Mind's Eye

Core Team

Adrian Cota - Camera Animation | Environment | Layout | Lighting | Previs | Team Lead

Emily Lindsay - Animation

Sergio Santos - Character Concept | Character Art

Wenlong Yu - Realtime FX | Environment | Props

Freelancers

Daniel Baldwin – Music Composer & Dialogue Editor

Parker Britt – Houdini FX

MJ Clemente – Concept Art

Cassandra King – Voice Actor

Alexander Silva – Animation

Natalie Storr – Animation

This is a breakdown of the progress of each shot.

This is a side by side comparison between the final version and the last version of the previs.

Previs Artist: Adrian

I wanted to establish a workflow that allowed for quick iteration so we could work on the previs quicker and more efficiently. The workflow was to use Unreal Engine’s level sequencer and Da Vinci Resolve to edit the previs together. I downloaded animations from Mixamo and chained them together in the sequencer. I also set up a folder structure for the shots that we made. So, when we needed to replace a render, I just deleted the content of the folder and replaced it with the new one. This meant that once I edited the film in Da Vinci Resolve, I didn’t have to stitch the renders together again. Only minor adjustments were made. I learned a lot about animation cameras using the curve editor and understood cinematography, pacing and storytelling. A good resource to learn cinematography was ‘The Shot List’ on YouTube by StudioBinder. It helped me digest the fundamentals in a concise way.

Character Artist: Sergio

A spy agent (Freya I0-05) is the main protagonist of the game cinematic. She works for the Brodmann Corporation. She becomes suspicious of the company and decides to investigate. The design of the character was inspired by the techwear aesthetic.

Metahuman workflow:

Based on the group’s decision, It was determined that utilizing metahumans would be the best approach for the project, particularly as the team had initially planned to use Livelink for facial animation. This decision was made due to the unavailability of a custom facial rig for the character.

I did some research to integrate our own created character into the metahuman system. During this process, I consulted with Zuzana, the character artist of "Insurrection London" (2023), who shared her experience with syncing the metahuman head with Livelink into a custom body she had created. However, given the complexity of this pipeline, it was deemed impractical for our project, leading to the commitment to using metahumans fully. Throughout the process, I discovered several tutorials and addon scripts that facilitate the use of a custom mesh with metahumans. The primary addon that stood out was Metapipe by Arts and Spells, which enables the transfer of a custom mesh to a metahuman.

Character Concept Art

Environment Art: Adrian & Wenlong

The environment aims to represent a digital world/memory. We utilised brutalist architecture to portray this as well as taking inspiration from Blade Runner 2049 and Ghost in the Shell for the lighting. We wanted the environment to feel unstable and glitchy to further exaggerate the digital feel. The original aim was to blend the environments of Control by Remedy Entertainment with Mirrors Edge by EA.

The environment developed from being an abstract brutalism to a more grounded brutalism. During this process, I also wanted to find a balance between the two. In a feedback session, Ethan, one of my classmates, gave me the idea to go the Barbican to base the brutalist structures off. So, I travelled to the Barbican. It gave me a much clearer architectural design that I could implement in my design for the city. I also gathered some references from the internet – Google and Pinterest. This gave me a good foundation for making the environment. However, in the cinematic, you’d only see the top of the buildings because it takes place on top of rooftops for most of it. I gathered the appropriate references so Wenlong could work on creating the environment assets.

Animation - Emily

At the start of the project, we planned to use a regular rigged model but as we became more interested in mocap, we decided to use a Metahuman instead. The Metahuman rig allows for the facial mocap via the Live Link app, so we plan on using an edited version of that as mentioned by Sergio previously. Because of this, I was easily able to create a character definition with a proxy model and retarget our mocap data onto the model using Maya's HumanIK system. Then, I used the time editor to blend different mocap shots together, adjust their speed, cut and relocate them to make it match the newest previs. Whilst doing this, it became apparent that some of our recordings, particularly the run and the corridor scene at the end, will need to be reshot as they are too different from the previs. One of the reasons our current previs is different from earlier versions is because we became aware of the size of the mocap suite space. Some of our original shots had running sequences that lasted a long distance with no cuts or areas to hide where the animation may be looped, so we had to adjust them. Furthermore, the model didn't have any IK switches on the feet or hands, so I was unable to use it to create the slide jump animation (which is why I used the Ray rig instead). In the final trailer, that shot will use a rigged version of our Metahuman character instead. The final previs is long, so I gave some shots to the freelancers.  

Below is some mocap tests we did.

FX Artist - Wenlong

For the project, as mentioned previously, the environment needed to feel like it was unstable and glitchy. We decided to make various glitch effects for this as well as other effects needed for the cinematic.

Third Party Assets:

Sound FX - Pixabay

Killing – Font by FZ fonts

Free TV glitch Textures – The Good Edit Club

'Brutalist Architecture Office' asset pack by KK Design:

MI_Concrete_Blocks_Large Material

SM_Debris_Ground1 Mesh

SM_Debris_Ground2 Mesh

SM_Debris_Ground3 Mesh

Unreal Engine 5 Starter content pack:

MI_Metal_Burnished_Steel Material

3D Scan Store:

Metahuman Identity Female 23

ArtStation Marketplace:

IMM Tactical Drop Leg Holster + buckles, tactical military equipment - Juan Dadomo

25 basemesh shoes collection - Cansah Tezcan