VirtualProduction & Real-Time 3D

Himalayan Trail

This project was started during my second term of the Virtual Production and Real Time 3D course at CG Spectrum in March of this year (2023). As a work in progress, this example is part of a bigger project that I'm working on where I want to show this environment in all the different seasons, having started with spring. 
I wanted to combine all that I have learned so far and challenge myself to try new software's and improve my skillset. Aiming to be able to show the complete version for next years Rookies! Here, I will take you through the process so far. 

I started with collecting some references for my scene and sculpting landscapes in Gaea. Once I got that into Unreal I set up a camera angle and blocked out my scene, having the mountain in the middle of the shot. I wanted the Stupa to be in the shot as well, and because I have some more animations in mind for a different season, I wanted to add a small road/stairs to highlight the trail. I ended up changing the camera angle a lot, and a big change was switching the focal length from 20mm to 70mm. It needed some readjusting of the mountains and assets, but it helped a lot with improving the depth of field. 

Filling up the fore and middle ground with foliage and assets to fill up the shot. 
The Stupa was made in Blender and once I put that into Unreal I added mega scan assets to create a foundation around it. On the Stupa are some decals now, for the faces and for some dirt/stains. I'll be learning more about quixel mixer to use that as a tool to work on the statue and improve it to have a more worn out look. Some other work:
The Cherry Trees in the foreground are from SpeedTree. 
I set up the flags with a skeletal mesh so I could add the cloth simulation to them. When simulated in the scene, they respond very well to the wind directional actor, but there is still some jittering when I render out the whole scene. Still working on solving that for the future.
I added 2 Niagara effects with a simple material to have some effect of petals floating in the wind. Around the landscapes in the mid and background, I added different fog cards, using William Fauchers Easy Fog. 

The garment was made in Marvelous Designer. Since this was a new tool for me, I tried to keep the clothing simple. I could not get the garment to simulate well with the animation inside of MD, so I ended up using Udraper in Unreal to make it work nicely with the animation of the MetaHuman. This workflow turned out to match nicely, whereas Marvelous Designer is better for making finer clothes and Udraper has a great tool to work with animation and tweak the fabric of the clothing in the engine itself. I'm excited to use this more in the future.

No Place Like Home

This was my first finished project since I started with CG spectrum. For this project my goal was to practice modeling in Blender and experiment with the different tools in Unreal Engine for setting up the lighting and atmosphere in a scene. 

Even though we have lots of real life references here in the Netherlands, it was helpful to use some specific pictures for creating the model. Knowing I wanted to just focus on modeling, and putting the model a bit further from the camera in a somewhat dim lighting, I did not spend to much time with UV unwrapping or texturing in Blender. I made sure the different areas had the right seems and were ready to be unwrapped and then I assigned a basic material color in Blender which I then replaced in Unreal with material surfaces from quixel bridge. 

The playful phase of making the landscape, setting up the camera,  atmosphere and overall mood of the scene is what I really enjoy!

The arms of the mill and the base were imported separately so I could join them in a blueprint in Unreal and then be able to animate the arms properly in the sequencer. 

Some postprocess work was done in Davinci Resolve after getting a final render out in Unreal. 

A big thank you to all my mentors and fellow students of CG Spectrum. Coming from a different field of work I had to learn so much, and having the excellent guidance and support from the whole community and staff has been such an amazing experience! And also so grateful to everyone outside of CG spectrum that has provided me with all the awesome support. Thank you for checking out my projects, and I'm looking forward to keep improving my work and be able to show my progress again with an entry next year!