Creating a Dream-Like Journey Through Nature With Maxon One Pulla Studio explains their stunning 3D short film ‘SOOREAL.’
The team at Pulla Studio has produced an impressive portfolio of captivating 3D films for a variety of clients. Based in Prishtina, Kosovo, they are always seeking to try new ideas and push the limits of their creativity, often through personal projects like their recent short film “SOOREAL.”
To accomplish the film’s cinematic odyssey through time and space Pulla applied every trick in the book to create a mystical, meditative look at nature and explore viewers’ relationship to that space.
We spoke with Executive Producer and Partner Shkumbin Ferizi about how they concepted the film and what it took to make it happen with Cinema 4D, Redshift, Houdini and Unreal.
Please tell us about Pulla Studio, your team and the type of work you do.
Ferizi: We are a small company formed in 2005 with about 15 in-house art directors, artists and producers. We typically play a supporting role for larger creative studios and advertising agencies with their motion graphics, CG and visual effects projects.
Describe “SOOREAL” and how it came to be.
Ferizi: We had been wanting to create a short film where we could express ourselves through our specialty of developing photoreal environments. The team decided to set about creating a unique storyline based on the way we see beauty and nature and the intersection between them. The time seemed right, so we took the chance and made it happen!
Talk about creating the environments and atmospheric fog.
Ferizi: We have been working with CG environments for a very long time, so it was quite a smooth process for us and allowed us to focus on achieving a great look and clear message for the viewer.
We used Cinema 4D to handle a majority of the scene creation, with Redshift acting as the primary render engine. We have also begun experimenting with Unreal and used it for some of the animation.
The skies are mostly HDRI sky domes, and the trees came from our library of models created in-house. The dunes were carefully crafted using either the landscape object or a texture with layers of displacements to achieve the desired look.
We used fog to establish continuity between scenes and maintain a consistent look. It also helped create the photorealistic style we were going for. To create the fog, we mostly used a Redshift Environment object or a VDB file created with Houdini, which was then textured with a Redshift volume shader.
Is the human seen in the animation live action or CG?
Ferizi: We call him “the loner” and he is a CG character. We wanted to keep as many CG elements as we could and are proud of his role in the film.
How do personal projects like this film fit in to your process?
Ferizi: We like to take them on as we are artists at heart and when we want to visualize something, we can’t help but fire up our software and try to accomplish some of our crazy ideas. We try to generate eye-catching visuals and post them to our website and social channels, which shows off our team’s creative potential and helps us commission new work and expand our portfolio showcase.
What is your studio working on now?
Ferizi: We are working on two beautiful projects right now, one being a full CG auto commercial and the other a big project for an army. I can’t disclose anything more about these projects at this time but stay tuned as we should be posting something from either soon to our online presence.