Shimin Cong MA 3D Computer animation

In the spare time of the last week, I completed the game character modeling, on wrapping, rigging and cloth testing and character animation replacement in the engine.

Modeling in Zbrush

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Rigging By Advanced Skeleston5

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This week’s production of this scene is the scene inside the church, which is the most difficult part. Indoor lighting has always been something I am not good at. But in the scene of the Principality, my control of indoor lighting has also improved.

Resources

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In this scene, I mainly refer to the building model in a scene file in the EPIC official mall.。Of course, the main object in the center of the picture is the statue of Cthulhu made by me.

References

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First, I referred to the decorative structure inside the church. It can be roughly divided into upper and lower layers. There will be a high dome inside the church, where there will be good light shining into the scene.

Process

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First of all, according to the composition, first determine the positional relationship between the camera, Cthulhu and the church. Of course, my reference picture is a vertical composition, while the video is made in a horizontal composition. This caused me a lot of trouble in production.

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Then continue to build the scene model.

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This is a picture composition after setting up the scene. At this time, the center of the screen is relatively scattered. I hope the visual center of the picture can make the Cthulhu statue.

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For this, I added some models on the top of the cathedral, so that a beam of light with light blocking was projected on the statue of Cthulhu. At the same time, the density of the height fog is enhanced. Make the light effect more obvious.

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The last is the color adjustment in the scene, which is adjusted by postprocessvolume.

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According to Yann’s storyboard, I placed cameras in other locations in the scene, and performed local point light sources to fill light. Get the picture effect of the above three pictures.

The main content of the ninth week is the adjustment of scene lighting. And interactive sand production.

Lighting

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First of all, I show some screenshots of scenes after Lighting. Maybe this is not the last color tone. I finished editing a large game scene in 9 weeks. I enjoyed the process, especially this week.

This week I mainly made the scene of the forest in the storyboard. In this process, I studied the production of flame special effects in unreal.

References

First of all, I found some scene composition and lighting pictures on Pinterest.

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And I roughly drew a 2D concept in PS.

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Resources

In terms of assets, I mainly used the number of resources in the scene, the grass resources in the Bridge, the land textures I made in the mixer, and the fire special effects I made.

Processing

First of all, I introduce the production process of some flame special effects:

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There are three materials for flame effects: flame, spark and smoke, which correspond to the three pictures above.

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As shown in the figure: from left to right and top to bottom is a process of making flame special effects.

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The first is to draw terrain and assign terrain materials.

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Then simply adjust the following Height fog and draw vegetation. When drawing vegetation, we should pay attention to whether the vegetation blocks too many light sources.

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Supplement the scene, add rain special effects and light adjustments.

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My last step is to modify the details in the foreground and add a flame material on top of the car model.

This week’s personal project is mainly about the modification of the water material in the scene, the study of the stone material, the study of bubble special effects, and the material shader compilation of the special rendering filter of postprocessvolume.

Stone

The first is the stone material test. The picture below shows me using blueprints to stitch together multiple models. Thus forming a complex model.

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But because it is in the form of a blueprint. Unreal’s vegetation system cannot be drawn on the blueprint. So I tried to change the texture node of the rock. Calculate the plane with a slope less than about 30 degrees, that is, the area except the upper top surface. Let it shift downward. So as to achieve the effect of ice thorns.

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This is the material test in term1 I made before.

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This is the node link corresponding to the world position offset. This connection method is mainly to write the material to produce a displacement effect below the Z axis.

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这是材质修改前后的效果对比。虽然看上去得到了好的画面效果。但是给游戏运行带来了很大的负担。

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The scene burden before the modification is 27.53. After the modification, the scene burden is 41.10. By comparison, I chose to modify the previous plan. Because of the obvious lag phenomenon in the second plan.

Water

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This is the effect of the water surface before the modification. I used the resources in the EPIC Mall for the material of this water. Here are some useful parameters. But at the same time, It is difficult to see the transparency and refraction properties of water from the picture.

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Here I want to introduce a reference to ZBZU, as shown in the water surface effect. We can easily feel the refraction and transparency of the water surface.

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As shown in the figure, I mainly modified the Normal and Refraction. Normal can also affect the refraction of water. I use multiple Panner nodes to superimpose the motion of the noise map. Make sports more enriched. For refraction, I set two different values and distance calculations near the shore and the center of the ocean.

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After modifying the parameters, I got the water surface effect as shown in the figure.

Bubble VFX

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This week I also made an important resource bubble on the seabed. I have summarized some production methods through Dare to watch Youtube tutorials. First, use the Panner node to make the UV of the bubbles have the same wave effect as the water surface. The effect of bubbles is mainly controlled by normal and transparency.

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After the material is written, we can refer to the particle emission of the smoke special effect for the emission method of the bubble particles. The two are very similar. The key parameters are particle size, speed, emission source, rotation, life span, and color within life.

Rendering material in PostProcessVolume

The effect of the rendering material is similar to liquefying the picture in the scene. So as to achieve the underwater distorted scene effect.

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The location of the parameter

The figure above shows how the nodes are connected. We can find from the journey that the sphere is distorted. This is like the distortion of the objects we see underwater.

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In short, the Panner node plays a key role in the resource production of ocean scenes. Through these productions, I became more familiar with the texture and special effects system in Unreal.

My task for the seventh week is the scene at the gate of the church. Before that, thank Sean for his careful polishing. This gave me good model resources in the process of setting up the scene.

The construction of this scene is relatively difficult compared to the production of the first two scenes. Because it is difficult to find a good light angle. After discussion between Yann and Sean, I decided to change the direction of the Direction light. This means that the time in the scene has changed. But after changing the light, the picture effect has been greatly improved.

The following is my production process in this scene.

Resources

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First test

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In my first attempt to make the scene, no matter what composition design and changing the local light source, I couldn’t get a Hao image effect. The only solution is to change the time of the scene, that is, to change the direction of the Driection light. However, such a decision needs to be discussed by the group of urban management. Because this CG video is a conceptual image. So we can slightly change the concept of time. Just don’t be too exaggerated.

Second test

The following operation process is the production process after changing the direction light.

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First of all, I added particle effects to my sub-scene.

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The most important step before making particles is the production of particle materials.

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Finally, we only need to adjust the emission source, burst rate, emission speed, rotation speed, particle life, life color, life transparency and particle size adjustment in the particle system.

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As shown in the figure above, it is the effect of increasing particle dust. The effect is faint, if you look closely, you can see some translucent fine particles.

The next operation is the addition of plants and the addition of light. This light refers to the light effect in my personal project.

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The above picture is the effect of adding plants and light.

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The final problem is the lack of details on the octopus head and the wall. So I exported some decals in Bridge to add details.

The main work of the seventh week is to manually allocate plants and rocks. Secondly, I conducted shader research on the top and side of the rock.Finally, I also wrote a light function, which can simulate underwater light.

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First of all, as shown in the picture, the frontal number of the rock model is low. I used vertex normal drawing to blur the top edge. But I can’t draw all the stones. In this regard, I have rewritten the rock shader.

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As shown in the figure, I mainly changed the original float constant to a complex alpha image. This input port controls the transition area between rock and grass.

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After the modification, the transition between rock and grass is more natural. It is not just a transition between 0 and 1. What I have changed is to slope the excessive straight line.

In addition, I also wrote a light function, which can be used to add to the direction light. The effect is as follows:

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The node display is shown in the figure above. It is mainly through the Paner node to shift the noise picture. And then affect the light.

In addition, I also completed the rock editing of the other two landforms of the scene and some plant editing.

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At this time the general effect of a large open world map has appeared.

My work this week is for the scene design of the front yard of the church. Due to the lack of understanding of the corresponding culture, I searched for reference pictures on Pinterest. It was finally decided that the front yard of the church was a cemetery. This is more in line with the Cthulhu culture.

References

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My scene is inspired by this picture. In front of the church ground is a cemetery. For this, I found the corresponding model resources in Unreal.

Resources

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Process

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First I planned a few roads in front of the church.

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Subsequently, many different kinds of coffins were added on both sides of the road.

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Then, I added plant models between the buildings.

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The next step is to polish the scene so that it is full of details.

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After adjusting the scene details, I started looking for a good camera angle.

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The last is the light adjustment under the lens. I increase the effect of light occlusion and halo.

The work content of the personal project in the sixth week is relatively simple. The main time is used for manual placement of stones and manual allocation of plants.Although the work content is single. But I got better scene art effects.

The first thing to show is the production process of the scene near the character’s birth point. The production of this area was not completed this week. There are still many details to deal with later.

The effect of the scene last week.

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Adding plents

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Then adjusting the lighting and fog.

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What I want to add here is to increase the effect of light. I used the method of giving shaders to cylinders. In addition, I also introduced an external resource_water material at the top of the map. Obviously, such a water material needs to be changed manually.

The effect of light

To achieve the light effect as shown in the figure above, there should be good object occlusion, otherwise it cannot be achieved. For this, I successfully achieved this effect by adding light material to the cylinder.

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The effect node is shown in the figure below:

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Its main working principle is to use a manufacturing method similar to glass. Use the Fresnel node and the calculated light texture. To achieve the effect of light. Of course, nodes such as Panner and depthfade are to make the optical fiber more realistic to give the light a moving direction and depth fade effect.

This week I completed a huge challenge: I made the first doomsday style CG scene.In the process, I became familiar with the lighting layout of the scene in this style.

The first is Sean’s church model. The model mainly made the part of the door and the broken roof. Very nice. Thank you Sean for providing me with such an excellent model. But there are some problems with the model’s UV.

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After the modification, I used the Bridge material. Get the effect shown in the figure below.

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This looks very cool. Thank you Sean again.

Texturing in Mixer

I did not find a suitable wet floor material in Bridge. So I made a new ground texture in Mixer.

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As shown in the figure, I have made three ground materials, in which three materials can be drawn and superimposed in unreal by vertex colors.

Reference

We usually need a lot of references when making scenes. Because no matter how many times we have done it, we can’t just rely on experience and imagination for the details of the scene.

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As shown in the picture: the color and composition of the first picture I will refer to. The reference for the second picture is the performance and composition of the church.

Resources

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The above picture is the resource I used in this scene production.

Build the Scene in Unreal

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First confirm the positional relationship between the character, the camera and the church.

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Then assign the ground material made in Mixer to the ground.

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Adjusting the focus of the camera.

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Adding plants and Cthulhu model.

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The light adjustment in this step is very important. The light source at this angle can get good ground reflection. This light direction is perfect for wet ground.

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Then add volumetric fog, raindrop particles, and adjustments to the scene details.

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The last step is the adjustment of the lights and the adjustment of PostProcessVolume. The role of PostProcessVolume is very important. We can adjust the hue, AO and some details of the lens through this function.