Finally we finished our project 01 and I’d like to share our journey in this blog.
Team Members and roles:
Zhenzhong Liang: Story; Storyboard; Character Modeling; Chracter Texturing; Main Editing; Compositing;
Ziyin Wang: Story; Storyboard; Creature Eye Modeling; Creature Eye Texturing; Animation; Compositing;
Yaozhang Zhong: Story; Storyboard; Environment Layout; Lighting; Camera Animation; Rendering; Compositing;
Guanze Wu: Story; Storyboard; Rigging; Environment Layout; Lighting; Camera Animation; Rendering; Compositing;
Script and Storyboard
At first we decide to make a 90-120 seconds Cthulhu style CG film. After we disgussed and evaluated the time cost and schedule, we finally decided to make a 60 seconds Cthulhu style cinematic CG trailer.
I asked Yaozhang to write the inital story for our trailer. After he finished it I added more detail to his script. Then we held a meeting to adjust the whole script together and finally confirmed it.
Here is a brief of our story:
Year 2025, the organization detects that an abnormal radiation signal is expanding in the restricted area. Several inspectors have been sent to the area to investigate the signal and collect evidence, but the base losts their contact soon. Therefore, the organization asks two inspectors to continue collecting evidence and try to find the investigation team.
The investigation goes well at the beginning. However, as the investigation expanded, inspectors find some bodies of the investigation team. They also find a mysterious cave inside the aabandoned area. After entered in the cave, they realized that there is some mysterious forces inside the area……
After that we started to make our storyboard. We finished our own storyboard individually.
Our storyboard and references in miro: https://miro.com/app/board/uXjVO8cHs_Y=/
Then we shared our storyboard and selected some of the shots that we want. Zhenzhong then edited these shots together and added a background music to it. This can be considered as the prototype of our trailer:
Modeling
After finished storyboard and the prototype, we started to make assets and build the environment. Zhenzhong is responsible for the character modeling and Ziyin is responsible for the monster eye modeling.
Texturing
As I mentioned before, Zhenzhong is responsible for the character texturing and Ziyin is responsible for the monster eye texturing. Me and Yaozhang gathered some textures from quixel to build the environment.
Rigging
I started to rig these character after Zhenzhong and Ziyin finished modeling. What I did is rigging two characters body and the creature eye. I also did a simple rig for the Geiger counter, which is an important prop in our project.
Environment Layout & Lighting
Me and Yaozhang started to build environments in Unreal Engine and Maya when Zhenzhong and Ziyin focusing on their modeling. I totally made 5 scenes, while Yaozhang focusing on the other four scenes. All these scenes covers about 12 shots.
To speed up the process, we gathered some assets and textures in quxiel bridge and unreal store and used them to build our scene. I also use Houdini to make landscapes and cave. It tooks us several weeks to finish the layout of environment and lighting. The result is quite satisfying.
Animation
Ziyin did the animations in our scenes. It only took us about one week to finish the animation and the result is fine. After imported these animations to Unreal Engine, me and Yaozhang prepared several camera sequences in each scene so that we can render out several versions of shots and choose which shots that we want when editing.
Rendering & Compositing & Editing
Herman told us that we need to do our compositing and editing separately. Therefore, we rendered out three to four versions for each shot in Unreal Engine. At the sametime, Zhenzhong finished the title sequences for us. He also made the editing template for us in PR, which is quite useful.
After finished rendering, we did our trailer compositing and editing separately. It is quite interesting that we did our own version of the trailer. The colors and the rhythm of each trailer is quite unique.
Reflections
From my point of view, this project is quite interesting. We used a combination of several techniques to finish our trailer. What’s more, we explored unreal engine and other techniques, which can be one of the biggest challenges in this project. The combination of maya and unreal workflow can significantly speed up our process, which is handy and useful.
Since the time is quite limited, some parts of this project don’t have enough time to be polished. As for me, I think we can optimize our lighting and animation if we still have some time. Anyway, we achieved our goal in this project. We learned a lot and enjoyed ourselves in it.