Oliver Kirchhoff

Technical Director at Farm Studios GmbH

Munich Area, Germany

Current
  • Technical Director at Farm Studios GmbH
Past
Education
  • Fachhochschule München
Connections
151 connections
Industry
Motion Pictures and Film
Websites

Oliver Kirchhoff’s Summary

As a TD I am always seeking for new challenging jobs world wide.

Oliver Kirchhoff’s Specialties:

Maya: Generalist, Shading, Lighting, Mel, R&D, Pipeline & FX Programming
- - -
3d-Equalizer: Camera and Object Trackings, MoCap, Stereoscopic
- - -
3ds Max: Generalist, Particle Flow
- - -
Fusion, Shake, PhotoShop, ZBrush, Mudbox, SolidWorks


Oliver Kirchhoff’s Experience

  • Technical Director

    Farm Studios GmbH

    (Motion Pictures and Film industry)

    September 2009Present (3 months)

    This startup company is so young it's still missing a real website. It was built in this farm (http://www.ferienhof-petersen.de). That's the reason for that company name.
    Anyway, I'm the TD on a German TV show. We'll have to create a photorealistic character which will be integrated into live action footage.

  • Teacher

    The Animation Workshop

    (Educational Institution; Animation industry)

    September 2009October 2009 (2 months)

    I'm teaching 23 students the basics of Maya 2009. But these guys rock. They are all so fast learners that they actually would be bored by the curriculum I made at the beginning. Now I'm changing my curriculum every day adding new stuff to it. They can do everything from modelling to shading to animation to rigging.... And this is just their 3rd week!

  • Camera TD

    Scanline VFX GmbH

    (Privately Held; Motion Pictures and Film industry)

    January 2009September 2009 (9 months)

    Live action footage has to be tracked for the perfect matchmove. This includes water surfaces from a boat, helicopter shots, green screen actor shots and object trackings.

  • Teacher

    The Animation Workshop

    (Educational Institution; Animation industry)

    May 2009May 2009 (1 month)

    Some students here at "The Animation Workshop" need to learn how to light a scene in Maya, render it out in passes and compose it with a live action footage. These guys are not absolut beginners. They already know how to model, texture and rig a creature. But they don't know the tricks. I'll show 'em.

  • 3D Artist

    Fish Blowing Bubbles

    (Graphic Design industry)

    August 2008September 2008 (2 months)

    The Toyota IQ mini car had to be visualized photorealistic for a convention presetation. I got a CAD model which I textured, shaded, lit, animated and rendered out in many passes so the compositor have maximum flexibility...

  • 3D Generalist

    ARRI Digital

    (Motion Pictures and Film industry)

    March 2008July 2008 (5 months)

    I worked on two feature films. "Killing Is My Business, Honey" is a comedy with extensive use of virtual stunts. "The Baader Meinhof Complex" has more subtle effects. In both I did mainly particle effects with 3ds max and ParticleFlow.

  • Lighting / Shading TD

    Trixter

    (Privately Held; Animation industry)

    December 2006March 2008 (1 year 4 months)

    I introduced Pixar's Photorealistic Renderman to the render pipeline of Trixter. Me and my collegues had to develop tools and scripts to streamline the workflow with RMan. At the end we could render all needed passes with the click of a button.
    I also did the lighting of many shots besides my coding work.
    Escape Studios have released an article about my work, which you can find here: http://www.escapestudios.com/en_GB/technology/news/trixter-renderman.html . The topmost picture at that web page was also lit by me :-)

  • Technical Director

    Trixter Film GmbH

    (Privately Held; Animation industry)

    20062007 (1 year )

    I this period I worked on many smaller project like commercials, but also on the feature film "The Secret of Loch Ness" with a CG main actor called "Oki". For that project I developted a lighting and rendering tool for Maya to streamline the, otherwise very time consuming render passes creation process.

  • 3D Designer and TD

    Plazamedia

    (Privately Held; Media Production industry)

    May 2006June 2006 (2 months)

    Plazamedia is a big player in the german tv business. They develop and support the on-air effects for many tv stations. I worked as 3d and compositing consultant for several projects. One bigger project was the creation of a whole company presentation DVD with movies, animated 3d charts and animated DVD menus.

  • Lighting TD

    CA Scanline

    (Privately Held; Motion Pictures and Film industry)

    April 2006April 2006 (1 month)

    Hui Buh is a semitransparent CG cartoon ghost character. He had to be integrated into live action footage. Since he was the main actor in this movie there were many shots to do. I worked in the lighting department for this project.

  • VFX Supervisor

    Trixter

    (Privately Held; Animation industry)

    December 2005March 2006 (4 months)

    The movie I supervised was called "Das Total verrückte Wunderauto", which could be translated as "The total crazy wonder car"... :-/
    Well, at least the VFX were really nice. Besides supervision I also modeled and textured half of the main character. I corrected some animations and some compositings and matchmoved all shots.

  • Camera TD

    Weta Digital

    (Privately Held; Motion Pictures and Film industry)

    May 2005October 2005 (6 months)

    King Kong 2005 was the project, and I worked in Weta's camera department. There we did matchmovings, motion capturing, Kuper motion control simulations and roto animations. We used 3D-Equalizer for matchmoving.

  • 3D Artist

    ARRI Digital

    (Privately Held; Motion Pictures and Film industry)

    November 2004January 2005 (3 months)

    I did a full CG shot for the feature film "Sophie Scholl" and some scene addons for other shots. This shot showed the Nazi headquater in Munich in which Sophie Scholl was murdered. That building was totally destroyed by the allies bombing. So I had to recreate it and it's surrounding in 3d.

  • 3D Artist

    Das Werk

    (Privately Held; Motion Pictures and Film industry)

    June 2000June 2003 (3 years 1 month)

    At "Das Werk" I worked mainly as 3ds max artist on many projects. Most of them were commercials. But I also did two feature films, "The Pianist" and "Das Wunder von Bern", and I did a low budget SciFi series named "Starhunter". For "Das Wunder von Bern" I learned Maya which has become my main tool by now.

  • Application Engineer

    Tecnomatix

    (Public Company; TCNO; Computer Software industry)

    June 1999June 2000 (1 year 1 month)

    The name of the company changed, but the software stayed the same. AnySIM was still my tool. Later it's name was changed as well. I was then called "eM Workplace", for some reason... My job was still to help to develop simulations and to train the engineers.

  • Customer Support and Trainer

    AnySIM

    (Computer Software industry)

    June 1997June 1999 (2 years 1 month)

    AnySIM is also the name of the 3d simulation software that were developted here. Many bigger companies use it to simulate many different things in their production, like NC machines, robots, presses, but also humans in a production line. My job was 1st to help these companies to develop their own simulation and 2nd to train engineers to work with the software.

  • Teacher

    Fachhochschule München

    (Mechanical or Industrial Engineering industry)

    June 1996June 1998 (2 years 1 month)

    While I was still studying mechanical engineering I also tought other students of all other faculties the basics in 3ds max. There were architects, constructers, but also hobbiests. This was an official course on my university with a final test and all.


Oliver Kirchhoff’s Education

  • Fachhochschule München

    mechanical Engineering 19931998


Additional Information

Oliver Kirchhoff’s Websites:

Oliver Kirchhoff’s Interests:

Movies, Cooking, Gadgets, Traveling, Computer Technologie, Games, Electronic Music, My Kids

Oliver Kirchhoff’s Groups:

Xing, IMDB

  •    3D Lighting & Rendering
  •    Matchmoving & On Set Mocap
  •    The Animation Workshop, Viborg
  •    Weta Digital Alumni

Oliver Kirchhoff’s Honors:

1st Prize Animago Award for Professional Compositing 2001,
Oscar for Visual Effects in King Kong 2006,
Bavarian TV Award for best Visual Effects 2008,
German TV Award for best Visual Effects 2008.


Oliver Kirchhoff’s Contact Settings

Interested In:

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  • consulting offers
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