Category: FMP

The last week I was tasked with importing all the models, animations, textures, cameras, and effects into UE5, matching them up and finishing the rendering.

In the meantime I also created some of the fabrics, and encountered many problems during the process, such as the uv distortion of the fabrics in the transformation shots, which was eventually solved by using dynamic mapping in ue.

For the Doctor’s part of the film we used the plugin metahumans in Ue5, which the teacher used to talk about in the last semester, and we used facial data for matching and finally rendered it in the ue scene.

After I imported some of the cameras, animations into ue last week, at the same time it was time to prepare for the rendering, before the rendering, in order to make the picture more realistic and beautiful, my job is to add some effects to the camera, such as motion blur, drawing, edge blur, etc. I would like to thank my teacher Serra, for getting school computers for our group, which made us much more efficient and teaching us how to improve the quality of the rendering in the class.

This week’s progress continues in UE5, we are importing the camera animation, character animation that we have tuned in MAYA, my job is to match all the effects, animation to the character in ue5, adjusting the camera parameters as well as the lighting, this is the first time I’ve ever done this in ue5 so I searched for a lot of instructional videos in the beginning stages, I’ve added shaking in ue for the camera, to make it more realistic as if it was taken from a hand-held video camera.

This week the project progress is starting to move into UE4, and since the models I’m making are all in MAYA, I need to export them as FBX files, then move into UE5 to texture them, and then do some simple lighting.

At this point in time, we found that the scene texture streaming in Ue5 is very severe, and this is one of the things we need to optimise later on, otherwise it will affect our rendering.

This mapping in order to comply with the UE5 mapping effect, strictly in accordance with the process, such as the normal map must use png format, while the other maps use exr format, as well as in addition to the base colour and normal mapping, we merge the metallicity, smoothness and AO mapping into a single mapping, in order to better optimize.

This week we started to create props based on the needs of character animation, such as the soldier’s gun, the doctor’s syringe, etc. I was mainly responsible for the material mapping of the props, and the software I used was Substance painter.

I am also responsible for the lens design in this graduation design, because I am a film fanatic, so I will refer to the lens language in some classic films when designing the lens, and use some special lenses to enrich the view of the film.

The fact that we have established a good shot position is helpful for character animation, we can more quickly know the length of the character animation and the rhythm, as well as silhouettes in the shot, so as to better modify the character animation, but also for the later in the UE in the shot animation to lay a good foundation.

It’s funny, I also tried motion capture during the FMP production, it was the first time I used motion steps, and I also worked as a motion capture actor and interpreted it for many days under a green screen in a motion capture costume.

The animation of the monster getting up and roaring after being knocked away is my first motion capture animation, I didn’t understand the process of modifying the data of the motion capture at the beginning, which led to the production of a very long time, and the effect doesn’t seem to be as good as the animation produced by myself, while the motion capture has its advantage of being fast, I’ll continue to learn about the related use of the motion capture in the future, and of course, I’ll still produce my own character animation, which is irreplaceable.

Continuing with the character animation this week, in addition to the flying flap, I needed to complete the animation of the monster fighting on the mech and then being knocked away by the cannonballs, this is an interactive animation, I created the fight animation of the monster first, and then created the key pose for the mech’s body to take the hit animation first.

The two crashed through the wall immediately following the flying lunge, dropping down to the lower level of the battle area.

Here are the character animations for the battle.

According to the video collected and filmed last week, I started to create the character animation this week. For the character of the monster, I encountered some difficulties during the process, for example, it has huge arms that are different from those of normal people, so I repeatedly modified it during the key pose stage to make sure that the silhouette is aesthetically pleasing in the shot.

In the character animation section I was in charge of there was a monster flying at a mecha animation, which I think was the most difficult one I was in charge of, so I still looked for a lot of references upfront because there was no way I could do this animation on my own.

This week we started the production of character animation, which is also the part that we learnt the most when we came to UAL. Compared with the undergraduate time, the process of producing character animation is more standardised now, and the process is more familiar and smooth. I am mainly responsible for the character animation of the monsters and mechs in the graduation design, and some of the animations in it are the first time to be produced, which is challenging.

Firstly, I found loads of videos to use as reference, such as animations of the Hulk, Iron Man and other characters that made perfect sense.

Of course, I also recorded my own animation, and for better understanding, I would like to thank Mr George for designing the movements for my animation reference.