Learning to use UE5 this semester with no prior experience was a huge challenge, but I have very much enjoyed the process once I was able to get over the hurdle of not knowing where to start. I’m excited by the possibilities of this software in my future practice, especially because I have previously struggled with other programs because of the lack of live visual feedback. I feel like using UE5 will allow me to focus more on animation, which is what I want to focus on most, as previously most of my project times were taken up with parts of the pipeline I found a lot easier and faster to do in UE5.
As shown in my Formative Presentation, the production process for me was as follows:
Visual research
Storyboarding
Animatic
Environment layout
Shot set up
3D Animating (Maya)
Texturing/creating materials
Lighting
Making custom LUTs
Rendering
Editing
I briefly mentioned it in my Formative Presentation, but if I had more time to work on this unit I would prioritise animation clean-up, adding more characters to the environment, and material creation. I did enjoy making materials in UE5 a lot, but I didn’t feel like my project idea gave me the time to fully delve into the process and possibilities. Early on in production, I really wanted to explore 2D line art materials, but I unfortunately wasn’t able to fit it into my schedule. As previously mentioned however, UE5 allows for easier editing of the different parts of the project in the future, so I will definitely be returning to this project as personal work to improve on existing parts and to add new assets.
I first did blocking animation for all active shots with animated characters, and imported those to UE5.Then I went back, and did splining and clean-up on those shots. If I had more time, I would have liked to do more clean-up work. But I’m okay with how the animation looks, and due to how dynamic UE5 is I can, in the future, do the clean-up work I want to do and reimport to UE5 for rendering. I do like that I won’t need to worry about going through an entire pipeline just to re-render improved animation, which UE5 makes much more simple. It is one of the reasons I’m very glad I learnt UE5 from Serra this semester, as I could potentially use it for future projects both at UAL and personal works to save time on parts of the pipeline I’m not as interested in perusing and learning. For example, I don’t like compositing in Nuke personally, but I found the live view ability of UE5 made making those counterpart adjustments and applications easier and faster.
Materials:
As mentioned previously, I remade and applied the materials for all of the rigs I used. While this was a little annoying and time consuming to do, once done for each rig I didn’t have to worry about it again until it came to the final render, where I made some tweaks to some of the materials.
I also changed and made my own materials for the subway train asset to make it look like the London Central line, as I wanted the film to feel more like my own experience with public anxiety so the film looking more like it takes place in London made most sense to me. For the seats, I roughly imitated the pattern used on most London underground seats in Photoshop, which I then applied to the Albedo texture for the seat assets. I also replaced most of the metal and wood materials, as I feel these aren’t nearly as common on the London underground, where everything is mostly a white matt material with black frames. To finish, I made some Decals using my own graffiti tag designs.
For the secondary characters, after the mood/lighting change I wanted them to be as void of personality as possible. I wanted the visuals to be representative of my experiences of working on my own social anxiety about people staring at me in public. I’ve found it helpful to question why people would be staring at me when I’m not doing anything outwardly worthy of watching, or thinking of times I’ve seen someone doing something weird and I maybe only glanced over momentarily before continuing to be more preoccupied with myself and my own thoughts and actions. All of those actions entail me thinking about the other person’s/people’s thoughts, feelings, and experiences as opposed to seeing them as void of those aspects and only focused on me. So if I wanted to add a twist to such a narrative, it makes sense to me that the people staring at the main character should be void of depth. Going back to my visual research, James Fenner’s works depict people as mostly silhouettes which I felt would work well for my idea. I made a flat, black material in UE5 and applied it to the skin, hair, eyes, and facial hair of the secondary characters in the ‘red lighting’ level to be representative of the above themes.
I also added 2D eyes to overlay the secondary characters. I found these shots to be a little boring and too static, so I added a jitter to the 2D eyes to give these shots some life. I realised later this worked well because the jittery eyes reflect the panic and instability of the feeling of these people staring at the main character.
Lighting:
I mostly went in and changed the colours of the lighting on the subway train asset, more so for the red lighting after the mood change mid way through the film. I did find it a bit difficult to not have the lighting too red, and essentially feel flat, so I would like to go back into UE5 after the submission and experiment more with the lighting.
I also added one point light each in front of the two characters in shot 0200, as they were too shadowed and the black silhouetted skin wasn’t as clear when not contrasted with their lit clothes. I also added both these lights to the sequencer so that I could key their visibility in the scene, otherwise they were too bright in other shots and looked odd.
Rendering
Even though I initially set the UE5 levels up in a way that I could have the lighting change during shot 0100 in engine, I kept having issues executing this. Eventually, I decided instead to render both the red lighting and the normal lighting separately, and edit them together later. Once I had set up a duplicate sequencer for the red lighting level, this was pretty straight forward.
For the sequencers, I made sure that the visibility of shot specific lights, alembic caches, and the 2D eyes were keyed so that they would only be visible during their set shots.
Editing
I edited my film in DaVinci Resolve. Most of the work was creating a satisfying transition from the normal lighting to the red lighting. I experimented with different methods (fading in, a glitch effect transition, suddenly changing the moment the main character opens his eyes again), and settled on the red lighting flicking quickly every so often up to the moment where the main character first glances over to the secondary character in shot 0140.
I also added in the sound. Early on in the project development, I found the track ‘Slow Trap’ by Anton Vlasov which I still wanted to use. I did have to cut and edit the track to fit with the film, but I’m pretty happy with the end result.
As I mentioned in my last Immersion blog post, I decided to buy the M-rig pack from Ramon Arango, and to use a few in this project. They were quite expensive, but I really liked his Artemis and Apollo rigs so I found the price worth what I would be getting in return. I did unfortunately find a few issues with them (mostly issues with the clothes and how they look with various rig poses), but I have already seen Ramon mention on his Discord server that he will be working on any bugs and issues, and releasing updates in the future with fixes. The issues aren’t so big that I can’t use the rigs, so I’m happy with them for now.
Using one of the rigs, Minerva, I started blocking animation for shot 0080 and 0090. I also did the same changes to the base rig file as I did with the Apollo rig to prepare it for UE5 import (removing N-gons, renaming materials, hiding faces, applying materials to the faces and not just the object). I still need to remake the materials in UE5 for the alembic cache import to link to.
Because I have an extension on this brief, I asked Serra what to do about blog posts updates, and she (and Friendred separately) advised that I make one last blog post before the submission post summing up everything I did between this week and submission.
This week I blocked animation for shot 0190. I also imported the alembic cache for shot 0180 (0170 and 0180 combined) and shot 0190 to UE5 and set them up in the sequencer.
Shot 0190 Blocking:
I also saw that the creator of the Artemis & Apollo rigs, Ramon Arango, is going to be releasing a new rig pack this week of 6 human character rigs. I want to buy them anyway for my personal use, but I realised I could use some of the rigs as the secondary characters for this project. I do wish I had them sooner as I would have liked to maybe use one of them as the main character also, purely for style matching sake as the new rigs look a little different to the Apollo rig. However I think since the Apollo rig is the only main character, I’m happy with the rig for him looking different.
This week I’ve been focusing on animation. I’ve been finding it difficult to get myself working lately, so I wanted to start with a shorter shot first before jumping into anything too big. I picked shots 0170 and 0180 (I decided to merge those two shots together as the cameras were too similar for a shot change to not feel weird).
I also decided to block all active shots for now so I can import them to UE5 and render the full film with blocked anim to test how it all looks, before going back and splining/cleaning up animation later. This way even if everything goes wrong after blocking and for some reason I can’t do more animation work, I at least still have a full film with blocked animation for submission.
I’ve been a bit slow with progress the past couple of weeks, but I’ve managed to make a start on animating. I’ve also found a few more issues with the rig that I’ve been able to fix, one by using the Discord server the creator of the rigs made for users. I also added a Bugs/Issues page to my Google Sheet that I’m using to keep track of the project, mostly so I can note down issues as they come up to look into later and keep track of what I’ve done to fix issues that may come up again and need the same fix. This sheet did prove helpful when I had to redo all of the changes I made to the original rig file due to part of the rig breaking in one of the early rendition scenes. I didn’t notice this issue until part way through animating, but was able to use the sheet I made to quickly reapply the changes without having to try and remember off the top of my head what changes I made.
In Maya, I posed some of the ‘Body Mechanics Rigs‘ (created by Joe Daniels) in the subway train. I then imported these into UE5 so I could set up the cameras there, and export the cameras back into Maya for animating. While convoluted, I found setting up the cameras in Maya less intuitive than in UE5, and I think overall I saved time as setting them up in UE5 was quick and easy when also using my storyboard sketches as reference.
I then set up each key shot (the shots I consider necessary to convey my project idea) in Maya with the Apollo rig referenced in. I had already deform wrapped the clothes to the skin of the rig and hidden the faces beneath the clothes, and saved this as a separate scene to be referenced in.
Before I got ahead of myself, I wanted to test the pipeline I had planed out to import the animation into UE5. From previous research, I decide to export the rig geometry as an alembic. I did a very rough animation for shot 0070, and exported this for the test. However for the materials on the rig, I misunderstood how these would transfer in and found that while the materials did import, they all showed as black. I put this aside to fix later, and I was then able to set up the alembic in the sequencer and see that, other than the materials, the alembic import would work as I planned.
For the materials it was a little convoluted but again, would save time later, to recreate all the materials in UE5, make sure the names of the UE5 materials matched the Shading Group node of the materials in Maya, and (while I couldn’t 100% confirm this was necessary, it works as desired) assigned the materials to the geometry faces rather than the object as a whole. I also had to make sure to assign the hidden faces a unique material that, in UE5, was transparent or “invisible”.
While I was already planning on switching out the subway train materials for my own, seeing the Apollo rig in the level gives me an even bigger urge to do so, as the contrast between realism and stylised stands out far too much to me.
This week we looked at rigging in UE5. While I’m planning on prebuilt rigs for Maya and then importing the animation into UE5, this lesson was still super helpful for if I want to make my own rigs for UE5 for future projects, which is something I’d like to try in a future project.
I have done rigging in Maya before, and quickly picked up how similar the general process is to the UE5 rigging process, just with a different interface, names, and (from what I understood) being more node-based.
Project Progression:
As previously planned, I edited my sketches into a rough animatic. This also includes all shots for my initial idea, as I wanted to have the full version so that if I do have time to add more shots the layout is already there to work from. I also started filming reference for the key shots where there will be character animation. In some of the shots (mostly those focused on the background characters after the transition to the creepy, bizarre vibe), the characters will be static and staring at the camera, so those won’t need reference. If I have time, I will probably add some camera animation in along with the 2D Animated eyes to give the shot some interest in place of character animation.
Since I’m still quite new to UE5, I wanted to quickly test how easy it would be to replace one of the textures in the subway file with my own. I had the sketch from my storyboard for a rough idea of how I wanted the final shot to look, so I went with replacing the text on the scrolling screen as a test since, if successful, this could also be something I keep for the final render.
Reference sketch:
First I located the material for the screen, then the node for the text texture. I exported the text texture, opened it in Photoshop, and replicated the texture by searching for a similar font (I settled on ‘Dogica’ by Roberto Mocci (link), and manually added the semi-transparent grid on top of the letters.
This week Serra showed us some physics in UE5. We learnt how to make objects fracture upon impact, and how to constrain objects.
Project Progression
I bought the Apollo and Artemis rigs and, following the creators instructions, used a wrap deformer to attach the provided outfit to the rig. I’m planning on using Apollo for the main character, and I can use Artemis for one of the background characters. I have other rigs I would be happy with as the other background characters. I did however see on the Discord server for the Apollo and Artemis rigs that the creator, Ramon Arango, is going to be releasing six more rigs soon that look really cool. Depending on the timing of the release and the cost, I might buy these as well, both for the background characters on this project and for future projects.
I also finished my storyboard, and next will be taking pictures of the sketches and editing them into an animatic. I found music I like (link), and while I’m not certain I will use it for the final edit (mostly due to timing, but I could always edit the music also), I can at least use it as a stand-in for now.
Last week we had to cut the lesson short a bit, so this week we finished off looking at sequencers, particularly with their uses and how to organise them.
We then moved onto materials, looking at how to make them, and how to make material instances. With materials, it is easy to make changes but can get a bit annoying when you might want to see those changes happening live in the viewport. With material instances, as long as the material it is created from is set up correctly, you can change the parameters live and it also doesn’t change the base material, making it easy to undo/reset parameters.
Serra also showed us how normal maps work, and how they can add depth and detail to objects without changing the geometry or needing to use high resolution assets.
Finally, we learnt how to blend materials together. I realised this will be very useful to achieve the aesthetic look I was hoping for (as shown on my Pinterest board screenshots from Week 2), because combining and laying different materials will probably be more successful to achieve the mixed media, textile look of the references I was inspired by.
Project Progression:
Finding rigs:
I didn’t get a response from Hernan Ares regarding his ‘Zio’ rig, so I started looking for alternative rigs. I’m considering buying the Artemis and Apollo rigs created by Ramon Arango, who has a strong background and experience in rigging and animation. While I really like the more unique facial features on these rigs and the level of technical detail, the tracksuit outfits that come with the rigs (and need to be deform wrapped to the skin geo) are a bit too plain for my taste. I’m planning on having a detailed environment with interesting materials, so without modification the tracksuits would stand out against the louder backdrop.
Because the rigs are more on the premium side, I want to wait another week or so before buying in case I find something else. While I would be happy to spend the money for them since they will come in useful a lot in future projects also, I don’t want to buy rigs I don’t need and that could be far more complex/detailed than is necessary for this project if there are better options.
Storyboard/animatic:
I began by quickly sketching a storyboard to visualise my ideas. To maintain momentum, I prioritised speed over detail, knowing I could refine the sketches later. I’m planning to make an animatic later by photographing the storyboard, saving time on digital redrawing.
Some shots were difficult to sketch, so I imported the subway train level from UE5 to Maya, and used the ‘Body Mechanics Rigs’ (created by Joe Daniels) as placeholder characters. This let me experiment with different camera angles and character positioning a bit before adding a shot to my sketches.
I realised early on that my project’s initial scope was too much to complete in the time we have, so I decided to sketch out all my desired shots, then selected the minimum number of shots needed to convey my idea and aesthetic to move forward with. This approach allows me to prioritise the essential elements, complete the project efficiently, and potentially add back more complex shots later if I have the time to do so.
Organisation method:
To help me track all of this and to keep myself as organised as possible, I made a Google Sheet for the project that I’m planning to have several pages for, each with their own purpose to help my workflow.
