What ever happened to Gunnar ? Well, he tells us all here:

Gunnar Radeloff kindly allowed us to "interview" him on the 3rd August 2003. This is the full transcript from the conversation:

B: Gunnar, tell us a little about yourself:

G: Self descriptions are not my favorite task, but i´ll try. I am 25 years old and both of my parents are artists, so my artistic background is mainly founded on their influence. Directly after the change in Germany (i lived in eastern Germany) i got my first PC and pretty soon found out that 3d Graphics was what i wanted to do. I started with POVRay with rendering chrome spheres on checkerboards on an 8086 with 4.7Mhz. During schooltime i earned some money by doing architectural visualizations with 3d Studio and later with Real 3d. Today i do 3d and compositing work mainly for commercials and industrial films. Beside that i enjoy my life in the nature during extensive offroad trips or with photography.

me and my toy ;°)

B: How long have you been using Real ?

G: i switched to Real because the 3d programm i used for architectural visualizations was´nt able to handle the mass of data i needed to show, that was sometime when v3 of Real was released. But since that time i pretty much learned to love this prog and always used it as my main 3d tool.

B: You have long had a hand in Realsoft 3D v4 through beta testing and Magnamana, being a strong advocate for RS. Care to tell us about your time at Magnamana ?

G: Yep, at Magnamana i had a pretty good time, i can really recomend this company as they really know what they are doing and talking of. I learned thats its not very common in the industry that quality work and technical knowledge come together in such a way. I really appreciate having been there, as i learned alot at MMP what i would´nt have learned in an education. Furthermore we had quite a good work climate there. Working at MMP also helped developing the good direkt relation to Realsoft as well as diving into the betatesting community.

B: What sort of work did you do there ?

G: The work was just the same as i´m doing now as i always reduced it to the 3d and compositing part, never liked anything else. We mainly did commercials for TV and lateron also for cinema and some industrial movies and we even did some short films which i realy enjoyed working on. I also invested quite some time into beta testing V4 and disscussions with RS. So overall i can say it was a very interesting time that i dont want to miss.

B: So you left there some time ago to startup your own buisness in Berlin, how is that going ?

G: Oh, well it started very quiet to say the least ;°) i was close to giving up the undertaking, but then the right people learned to appreciate my work. Now it runs so well, that i sleep smiling everyday. Berlin is also a very nice city with lots of opportunities, i´d say i just scratched the surface.. The kind of work i do here in Berlin is quite similar to what i did in Frankfurt but it feels much better if you work just for your own pocket ;°)
Luckily my customers are so far very satisfied with the work i do and the quality i deliver so it turns out that the jobs get more complex and enjoyable everytime. I love it when a job gets a bit tricky, as this is where the fun begins..
Beside the work i must say that living in Berlin is totally different to living in Frankfurt, for me it´s much less complicated. People here are very relaxed as is the whole city..

B: And are you getting the sort of work you enjoy ? 3D ?

G: Latelly i did tv commercials for Maggi, Lux and Theramed beside some others and they were quite enjoyable. Even though they had a tight schedule everything went just right. In the Maggi spot i had to animate a Kungfu fighting Dog and also some wires had to be removed. Even though it´s claimed that Realsoft is not that good at animation it worked just right. Even with v4 you can allready animate charachters quite well and similar to bigger animation packages you only have to consider that animating charachters at all involves a lot of work, no matter which package you choose..
Currently i am doing a complete 3d spot of 30 seconds lenght involving 2 worms eating apples.. this is a whole lot of animating, but i also do it in Realsoft 3d V4.5.. I must say this is some kind of dreamjob, as its very rare to get the chance to create a fully 3d commercial with charachter animation in it.

the intro to my demoreel, which is a flytrough through about 30-40 fully animated towers unfolding.. done in Real v3.53 ;°) but still looks cool

an animated LUX Packshot that had an animated Label, with flowing Milk, Honey, some Flowers falling into fluid etc..

something i did for Theramed

my current project

the Maggi Kung Fu Dog.. i did the 3d and also some compositing in the Spot, like wire removal..

my interface.. this is the animation window..

B: You have been very quiet on the RS scene these past months. What has been occupying your time ?

G: actually i dont post very much in the Realuser list at all, i just read it from time to time. I spend much more time in the beta testing list, but since we rearranged the whole betatesting process it got much more efficient and there is very few to disscuss ;°) But i have to admit that i dont created any cool images lately, which is mainly the fault of my job and my
girlfriend..

B: You've developed some new methods of animating similar to messiah i'm told. Can you tell us (or show us some images) how you do this?

G: ;°) oh its nothing special, and therefor i did not mention it.. one boring day i downloaded projectmessiah and tested it, as everyone claims it to be the coolest animation tool on the planet.. it obviously was very advanced in that area but i also found i quite complicated to use compared to RS, which is my common impression when looking at other 3d prog´s ;°)
Another thing i found was that nearly everything of the charachter animation tools in PM was scripted. This was what made me thinking.
So i took the whole T-REX Demo of PM and tried to rebuild it in RS and it was very possible! I guess any user knowing a little bit of scripting can achieve this in V4.5 as the constraints are there and you just need to know what you aim at. Basically i took 3 spheres and used them as handles for a rather complex skeleton and also added some constraints for balacing the skeleton while walking. Its all very simple math. perhaps i write a tute someday ;°)

B: I've always loved how you made interfaces and customised RS in the past. Did you ever end up finishing one that you use or did it prove too time consuming to create ?

G: oh my favorite question! :°) i really love to create interfaces and am always working on my own RS interface, i guess it´ll never be finished. Like animating in RS the interface editing prooved to be quite complicated for most users or atleast the magazine testers, as its allways moaned at and i dont exactly know why. In RS you can customize the interface into the last detail and it works atleast as simple as designing an HTML Page. Of course you need to have some ideas of what your aim is, as always. Actually i once again work on interface and related stuff, but currently its still under developement so i dont want to show it.. you´ll hear of it.

B: What are Realsoft's advantages vs other 3D applications ?

G: my interface ;°) nope, i think i allways liked the speed of working in it, its very flexible but yet efficient.. My favorites in RS are VSL and the modeller, so far i found nothing comparable to VSL! But overall i simply love RS3D and thats why i never changed to anything else.

B: Are you happy with the direction of RS ? Are there any features you would like to see implemented ?

G: obviously i already know whats going to be in v5 and i´m quite happy with it even though more animation tools are always nice to have.

B: How fast can u model your horse now ? ;)

G: i never really tried to get very fast with modelling the horse, but modelling is one of my favorite tasks so i´m pretty fast at it.

B: And finally, is there anything you wish to say to the RS community ?

G: um.. i dont really know what to say, except keep up the good work and try to animate more.


Many thanks for conributing Gunnar and taking the time out of your busy schedule. All the best with your future work.

Bernie

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