Matthias Eckhardt Portfolio

MECfiller

MECfiller is a pixelation and filter based filler tool. Its main use is to fill in missing information of a picture, to close holes from cut out tracking markers and to generally extend available information for a full picture estimation. A breakdown of how it works can be found > here < This tool is based on Mads Hagbart’s FFfiller approach and idea. It can be downloaded > here <

Thistle One

Thistle One is finally available online can can be viewed > here <
It took a few months of getting up really early to comp the shots before work but it was worth it! Artella seems to be a really great plattform for collaboration on such projects and I will continue to contribute to cool shorts in the future.

Hellboy

End of last year I was working at risefx on the new Hellboy movie. The second trailer looks quite exciting and can be seen > here <

Font – Bubblegum Matrix

I was looking through and reworking some older projects and got across a font concept I did a few years back. This is the digitalised version of my rough paper sketch I called ‘Bubblegum Matrix’ which is based on a 9×9 grid.

ThistleOne Premiere

In the last few months I spent my mornings on a very cool Artella project. ThistleOne is an action short that will premiere on CTN animation Expo on November 17th. I’m quite excited for the first reactions.

Petzi

The stories of ‘Rasmus Klump‘ finally hit TV Screens. After a very successful festival circuit they will be played on many European Children TV Channels. More Information about the lovely Studio Soi project can be found > here <

MECshotmanager Script

My latest and most ambitious Nuke tool ‘MECshotmanager’ provides archiving, optimisation, cleanup and repathing options for shots in Nuke. I created a process similar to ‘archive scene’ from Maya as well as version control and file checking functionalities for sequences. The optimisation options offer small speedups, better script readability and redundancy checks. A video breakdown of the script can be found on > vimeo < and it can be downloaded > here <

Hochkant Film Porsche

I’ve been freelancing for Hochkant Film lately and they create some stunning automobile spots. A lot of them are not published yet but one of them was for the Porsche 70 year celebration and can be seen > here <

Game of Thrones Making of

After a long wait the Breakdowns for Game of Thrones are finally online. Some of my shots/breakdowns are in there as well. It’s quite a spectacular video and I’m really proud of what the whole team at Pixomondo was able to accomplish. Breakdowns can be found > here <

MECudimmanager Script

I just published another tool that is used to to organise UDIM Inputs in Nuke. It can conveniently give an overview of the models UV spaces, show specific UDIMs and input textures that are automatically getting put into the correct place. It can be used for the creation of masks, paintovers for specific areas and projections on complex models with multiple UV spaces.
More Infos > here <
Download > here <

MECwhispy script

MECwhispy is a fast and simple to use python tool to create whispies/airparticles/underwater bubbles/general atmosphere feeling along a camera path. It analyses the camera, uses standard noise or file inputs as a texture and gives some randomise/fadeout options. You can download it on Nukepedia and find some more information and a preview video > here <

Tomb Raider & Hotdog Trailers

I’m working on two projects at ScanlineVFX right now and both of them have their trailers released already. The Tomb Raider Trailer can be viewed > here < and the trailer for the German Movie ‘Hotdog’ can be seen > here <

Game of Thrones Season 7 Finale

One of the sequences I worked on in the final episode of Season 7 got a feature on the official Game of Thrones Youtube Channel. I worked on 5 of the Wight shots, one of them with the before/after at 00:51. The Team at Pixomondo was great and I really enjoyed working on that sequence. The Video can be found > here <

Templating Tutorial

After years of working with nuke I finally got myself to record a video tutorial. I planned on doing this for a very long time but never managed to make one with the topic and quality that I thought was worth sharing. Special thanks for the footage to Manuel Mayer and Laura Feraud. The tutorial is about TEMPLATING FOR FULL CG PRODUCTIONS and can be found > here <

Star Wars test project

One of the shots we did for a Starwars test project just got put into Icon Creative’s updated reel. The shot is split in two and can be found at 0:22 and 1:04. As a huge Starwars fan this was very exciting and a great test for the pipeline. More about it > here <

Circle Expression Challenge

At Pixomondo we have a little challenge going on in our comp department. Fabian Holtz challenged everyone to create a tool by only using one expression node that creates a circle with different size/falloff that can be repeatedly tiled and also offset. It was quite fun and is just way faster than any combination of nodes could ever be. Here’s the > code <

Pixomondo

I’m in Stuttgart for 2.5 months now and it has been quite exciting at Pixomondo. One of the trailers for Season 7 of Game of Thrones went online and I’m looking forward to seeing the show – even though I usually don’t watch GoT.

Return to Europe

After a year in Vancouver I will return to Europe. It was an awesome experience where I learned a lot and met some amazing people. Now I’m looking forward to being back in Europe and to the future at home.

Date of availability: ~ 01.04.2017

Riders of Icarus / Elena of Avalor

Two projects that I worked on at Icon Creative Studios during the last three months are now released or about to be. The Game Cinematic for Riders of Icarus is already online and the Disney Show Elena of Avalor is about to air soon. The Trailers can be found here:
Riders of Icarus
Elena of Avalor

Rift – Comp

Rift is an animated Shortfilm about a climber and his struggles. Its a project from my friends Christian Hochfellner & Benjamin Arzt & Manuel Thomasser. Premiere: 6th of June at the Creativity Rules Festival.

360 panoramic HDRs

I made some 360° panoramic HDRs for our Lighting departments. You can see and download them here > here <

Matrix Node Tutorial

A few days ago I used the Matrix Node in Nuke and thought that its probably hard for Beginners to understand how it works. This Tutorial is a complete breakdown of the inner processes, usage and numbers behind the output. You can view it here or dircetly download it > here <.

Canada

Fast Overview
Visa Status: Approved
Date of arrival: ~ 14.04.2016
Availability: Starting Mid April 2016
Housing: Searching for flats

Trudes Tier

I’m working for Studio Soi at the moment and two out of three episodes of “Trudes Tier” aired on television the last two weeks. I worked on this lovely show for about 3 months and did alot of the compositing, the third episode will be on air soon.

Barefoot – Game Waterfalls

Two years ago some friends made a multiplayer funracer with Unity called “Barefoot”. I helped them out in making a waterfall for the background that was easily changeable and had a good performance, so the challenge was to make it work in different colors, loopable and still have low ressource usage.

3D-Printing

After receiving my 3D-Printer I started to play around with the settings to get a feeling for it. I really like the results so far although I didnt do any polishing/postpro. You can see some of the prints > here <

4000 Mile Stare Trailer Release

The Trailer for the short film “4000 Mile Stare” is finally released. I was part of the VFX Team for the project and I’m very happy to finally see it online. You can find more information about the movie at the brand new website: 4000 Mile Stare

Depth Styletest

I always liked the look of depth-maps/passes, so I used some old files and tried to create a cool atmosphere by only compositing this single pass. This is the result after a total of 3 hours of messing around:

CS:GO Weaponskins

I’ve decided to try out the “Steam-Workshop” and make some skins for Counter Strike Global Offensive. Its really fun to work with the models and do something game-related for once. You can find a collection of the skins > here <

Motion Visualisation Script

As Maya doesn’t provide an internal strands-system, I thought I might as well write a small python script that fakes this kind of feature. You can see the spheres (dynamic movement) followed by simple geometry generated by the script – and then the whole thing rendered with a simple vray setup to test everything out.

Scatter-Script

Lately i optimised some scripts and cleaned up some code. This one was quite fun to make, it’s a simple scatter-script with a strong performance focus.

4000 Mile Stare – WIP

I’m currently working on a shortfilm called “4000 Mile Stare”. You can have a look at wip-pictures, set-timelapses and other videos on the official facebook-page. I’m one of the Compositors and VFX-Set-Supervisor.

Room on the Broom wins at Annecy

2012 i was working at Studio Soi on a project for BBC 1. The 25 minute full-cg film “Room on the Broom” now won an Annecy Award. Its also nominated for an Acadamy Award for the Category “Best Animated Short Film”. I’m very happy that I got the opportunity to work on this beautiful movie.