Xhesi Beqiri UE5 shorts

Sweet Dreams

for this one i got inspired playing Resident Evil 4 Remake, the idea was to make a cool but dark mine environment.
the real challenge here for me was the lighting, cause i had to make a scene dark (for the horror context) but visible, highliting the right places in the right moments and giving the right mood.
 At one point i had some fire vfx made in "Niagara"  that i thought was cool but got replaced later on by these industrial lights i made in blender because the warmer light of the fire was influencing  the scene in having a "good vibe" so i decided for something more metallic as material and cold as light.

Responsible for all the aspects but models, character animations (both manequin and monster) and some of the sounds. 
I used megascans, the teuthisan creature and the Animation Starter Pack from the ue marketplace. 

the finished product has some things and little mistakes that hurts me but i m generally happy with the result.

the sounds are for something like 70% done all by me with things i have at home, like the steps are just a phone hitting the salt and my mic really close to them to rec, all after rec have been modifyed in After Effects.
I wanted to try making the sounds for the first time and it was really funny, especially the monster scream.  

music "Wake up is just a dream" taken from youtube
tension sounds: taken from Freesound.org

under here you can find some reference from Resident evil 4 and Dead Space i kept close just to have some inspiration for the level design lighting and atmosphere.

Process: (some imgs under)
-outline the idea
-do a simple blocking of the level with only defoult blocks scaled as needed 
-think about the dynamics of the scene 
-add sequence and manequin char whit just some key animations
-animate the manequin path for the sequence 
-decide the position and settings of camera so i have a clear view of what is inside the camera and i can focus only on that
-adding the monster and his animations 
-adding AK gun (from a UE marketplace pack) and attaching light, finding the right IES and setting for the light
-adding, modifying, merging the manequin Animation from Starter Pack with the anim i did for the path to coincide
-animating the AK and all the objects that needed animation
-Starting swapping out the blocking cubes with real meshes (this process takes from here to the end, detailing more and more every step)
-Adding props 
-Adding railway assets
-working on semi def Lighting 
-Adding blood decals from megascans
-Adding cables and linking those to the lights
-polishing all of the things listed above
-Tested rendering
-Last changes
-Making the room that you see in the last scene
-making a metahuman that looks like me
-animate all but the face
-face animation with "live link" 
-very little post process in UE
-very little post process in After Effects
-finding sounds for tension musics and shooting
-making all the sounds missing 
-modifying sounds in AE 

-final ajustmenst in AE  

Breaking Bad

For this one i got the ispiration wile i was rewatching Breaking Bad and i thought it ll be cool to try to recreate some scenes from the serie. 
Initially it was planned to be just an environment with one scene and static but in the process i started adding things and ideas and it ended in what you can see in the video.
I generally tryied to stay as close as possible to the refs but i added some personal touches like the blue smoke insted of white and the close to vegetation cameras shots.

  Responsible for all the aspects but models.

some reference under :
img 1 --> Season 2 Ep 9 
img 2 and 3 --> Season 5 Ep 10
img 4 --> Season 2 Ep 9

Process: (imgs under)
in every scene i placed few assets to have an idea of proportions and started with the camera: focal lenght, distance from the objects, height etc. 
after a good positioning of the camera i started to do the layout with megascans initially and after with custom really simple assets that make my scene look more like the ref, used foliage with only rocks, color correction (somewhere in the middle i made it worste i think), done ground, done the foliage, made walter in metahuman creator, pose him with the unreal control rig, added the moving camera scenes.
For the smoke sim i started from a Niagra fluid preset and modify it until it matches my goal: a really dense and blue smoke. 
Used Ultra Dynamic Sky, megascans and  Vehicle Variety Pack Volume 2 for this one.
the camper in some scenes is rendered in path tracing (only camper) and composited after in after effects (this choise was done because the camper looked really better with the path tracer and the times to render was kinda low anyways so the cost\benefit ratio was pretty good)

War

this was my first solo project in UE, done studing the software at Skyup Academy and applying what we learned in a short.
not very proud of the result but during this one i learned a lot of things that came in handy in the later ones so i'm happy anyways. 
the most challeging parts for me in this one was the retargeting and animation parts.


Responsible for all the aspects but models,characters anim and vfx.
Note: the parts in the "control room" are rendered in Path tracing 

Create a story: (imgs under)

Finding all the assets for the finished product in Quixel Megascans and in the Unreal marketplace 

making the characters in metahuman creator  based on their role. 

after it was all a matter of layout (making the control room and the village with landscape), placing metahumans and find animations for them, retargeting the animations , twick/modify/combine the animations, adding rigid wearables (like helmet), animating camera, animating planes ecc, add the vfx with the vdb plugin (some of them from the ue marketplace and some from jangafx free vdbs), do some color correction and img adjustments with the post process volume in ue, finding the good settings for the render and do some little twicks and adjustments in After effects