Cyberpunk Alleyway
Made for my final project for Level 6 back in 2022. (I currently study a Bachelors of CGI at NMIT) I am a very big fan of all things Cyberpunk, the whole genre is interesting and aesthetically pleasing for me. So, for my project I wanted to solely focus on creating an environment of a part of a Cyberpunk city.
Pre-Production
For the pre-production stage I focused on gathering references and planning out how I was going to go about making my environment. I had to factor in time as well as which programs I wanted to use and what I knew would give me the best results.
Planning
Using the Team Gantt website I was able to create a Production pipeline based on the time I had available. I wanted to try and stick to this as best I could, but as always things happen such as sickness or troubleshooting, so it is good to have the ability to adapt and find an alternative to complete the project.
Inspirations
Below I have included different mood boards I created to gather inspiration for my environment. I looked at games and films such as Cyberpunk 2077 and the Blade Runner movies as well as real life references from cities such as Osaka and Seoul. I also was inspired browsing through Artstation looking at others projects. Taking in different aspects from the gathered images such as, the lighting, the props, the ambience and colors, all help support my idea and vision of what I wanted to create.
Concept Art
These are a few sketches and photobashes I did to help me visualise more what I was hoping to create.
I created the sketches using Procreate and did the photobashes in Photoshop.
Storyboarding/Blocking Out
I did some sketches of a few sequences for the cinematic of my environment.
I also went into Unreal and blocked out the base of layout, where I created an animatic by recording the mannequin walking around the blocked out scene.
Programs
My program pipeline I decided to use was, Blender for modelling, Substance Painter for texturing, Unreal Engine for the setup and cinematic, and After Effects for any post-production.
Throughout the first half of the year, before I began this project, I had been using Unreal and Substance Painter more and more so I could be comfortable in each program. Blender was a program that I had most experience in as I had been using that since day one of my course.
I knew these selection of programs would give me the best results I could achieve and I knew that I could navigate them easily while still learning something new.
Production
This is the part of the pipeline I most enjoy, as I am able to start creating my assets and begin to make my idea come to life.
Blocking Out
An important part before modelling is blocking out. While changes can be made later in the pipeline it is always good to have a rough idea of what the layout will look like, and it is also a great way to determine the scale of your assets that you need to create.One thing I did to ensure I had accurate scale was to export the Unreal Engine in game mannequin and put it into Blender. That way while I was modelling I could look at the scale of the mannequin and compare it to my assets to see if I needed to change anything.
Building Modelling
I relied solely on Blender for all of my modelling, using hard surface modelling for the bulk of it.
I started with the modelling of my Buildings. One thing I did when creating the buildings for my scene was thinking about how many I would need to create and if I could use them more than once in the scene. I wanted to be able to create a few then place multiple variations of each in the scene.
I knew the two key buildings I wanted to include in my scene was a little convenience store and a food stall for noodles, so it was important to me that I created these first.
Prop Modelling
For creating the props in my environment I had to make sure that I made enough to fill the scene. Usually when Cyberpunk cities are portrayed they are messy and have an abundance of clutter and trash so my goal was to try and recreate that.
The main element for my props was creating a vending machine. This was something I knew I wanted to incorporate into my environment and I also knew that it was going to be a big focal point so I had to ensure that it was the best looking prop.
Texturing
For the texturing of my assets I UV unwrapped them in Blender then exported them as an FBX where I imported them into Substance Painter. For a few of my assets I textured them in Blender using an image where I then texture baked it to the asset.
Lighting
For my lighting I wanted it to be vibrant, emitting neon lights as well as having some mist to represent the 'pollution' in the city, as it is based on cyberpunk. I wanted to have my scene set at night as I felt it would display my environment the best and I would be able to achieve cyberpunk looking lighting.
Instead of just using random lights set up around my scene, I wanted to utilize some of the assets I had that would potentially give off light. Some of the assets I used were, signs that will emit a neon light, vending machine lights emitting from the inside of the machine, lanterns that will be scattered around the scene that will emit a soft red light and the windows from the buildings emitting different colors of light.
I used a mix of Point lights, and Rect lights as well as using Post Process Volume and Dynamic Volumetric Sky. Using the Dynamic Volumetric Sky I was able to set the time of day, adding in the night atmosphere.
VFX
I made sure to include some VFX into my environment. I wanted to create steam for my bowl of noodles and my AC units. I wanted to do this to add more depth to my environment and make it look less static.
To create the steam I used the Niagara System in Unreal Engine. To give some variance between both of the steam systems I duplicated the original and added some adjustments such as changing the scale and opacity. I made it so the steam was less intense than the AC steam, so it would look more realistic.
Wires
Using the Cable Actor in Unreal I was able to create wiring stemming across each building. I like how it added to the busyness of the environment and added more to the height of the buildings.
Foliage Tool
Using the Foliage tool in Unreal I was able to put in two of my assets to scatter them around my scene. I made the paper and rubbish bags into foliage assets where I could then paint them into the scene. Doing it this way saved time for me and also ensured I could have more randomness in my scene.
Rendering
For rendering I used the Movie Pipeline Render in Unreal.
Post-Production
For the color grading I simply put all of my rendered shots into After Effects, where I was able to arrange and tweak any shots I wanted. I added in an adjustment layer and added the Curves and Brightness & Contrast effects to it, so I could start playing around with the color and brightness. I did find that some shots would look brighter with the adjustments, so I had to use separate adjustment layers for different shots.
After the color grading was finished, I then added some black borders on my video and rendered it out from Media Encoder where I rendered it as an MP4.
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