This week, I decided to focus more on my observatory assignment. I began this week by changing around my scene, adding in the rest of the models and fixing any light issues I had prior. Moreover, some of the main struggles of this week were the telescope. When I had built the lighting, the textures on the telescope would go dark, regardless of how bright the light was and at the time I was really confused to why it was behaving that way. After some research and getting advice from my tutor, I realised that the issue wasn’t the textures or mesh, but the lightmap density of the UVS. To fix this, I had to revert back into the telescopes older files and do some tweaking to the UV quality of the mesh. After this was done, I needed to update the textures and this took forever to do as I had to redo them completely. Luckily, I was able to duplicate some of the old textures onto the new mesh as they acted like smart materials. Ultimately, once this was finished, I brought the model and textures back into Unreal Engine and they were perfectly fine.
Towards the end of the week, I began to work more on the scene itself and the vibe that I wanted to go for. I decided that I wanted to leave the lighting and other extra tweaks for the post-processing volume as this would’ve meant that all the models and the lights would have an equal share of the same hue. Originally, my plan was to go for cooler tones of purples and by doing so, would allow the colours to emphasise the scene to be lonely, abandoned and run-down. I feel like this was a good call on my end as it definitely looks far better prior these changes.
Photographs of the updated scene & lighting changes
I feel quite confident that some areas in my scene will be really cinematic for rendering. Some of my favourites shown above include the window, table with newspapers and the telescope. These all would be really impactful focal points and I definitely will be considering them as the stronger parts of my rendering. Some of the assets used in this scene were sourced from the Unreal Engine marketplace, along with some built-in starter content. The credit list is as follows:
Procedural Nature Pack by PurePolygons- foliage, trees, leaves, etc.
M5VFXVOL2 by JeongukChoi -flame effects
Starter content-stray textures, steam particle
The reason I used some of these free models is due to how little time I had left, and also how I needed them in such a small quantity. For example, the flame animations weren’t a huge priority, and were only a small addition to my scene- they weren’t going to be a focus, but merely a filler. Moreover, I really liked using these additional models as they acted like good fillers for the backgrounds of my scene. Ultimately, I felt that this was a good idea as it allowed me to put more focus on other models that were going to be more of a focal point, and it honestly really helped me to build my scene a little more. I will aim to create these types of models in the future, so I feel like my scene is more authentic to me, however, I feel like this is a good backup option depending on time. Not only that, but as I am new to Unreal engine, it is quite difficult for me to grasp how to use all the features, so having the access to free effects such as fire, really helps in short time frames.
Camera planning and testing
Below was my process in planning my cameras and their movements. I began with a short storyboard of some of my most favourite ideas and then continued forward with this in Unreal. The movement you see in Unreal in this test is actually just me moving around without cameras. I decided to do this in order to prevent confusion, but also to force myself to explore the scene a bit more before adding in the cameras. Ultimately, these exercises helped me out a ton, and I now have a better perspective on what the final outcome will look like. Since making the test video shown below, I have come to the conclusion that I will be changing the order of my render around, and cutting out some sections. An example of this is how I have now decided I want the newspaper scene first (short and sweet, tells the story right off the bat) and to cut out the scene with the window (the candles are a bit repetitive- too much). This will ensure that my final render will have a variety of different scenes to view in the environment, further making it less boring to watch.
This is the quick test that I mentioned in the last paragraph. Since putting this together, I have decided on a lot of changes and these will be shown in my final render next week – Stay tuned!