An Interview with Janne Hellmann

About Janne Hellmann

I
am 30 years old and I have spent about half of my life involved in 3D.
For a long time it was only a hobby. I served my apprenticeship as a
carpenter but for a few years now I have worked as a freelancer on
3D-Visuals.


All of my abilities are self-taught because I have never been able
to work through tutorials. I think I am a little bit too impatient so I
just use trial and error.

The Interview

cebas:

What was your inspiration for these images?

Janne:

It
was for a job. My client has an online store for mechanical watches and
had a photographer take pictures of his watches. The photos weren’t
good enough so he decided to go another more flexible way. My client
wanted to make an extraordinary online shop with a unique
3D-configurator-system. With this system, you are able to configure
your own watch. You can choose the hands, clock face, and the
wristband. Then you get a realtime (prerendered) 3D-View of your
selection and a 360°-turn with 8 singleframes so you could see your
selection from every side. If you want to see it in action just click
on the image below!

Click on the image below to go to the website!

cebas:

What software did you use to create these images and why did you choose it?

Janne:

This
is easy to answer. For about fifteen years, I never used any other
renderers or other 3D-Software besides CINEMA 4D. I only ever wanted to
do everything with CINEMA’s renderer. It worked fine, but if you truly
believe this, I think perhaps you have never used blurry reflections or
refractions, caustics or all of them together. Maybe all together with
GI because you don't have enough time or you don't want to spend so
much time. These nice effects that you have never used can help to
create photorealistic images which is very sad I think.



Then I saw something in a forum that was renderd with finalRender.
Okay, I thought, nice, another renderer, like Maxwell and so on. But I
decided to visit the finalRender website and what I saw there I
couldn't believe. The renderings were so damn realistic. Some of these
renderings had stamps with rendertimes on them. I took a look at the
description of finalRender. The render speed... could it be true? No
way! I thought that such a fantastic render speed would only be
possible in 5 years, maybe, because the hardware would need a few years
to become this effective.





So I searched the web for finalRender and every time, I saw such
wonderful rendertimes. I found out that Peter Hoffmann uses
finalRender. I knew Peter from a forum I was always on. So I decided to
ask him if all of this could be true. Sadly it took a few days until I
got an answer. But in this few days I had already bought finalRender.
:-)



After a very quick installation, I started CINEMA 4D and took a look in
the effects-tab under render settings. And there it was! finalRender
Stage-2. What an impressive moment! Immediately I called a good friend
so he could assist me with my very first tests. And we had so much fun.
For about four or five minutes I wasn’t able to get one rational word
out. Only stumbled thinks like "uuuhhh, ohhh, wwuuuhuuuuuu,
yeeeehaaaaaaa" Okay, why? I created a cube with fillets. Cut a hole in
it. Sunlight. Sphere inside. Diffuse reflections for the cube. Diffuse
reflections and diffuse refractions for the sphere. GI. Started to
render. And after three seconds it was ready! Three seconds! I had
never seen this before in my life and these were only the standard
render settings from finalRender. Then I took another look at the
AdvancedRender for C4D using the standard settings. And what could I
say? After 45 minutes I stopped rendering with an absolutely unusable
result.



And since this glorius day I have used finalRender every day for
everything. And I must say it’s funny. A little bit dangerous too. The
first thing I usually do is switch on GI because it’s so damn fast!!!
But hey, you really don’t need GI in every situation. :-)

cebas:

How did you apply finalRender to achieve the desired effects?

Janne:

In the majority of cases, I used fR-Materials or even
better, the new Architectural Material. With these materials, I have
the possibility of adjusting them very exactly. Most of them are really
simple to use. A little bit of bump, a little bit reflections. There
are a few materials that are really complex, like the clockface in the
image below for example. It was really hard to do because it has so
many attributes. But with finalRender it was doable. The whole time I
tried to keep the materials and the scene-setup as simple as possible.
For a single image, it wasn't quite hard, but doing this for the
360°-turnaround, was sometimes really nerve-racking and I had to fill
the scene with some reFlection-planes and some additional specular
lights.

cebas:

What features helped you achieve your goal and why?

Janne:

I
think it’s the amazing quality. With finalRender, you have the
possibility to adjust the quality very very exactly. It’s simply
amazing. The fantastic speed, especially with GI was also helpful. With
this, you develop a real play instinct because it’s so fast.





One thing I really noticed was the quality of the bump. This is really
amazing. It is so clear and accurate. It makes it a lot of fun to use.
In most cases, you can’t tell if it's only a bump or if it’s modeled
and with this, you can save a lot of time.

cebas:

What was the most difficult aspect of this project and how did you solve it?

Janne:

The
most difficult aspect was absolutely the plane objects of the
clockwork. If you have nice round, organic, objects, you'll get very
nice reflections but if you have lot's of plane objects, it's really
hard. In one view, everything is quite perfect. It looks like metal. In
the next view, where the object just turned two or three degrees, it's
black because there isn't anything to reflect.



One way to solve this problem is to use blurry reflections but in some
cases you can’t use them because the metal must be blank. Here you
could go several ways.





One way is to place a plane in front of the clockwork. Give it a
finalRender-Object-Tag and tell it to only be visible to reflections.
It is important that you define a texture in the illumination channel.
This will result in some nice reflections. This way is good if you have
clockwork with many diffuse reflections. If you had one with clean
reflections, it might be better to use only a white self-illuminated
plane. If you are careful not to make the plane too big, it is possible
that there would be some reflections from the side and this could
produce some really good results.

cebas:

Can you take us through a step by step overview of your workflow and pipeline?

Janne:

The best thing at this job was that I was able to deconstruct every single watch!

My workflow changed from watch to watch once I found the perfect
procedure. I shot many photos in the same position. I removed some
pieces and shot a photo, removed some pieces, shot a photo and so on.
Then I printed every photo out to DinA4. With this, I got a nice little
flip book. Every single piece I removed, I put into a little bag and
numbered the bag. Then I numbered the sheet with the photo. Every
single piece got it's own number and I added this number on the sheet
too.





I scanned every single piece of the clockwork and underlayed the
scanned images in MOI. MOI is a very simple but accurate and powerful
Nurbs-Modeller.





Then I took a digital measuring slide and started to measure a piece. I
then assigned my measurment to my model. After finishing a piece of the
clockwork, I imported it into CINEMA 4D. It's better to give every
piece it's own color because when you have about 106 pieces, it is
possible that you could lose control. :-)







Another very very important thing is that you work with extreme
accuracy. If you aren't accurate, you will have many problems doing
something like clockwork. If you have 106 pieces that aren't exact you
can imagine what would happen.











I've modelled the watchcase with CINEMA 4D because in the majority of cases I needed some smooth organic shapes.



Most of the wristbands were devloped in CINEMA 4D too. I even decided
to model the stitching because if my client ever wanted to make a
poster or do something else with these nice watches, I can easily
create absolutely perfect images without having quality losses.



After modeling, it was best to create a scene set-up. The most
important thing was the light-setup. A good way to do this to light the
untextured model. This allows you to see how the light works and if the
shadows are good.





The lighting in my watch-scenes is pretty simple. There are only 4
Omni-Lights with area-shadows and a HDRI-Map mixed up with another
image for the reflections. Thats all. In some cases I added some
additional specular lights for the wristbands and a few
reflection-planes for the clockwork.



After that I could start to create some nice little materials.
finalRender has everything you need. It is really a pleasure to create
some materials with it. It's really fast and clean. The new
Architectural Material is great!!



Fast interpolation for Reflections and Refractions. My dreams have come
true. Now you have everything you need to create real looking materials
in a fraction of the time it took before.





I decided to create the clockfaces in CINEMA 4D too. Normally, you
would take something like Adobe Illustrator I think but I don't have it
so the easiest thing for me was to do it in CINEMA 4D.





You could work in Photoshop also by creating everything as real
objects, laying them on top of each other, and rendering it in the
topview. Using this method, you are able to create textures in every
size you need and you are able to create bumpmaps, specularmaps, and so
on. Just give it the material you want; a light grey material for bump
for example or a nice colored one for colormaps. Another nice thing is
that you can continue to work on the created objects. With this
procedure, you can be sure that your texture fits your object.













Rendering was a very intresting part too because I had to render most
pieces as single-images. After rendering, the images were put together
online in the shop. It was a very clean and accurate collaboration
between me and the advertising agency and this fact I have to owe to
finalRender.

cebas:

What was the most fun or rewarding part of this project for you?

Janne:

Oh
man, I really wouldn't be lying if I said that the whole project was
really fun. And this project was the start for me and finalRender. I
bought finalRender only a few days before I started on the watches and
that means I only got a few days to learn fR. But it was absolutely no
problem. The learning curve of finalRender is really great! You can get
very very nice results in a very short time. If you have an idea,
you’ll be able to realize it with finalRender. Sure, it was a litte
risky to start a really big project like this with a new software that
I had never used before but retrospectively, it was the best decision I
could have made. If you "must" learn a new software, you will do it.



But I think the most fun is to see the increase of the quality. When I
take a look at my first watch-renderings, it’s terrifying and I thought
the first renderings were really great. And many others thought it too.
But when I take a look at the actual and final renderings of the clock,
it’s really great. I learned so much during this project.



But ok, you asked about the rewarding part.

I think it was the wristbands because it was a lot of fun to create
them. I got really nice, realistic results, and it was a pleasure to do
that. One nice thing was the diversity of the wristbands. It was really
a lot of fun to see the inventory grow.

Click on the image below to see a larger image





cebas:

What was your deadline for this project and how did finalRender help you achieve it?

Janne:

I
didn't have a fixed deadline for this project. My client attached
importance to the quality, not to time, which is really rare! But, I
must say that the workflow with fR is really great and it helped me a
lot as did the render speed combined with the amazing quality.

cebas:

What projects can we expect from you in the future?

Janne:

The
watches will grow. My client will change his range of products and that
will mean there will be some new watches. Then there will be many
Arch-Viz images, most of which I do for a carpenter. I will also be
doing more product shots.



At the moment, I am also creating a new free model-database with the
focus on quality. There will be many fR-optimized models with most of
the models able to be used in Arch-Viz. All of these models will be
ready to use in C4D. Just download, load it into CINEMA 4D, place it
and render it. If you want to visit the site, just click on this link www.cg-vitality.de



It will take some time for the site to be fully complete because I have
a lot to do. If you don't care to visit day after day, you can
subscribe to my newsletter. That way you will be notified when I launch
the site.

cebas would like to personally thank Janne Hellmann for
participating in cebas' "The Making of..." Artist Interview Series.
Stay tuned for more inside information from some of today's most
talented artists.

If you want to see more of Janne Hellmann's fantastic work,

visit his website at www.b-w-design.de!!