Project brief:
Do not be afraid was a group project that I and 6 fellow course mates worked on over the course of around 4 months. The goal was to learn how to use a real time render engine, this being Unreal Engine 5, to create a shortfilm with, using the character Echo that we were given. The brief stated she would have to try to obtain something with creative freedom of what that journey would look like. We went through the whole VFX pipeline from preproduction all the way through to compositing.
We used the Quixel market place to get assets to then set dress an environment, we also used our own motion capture data to then retarget onto the character and included our own simulations from both Houdini and Niagara.
Here is the final result:
Sections I worked on
My main goal throughout this project was look dev and set dressing the environment using Quixel Bridge assets. A member of my group provided me a basic block out of the whole cave for me to apply these assets to. I also worked on lighting thoughout the scene including the entire cave, the final door lighting up and the eye at the end.
Block out made by Danial Bear
Set dressing with Quixel assets
Quixel had a downloadable forest megascan that I used and I set dressed areas that the character would be in.
A lot of natural light had to enter the scene so I had to find ways to get areas of light peaking in for atmospheric quality. We wanted to save the artificial light for later down the cave as if the deeper she is going the more she comes across man made-objects so having no natural light was key later on.
Here are a few test with the motion capture data applied to Echo in the environment.
Another element I worked on was RBD simulations that Echo dodges in the cave. This was an early test before I switch to stalactites.
I also worked on sculpting the rune seen above the cave entrance and in the corridor that light up
