an usual 3D-animation software is still a big challenge for many CG Artists. A problem during the modeling process of real, human-like characters is the observance of certain natural proportions.  An important role plays the famous Golden Ratio, which is difficult to be applied in many ways.