Category: Animated Strategies – Unreal Engine

 

Animated Strategies – Compositing and After Effects.

Animated Strategies – Some research on cinematics/trailers,

Animated Strategies – Further Updates to lighting, LUT and Rendering the first scene.

Animated Strategies: Adding a little more lighting and building some light maps.

Animation Strategies – More lighting work, post process added and cameras placed.

Animated Strategies – More layout and some lighting actions.

Animation Strategies – UE 5, Cinematic Layout.

Animation Strategies – Finishing up textures, adding GIF video files to screens.

Animation Strategies Week 9 – Textures imported into UE5

Animation Strategies week 8 – Updated and finished Textures

Animated Strategies – Texturing and final model for UE5 project

Animation Strategies Week 7 – UE5, UV Unwrapping assets.

Animated Strategies Week 6 – Studies Advice, Homework, working on Server and Computer assets, tests in UE5 etc.

Animation Strategies – Modelling Monitor Assets.

Animation Strategies – Week 5, Lighting and Post-process effects

Animation Strategies – Week 4, Bringing textures and applying textures in UE5

Animation Strategies – Some test texturing

Animation Strategies – Week 3, Refresher on Textures and Wall Sculpts

Animated Strategies – Week 2, more concept art and ‘blocking out’

Animation Strategies – Working on some concept art, finalising theme and concept.

Animation Strategies – Week 1, first look at Unreal Engine 5.

Self Reflection:

I found this assignment incredibly challenging in terms of both software and  meeting my own personal standards in my work. I really wanted to push myself to create something good personally in terms of assets, to ensure that my team mates were equipped with good props to use within their scene. Whilst there were a lot of moments during this process that I felt incredibly exasperated with myself and my own abilities, I really believe that I delivered with my assets in the end. I also wanted to push myself to use Adobe After Effects in post production, as I wanted to add some spooky ‘found footage’ aspects to my cinematic. Again, I believe I really did myself proud in my progress with this.

I regularly sought out feedback for my scene, and acted upon it where I could – time permitting. That’s another thing that I’m really proud of myself for; I think I’ve benefited from seeking out feedback. Where before I would find this quite uncomfortable, I think I’ve grown a much thicker skin when taking criticism and I feel that I’ve done well to act on the criticism I’ve been given.

There is much to be improved upon, however, and there are a lot of aspects of this pipeline that I do not feel that I am particularly strong. For one, I feel as though I could have done a lot more with my flooring and my roof, and the layout of my environment as a whole. There were no pillars, no specific roof textures, no skirting. I think, were I to go back and do this again, I would have modelled some larger pipes and done more with the skirting and the roof. Mike also made a great point about making my textures tile-able, which I think would have improved the overall look of the scene. When it comes to post production, I was not hugely adventurous when it came to cameras or camera movements, nor lighting. I’m sure much cooler things could have been done with both of these aspects. Finally, my grasp on After Effects – which, admittedly, is better than it was – is still very limited. I am sure that I have made my cinematic pretty repetitive. I must try to improve on my editing in the future.

Overall, I’m very pleased with my performance in this class. I really believe I did the best that I could — I can’t ask much more of myself than that.

After downloading the twitch plug-in, and after a bunch of help from henry, I started compositing today. I used the guide above to achieve a VHS look to my shots.

I downloaded music from these sources:

Noise 1.

Noise 2.

Noise 3.

Noise 4.

I also overlaid a creepy picture intermittently. I didn’t want to over-do this, so I tried to keep it really subtle, low opacity and sparingly placed.

I used the tutorial above to learn more about rendering and exporting in after effects:

 

I spent today looking at some horror trailers/ horror game trailers in an attempt to figure out what sort of vibe I am looking for. I know that I want quite sharp, snappy transitions, flashing lights, glitches etc.

I’m planning on using a twitch plugin to after effects in an effort to get the effects I’m looking for.

Resources:

 

After speaking to Henry and Mike today, I was given the following feedback:

• Add a skirting board to make the room feel more like a room, and less like a box with textures slapped on. ✓
• Remove bubble particles, they’re a little distracting.✓
• The scene is far too contrasted, try adding some more lighting.✓

taking this into consideration, I added a simple skirting board to the room and I removed the bubble particles. I also added an LUT to a post process effect in the main room of my lab. I used the following screenshot:

(Before)

(After)

I really think this lightened the scene up a lot, but still keeps the atmosphere that I’m going for. I’ve tried a lot of things with lighting, and whilst I don’t think it’s perfect I am still proud of where it’s at.

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As I was rendering today, I was also given the feedback that using my GIF image as a light source wasn’t making a huge amount of sense when rendering my server scene. I removed those, and added static rectangular lights instead:

I managed to get all of my scenes rendered today, and will start compositing in after effects tomorrow, if I don’t have to make any revisions (Which I am sure that I will).

I decided to add a second light source in my main lab room, so that I could subtly light the server and shelving assets with a light source that makes sense. I added another spotlight under the lamp I was already using as the asset for the light above the op table:

It made the room a little more visable, which I think was needed – I added a little green tinge to the lighting to match the other lights, as I think it adds a lot to the ominous feeling. This also lightened the server and shelf views more, making some of the features more visable:

I like how this looks, I think it’s still subtle and I did want some stark contrast in my shots, but you can still see more of the details of the buttons etc.

I then decided to play around a little with the light maps in the scene, and I made the tesla poles, the ground and the server higher res as the camera was quite close to these areas and I thought that upping the res of these assets would be useful as the audience will see them:

I’m really happy with how my scene is looking at the moment:

I’m glad I decided to go for quite bright, white, lights — when I was imagining these scenes, I wanted something that was very exposed and reminiscent of the types of lights that are installed in boots pharmacy. IDK if that will make sense to anyone else, but as boots in Belfast City Centre is such a large store with few windows, the lighting feels incredibly artificial and I think I’ve managed to achieve this through this scene.

I’m going to work on my camera, and my camera animations over the next couple of days.