Vanessa Stotz


3D Rigger || Technical Director

About

Hey there!
I am Vanessa, a 3D artist from Germany with a heart for rigging and scripting. I love solving problems and finding new ways of approaching things. I never settle for just okay!
If I am not working on a new media piece, you can find me in the cinema watching films or at home, where I fully live my grandma life by being crafty, baking, reading, or solving a jigsaw puzzle.
On this website, you will find a collection of the projects I worked on over the years.
Have fun looking around!


Skills

Softwares
Maya
Nuke
Houdini
Unreal Engine
Substance Painter
Moho
Adobe Creative Cloud
Program Languages
Python
C++
Java
RIB
VEX
Languages
German
English
Spanish
Swedish


Education

Bournemouth University, Bournemouth England
MSc Computer Animation and Visual Effects | 2023-2024
Stuttgart Media University, Stuttgart Germany
BEng Audiovisual Media | 2018-2022


Work Experience

3D Generalist and Compositing
Studio Soi, Ludwigsburg | 11/2022 -09/2023
Working Student
SERU, Ludwigsburg | 03/2021 - 08/2022
Internship
SERU, Ludwigsburg | 09/2020 - 03/2021

3D Rigging


Technical Direction

Creature Showcase

LoveBirds Inc.

Unreal Journey

Comment Tool

Are You My Enemy ?

Profile Curves

Cosmos Transport

Auto Lip Rigger

Renderman Candle

Animation

Creature Showcase

LoveBirds Inc.

Cosmos Transport

Are You My Enemy ?

Profile Curves

Comment Tool

Auto Lip Rigger

Renderman Candle

Creature Showcase

LoveBirds Inc.

Are You My Enemy ?

Cosmos Transport

Unreal Journey

Animation

Are You My Enemy ?


Student Project | Short Film | 2020


About

Hannah's mother hasn't been feeling well lately. Worried, Hannah asks what exactly is wrong with her. Her mother explains that she is affected by multiple sclerosis. But what is that? Hannah imagines a world in which Imunno, the immune system, is fully occupied with trying to capture the MS again.This was my first project in Maya, so it's still very special to me.


Contribution

Rigging
Technical Direction
Animation
Compositing
Editing

Lovebirds Inc.


Student Project | Short Film | 2020


About

Moritz is a dreamer. He lives in his little world, passionately reads and draws comics, and is hopelessly in love with the librarian Lilly. But he can't bring himself to talk to her; he's too shy. Fortunately, he is getting professional support from Roger, the lovebird employed at LoveBirds Inc., who has truly unconventional ways to bring them together. But are they going to work? Love simply can't be planned.


Contribution

Body Rig Roger

Cosmos Transport


Student Project | Short Film | 2021


About

Sarah is trying to escape her seemingly hopeless situation in a stranded spaceship with the help of her companion P-42, a support robot. While Sarah realises that she is slowly running out of air, P-42 fails to grasp the seriousness of the situation.


Contribution

Body Rig P-42

Unreal Journey - Flower Forest


Student Project | Short Film | 2021


About

Dive into different worlds with this truly unreal journey.In this project, we wanted to get to know Unreal Journey. That's why we decided everyone builds their own little world while adding tracks as a connecting element.
I created the flower forest.

Animation


Here are some personal animations I did throughout the years. I did most of them while taking some private mentoring lessons.

Rendering of a Candle with RIB and OSL


Assignment Rendering | MScCAVE | 2024

Final Renders

Reference Images

Creature Showcase


Student Project | Short Film | 2024


About

Get to know the Axotamus!
A semi-aquatic creature which feeds on plant life and occasionally fish if nutrition is lacking. The creature has small emissive dots on its back to ward off predators and use as a display towards potential mates.
They live on land during the winter to hibernate in small caves and spend most of their summer and spring in and around the water's edge. Females live in family packs with one mature male who defends the territory and wards off any other challengers.


Contribution

Rigging
Compositing


Creature Rig

For this rig, I decided to add some dynamics to the ears and gills of the creature, as well as some jiggle dynamics to part of the body to simulate muscles. This gave the character some lovely secondary movement to the character without the animator having to animate it.

Comment Tool


Assignment Pipeline and TD | MScCAVE | 2024

This tool lets the user write comments. A possible usage could be as an extension to the blue pencil tool in Maya to use during the animation pipeline to write feedback.
The tool can be run in Maya or as a standalone program, where no Maya is needed.

Maya Tool based on Pixars Profile Curves


Master Project | MScCAVE | 2024

The Maya tool I developed during my Masters Project allows the user to draw profile curves and provides multiple editing options for the curves. It also offers an easy way to integrate the Curvenet into an existing rig by constraining the control points to the joints and adding the profile curves to the mesh as a wire deformer. The tool was developed using Python and Maya’s native functions.This project is based on the paper Character Articulation through Profile Curves in 2022 by Pixar Animation Studios. Profile Curves represent a new way of skinning a character, with the rig being independent of the mesh and therefore changes to it. Each profile curve has control points, allowing the animator to manipulate the shape at any animation stage.

Auto Lip Rigger


Bachelor Thesis | BEng Audiovisual Media| 2022

This script was created during my bachelor thesis and was my first real script project. It builds a mechanical rig with ribbons, based on the selection of two edge loops and one vertex point.