A Final Transmission

"A Final Transmission" is a performance capture short film passion project made by students from Breda University of Applied Sciences in collaboration with film industry professionals.

Trailer

Full Movie

Character Animation Breakdown

The vision for the project was to create as much of a realistic and believable visual experience with the time constraints the team was faced with. Stemming from this we decided to opt for a full performance capture approach.

Due to the design of the alien, the team had to create a new mapping to correctly solve the anthropomorphic legs of the creature. After applying the motion capture as a base, the rig was used to keyframe detail animation.

Virtual Camera Breakdown

Another facet of our goal to create a realistic experience, was, of course, the camera movement. The team researched and devised a pipeline, which made use of an iOS application to capture camera movement as if it were a live-action production. Then that raw data was cleaned up and modified to complete the almost documentary-style camera, which aims to put the viewer in the space station together with the astronauts.

Facial Animation Breakdown

The way the team decided to tackle the daunting task of facial animation was through the use of Nvidia's Audio2Face software. This way through the audio recordings, we had an efficient way to produce a base and lip-sync. Then the data was cleaned up and polished further using Unreal Engine's facial rig to achieve the final result.

Environment Showcase

The environment was carefully crafted to match the space in which the performance was captured. Beforehand we completed a full 3D scan of the space to use as a guide for spacing and placement. This way we could avoid additional adjustments to the placement of the actors. Due to the team structure and the availability of a single environment artist, we opted for building the space with pre-existing modular assets from the Unreal Marketplace. 

Film Festival circulation:

- 1 Nov '22- Imagine Film Festival - Amsterdam, Netherlands (init. premiere)

- 17 Dec '22 Madrid Sci-Fi Film Festival - Madrid, Spain

- 17 Dec '22 It's the End of the World (As We Know It) Film Festival - Amsterdam, Netherlands

- 15-20 Feb '23 Boston Sci-Fi Film Festival, Boston USA

- 15-22 Sep '23 Love & Hope International Film Festival - Barcelona, Spain

The Team

Student Post-Production Crew

Michelle Lipman

Product Owner ○ Animator ○ Facial Animation

Viktor Kamburov

Product Owner ○ Animator ○ Editing ○ 2D Previs

Veronica Redlaff 

Line Producer ○ Rigging

Aleksandra Chapevova

Animator ○ 2D Previs

Bernhard Altena

Animator

Hanne Hammarstrøm

Environment & Lighting

Luuk Hoffmans

Animator ○ Facial Animation ○ Lighting

Max van der Plas 

Animator ○ VFX Compositing ○ 3D Previs ○ Scribe

Mihaela Gagalova

Rigging

Yaro Copijn

Animator ○ Assistant Camera ○ Virtual Camera

Additional Student Crew

Deyan Mohamed

Reference Camera

Nathalie Stuit 

Reference Camera ○ Behind the Scenes

Kim Trouwborst

Facial Camera Supervision ○ Actor Supervision

Yuli Ognyanov 

Data Management ○ Engine Technician 

Industry Professionals Crew

Kelly Klingenberg

Director ○ Line Producer ○ Post-Production Supervisor

Jip Klompenhouwer-Degens

Screenplay

Eli Thorne

Actor ○ Astronaut Sal

Yaron Mesika

Actor ○ Astronaut Ryde ○ Alien

Kasper Stegeman

Director of Photography

Hens Zimmerman

Sound Engineer ○ Composer

David Rhodes

Post-Production Supervisor

Daan van de Ven

Manus Gloves Supervisor

Special Thanks

David Rhodes
Simon Kay
Torben Hanegraaf
Abigail Putri
Breda University of Applied Sciences

Assets & Characters

Astronauts - Nvidia Studio
Faces - Metahumans
Environment Asset Packs - Unreal Engine Marketplace
VFX Asset Packs - Unreal Engine Marketplace
Alien Rig - Truong CG
Spaceship "Nortend" - Ruslan Malovsky
Spaceship-05 - jah3d
Alarm Button - Tasha Kosaykina
Emergency Stop Button - Miljan Bojovic