With the whole group having completed making our assets, we moved onto building the sets. Each member made their own set in Unreal Engine, as that made the most sense for us to do. Cloe had made a Post Process effect that could be applied to a Post Process Volume in unreal, while gave everything in the scene outlines, which helped achieve the cel shaded style our group was going for. After importing all of the assets, I went on to constructing the church set. I wanted to give a grand scale to church but making the walls tower over everything.
The floor took a long time to do, so it looked suitably ruined and broken.
I then started decorating the church, placing everything with purpose, knowing I have to tell a story, so as I was dressing the set I was planning shots and how I wanted to tell the story.
I really wanted to convey how old and ruined this church was, using The Last Of Us and The Walking Dead as inspirations with how derelict the roof and walls were. I wanted to get some really interesting and visually striking shots that played with lightning, so I thought a lot about where the holes in the roof should go to best achieve this effect.
The next thing I did was play around with the lighting. I really liked how the orange light looked, achieving a dusk-like appearance. I particularly like how the orange lighting effected the feeling of the scene. It made it feel warm in a way, but also melancholy, like the sun had set on whatever happened so long ago in the church. I got some really good, dramatic god rays coming through some of the cracks in the roof that felt thematic and very visually appealing.
Using Unreal Engine for this was very interesting and useful, getting to see the scene as it would be, being rendered in real time, as opposed to Maya, which needs to be pre-render. I was happy with how this looked and was ready to move onto the filming process.