Big update, final video

Scene is fully realised in unreal engine, have added music and tweaked within after effects to get my intended look.

Work Update

Just a quick update, I have now got everything pretty much ready and in the engine, I just now need to add a few more props and foliage to the fountain area. Then I will take it into after effects to add proper clouds and make it look nicer on the whole.

Current update

I feel I am working well as the end is quickly approching, I have experimented with some different camera angles following feedback from Rob, such as still shots rather than long, exaggerated camera shots which slow down the overall feel of the cinematic. I have also tried to focus more on the water fountain area rather than the rocks but also keeping the sense of the scale in the cinematic. I have also tried to incorporate some music which adds another level to the cinematic as a whole, I like the music at the moment however its got a little bit of beat to it so I will make sure that I get some feedback to see whether I need to pick something which has a more background feel to it. Overall its going well however I still have a load to finish off.

Update doors

I have taken out the spinning doors and am in the process of making it so that the doors are being blown out from the inside with a gust of air to match the theme of the whole scene. I have fiddled with the cameras and the doors to make them move correctly using the matinee, after feedback I have added to air so that it looks more lifelike, I was going to add this in post production in after effects however it looks quite good at the moment just doing it in unreal engine directly.

Changes

Some changes that I have made from the block-out is that I'm not going to have any meshes with destruction on such as the broken pillars as I want to recreate the scene to be as it was first built with a little foliage which has overgrown over the scene. I have changed this as I feel it doesn't add anything to the scene and it will let me concentrate on the foliage. Another change is that I have decided to add the up-side down buildings to the scene because I felt that on its own the scene felt little lonely without much in it, I personally like the outcome of putting the buildings into the scene for alpha as it really matches the references which also filling the scene making it feel a little more properly fleshed out.

Birds

As from feedback I have put some birds into my scene to try and get the sense of scale across to the audience, here shows the base model that I will use. I have kept the poly count as low as possible as the model will be seen from very far distance, at the moment I have put them in just a quick particle effect format so that I can get the gist of how they will move through the scene but for the final cinematic I will make them into a blueprint which will drive their movement in more accurately.

Catch-up

As of the presentation I am still trying to catch myself up so that I can make sure everything is done on time and to the highest standard. I am making sure that all my assets which I will use within the scene are UV'd and light mapped by the end of this week so that I can start the texturing process at the start of next week or over the weekend if I am able to do all the prep before then.

Alpha Presentation Feedback

Overall the presentation went better than expected, feedback was mostly positive to the scene as a whole with only minor grievances on some of the camera angles as the feedback advised me to put some more shots of the water fountain in rather than spending as much time with the large pan over the top of the cliff. I will take this on board and will look at fiddling with the cameras so that there are more shots of the water fountain. Secondly I had some feedback about shadows and how the light will be broken up by the overhanging cliff, to combat this I want to talk to Jamie to get some advice on how to get the best light direction. I am also going to make sure that I properly plan out the rest of my time so that I can get the scene looking really nice, in addition I am going to get regular feedback so that I can get my scene to a high standard.

Alpha Cinematic

Here is the Alpha progress video, could be better but I am happy with the result. Just need to make sure that I finish everything off to a high standard.

Block-out Presentation

Reflecting on the first presentation I think that I managed to cover all the bases that I needed to within the presentation and felt that my work was at the right stage for that presentation, I had a small amount of feedback from the lecturer which I have been able to work on such as the input of moving parts into my scene. For the next presentation I think I will keep to the same style in the presentations as it worked well for me however I will make sure that I look at the brief before hand so that I hit all the points needed within the presentation.

Moving Parts

In order to bring my scene to life I want to have a few different moving parts so that it will feel like a real scene rather than just a camera fly-through of a stationary diorama. I have chosen to have spinning doors, clouds, foliage and a few birds gliding around to show off how high the scene is in its landscape. The grass will be on top of the cliff so it will be affected greatly by the wind which I hope to have a hard breeze to make it move properly in the wind. I will do this from the use of materials within unreal engine 4.

The doors and clouds are moving with the use of Blueprints and the timeline functions, however these are only for the time being as they start from the beginning and keep looping until it finishes which I want to change so that they move properly, especially the doors which I want to only move when the camera is focused on that point. Overall I am happy with the progress that I am at and can turn my attention to getting the rest of the scene up to standard, I also need to work on the particle effects such as the running water flowing through the middle of the scene.

I have also included an image of my cloud material as it shows how it all works together to get the desired effect. I followed a tutorial to get this result however my material is a little different as I have connections in the world displacement not the world position so when the mesh moves the material stays still in a way in which the clouds look like they are properly moving within the world.

Updating Old Meshes

Following on from development of the mountain range I have gone onto update most of the other meshes to bring them up to the same standard. I started with the pillars as they wouldn't take much time to make as I can just take them over into Z-Brush and use a combination of Z-brush tools and alphas to get the desired look. I wanted to make the scene look abandoned and disused so I decided to put a lot of damage onto the pillars so I have done this by breaking them in half and then sculpting the damaged onto them. Below shows the differences in what the mesh look like now compared from the block-out, I am going to use a variety of normal map techniques to get them to a high standard.

I have also decided to update the tree mesh as it was at a really poor standard and bugging me when I was working around that mesh. I have made another base mesh of the tree now which I will take over into Z-Brush and then make the high poly version.

Progression

Having taking the feedback from the block-out presentation on board I now have a clear idea on what direction I need to take and also what I need to focus on however overall everyone liked the idea and the stage of progression that I am at. One thing I need to look into is more camera work everyone felt that the camera was too erratic and there were too many camera shots for the scene and recommend that I have fewer camera shots as it will flow nicer together in the final cinematic. This is very helpful as I will be able to get the best shots of my scene with a more coherent camera fly through.

The first thing that I chose to develop was the opposing mountain range which I will be using in the far distance across the valley which will be seen in the backdrop of some of the shots when the camera is looking from within out to show the sense on size and scale of the whole scene. I decided to look into using the sculpt geometry tool within Maya as I found it to be a quick and easy method in creating a low poly mountain without a large amount of detail on.

I started out with a plane to which I then imported a height map to get the original shape of the mountain, I have decided to use a plane as I will be able to use basic planar mapping for the UV's in which I will then use custom materials within Unreal Engine 4 to create the texture for the mountain.

I then tweaked the vertices on the plane to get a taller mountain as I feel it would fit my scene more to have a very tall, random mountain range. After that I smoothed the edges to make it more organic and lifelike as it had very hard edges which didn't look like a proper mountain.

Following on from this I put the mountain into the engine and duplicated it around to make the whole mountain range while also making sure that I am looking through the camera's to make sure that I cover the whole field of view. I then went onto put a basic material using constant3Vectors and a normal map on the mountain to give it some colour so that I know what kind of atmosphere that I want my scene to have. I want to try and get everything up to the same stage so I am going to concentrate on other area's of the scene so that I don't put off one area to work on another.

Blockout Progress

The block-out presentation is in week 3 and I am pretty much ready to show off my work at the stage it is at now. It has all the elements that I plan to properly implement into the project. I have made all the low poly assets which shows off the whole scene and how it will look at the end and I have also looked into camera work and have implemented that into my scene also to try and give off what my final cinematic will look like as well when finished. I wanted to make sure that I had camera's in as it is an easier way to show the audience what the final scene will look like. I have also made the particle effects to go in the scene such as the water and fire, however I am yet to get anything else moving such as the doors and birds. Looking at the cinematic at its current state I can see where I need to add more cliffs and rocks in so that you can't see the edge, however overall I think I am happy with the stage that I am at, from here on out I need to look at photo-grammetry and where I can implement it into my scene and also improve all the meshes in the weeks to come.

Gathering Reference

Before I start making the assets for the scene I want to get as much reference as I can find as it will benefit the modelling process as a whole if I know what the asset I am making actually looks like. One bad thing about choosing this topic is that there isn't many picture references of each assets that I am looking to design however I have found a fan-site that has screenshots of each frame of an episode of the "Avatar: Legend of Anng" which I have used as my reference shots due to the fact that If I were to do this on my own I wouldn't be able to capture each frame perfectly. One thing that I have taken away from this is that I need to make a better choice in what I am going to create to make sure that I can either get a large amount of references for or if it my own design then I need to be 100% clear in what I want to design.

Decision

After a lengthy decision I have chosen to go with the Avatar idea basing it more towards the smaller water-fountain area with an enclosed section showing off a large focal piece being a door. I want to show the fountain as a large focal point within the scene as well as it will show off a number of skills such as modelling and the use of materials and particle effects within the unreal engine.

I will also be able to show off some of my level design skills which will enable the use of this scene within my final portfolio at the end of year. It will also enable me to progress in my sculpting skills with the use of Z-Brush as the scene will be on the side of a mountain so I will first need to make the mountain itself then all of the other rocky structures. I am planning to have the scene overgrown with foliage and the rocks itself will be withered to create the atmosphere of it being abandoned for a long period of time, However I still want the scene to have some life within it, so I am planning on having the water-fountain working with running water and also small things such as wind blowing the grass and bushes, maybe even a bird flying around to give off the sense of scale and height but I will have to do some research into these area's to get them to a high standard.

Overall, I am happy with the choice that I have made as it will feed into the skills that I have already got while also making me look into other area's of research to make the scene as a whole look better such as the animated parts of the scene. I am looking forward to the development process and are very hopeful that I can make the scene into a piece of art.

Camera Work

Following from last years work with UE4 I haven't full got my head around using the camera's and matinee's within the engine and I wanted to have a quick play to make sure that I at least know the basics and over the weeks can make sure I get the best camera angles for the cinematic as I don't want to leave it until last minute to try and understand how it all works together. To do this I made a quick scene within UE4 and started to mess around with a few camera's while doing research in how to make clips from in UE4.

Above shows a screenshot of the scene within UE4 taking reference from the howls moving castle idea. I also experimented with the landscape and foliage tools so that I could refresh my memory for the upcoming work. Below is the grass strand that I made in Maya which I used in the foliage tools in UE4.

After I had set up the scene I wanted to put a few camera's in and started to move them using the matinee's to get different shots of the early castle and scene to see how they would turn out. I am planning on continuing this research and development into the camera and matinee work to make sure that I can get the best shots come the end of the module for the cinematic. Here shows a short bit of practice using the matinee's.

Idea central

I have had a couple of ideas for my Advanced graphics module which I want to explore before I make my final decision. My first idea is taking inspiration from a Studio Ghibli film called "Howl's Moving Castle" as the castle within the film is a breathtaking piece of art when looked upon from every angle. I would like to do the outside of the castle and have it walking through the landscape to show the size and scale of the castle.

However due to wanting to be an Environmental Artist I thought that just doing a green hill filled landscape wouldn't look very good so I decided to explore other ideas. Another idea was from The last air-bender animated series specifically within the western air-temple as it is set on the underside of a cliff face being built as an upside down city, which would visually look stunning to show the difference of camera angles and how it differs from being upside down. I decided to gather some reference images in a mood board and then proceeded to make very quick block-out of the scene.

One final idea took inspiration from the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy specifically at Minis Tirith, I was first wanting to model the whole city however thinking it over I decided on just designing the top courtyard and main hall as they are at the top of the city and are very stunning in their own right. I went on to collect some reference images again to get a better view of how I would start to make this area.

Out of the three ideas I think that the Lord of the Rings idea will personally be the best as I could do both the inside of the main hall and the outside courtyard which would be a nice big area to make but also manageable about keeping it to a high standard.