#milestone1a

[coolanimatron]

So here is one of the 2d assets I have brought into the unreal engine. I am having a problem with the keying aspect of things, they seem to not be clean, parts of the legs and outlines are being cut off

[n9691910cgtoolkits]

Progress so far

on september the third I encountered my first problem. I had just learnt how to import videos into unreal through the media player, but the overall goal was to key out the green to make a green screen. When ever I tried to use Chroma key in unreal engine it would crash. Here are screen shots of everything that was going wrong :  https://n9691910cgtoolkits.tumblr.com/post/165062665014/1-i-have-my-film-in-the-correct-project-folder-i 

I asked my tutro about how to fix this issue, I had to use media textures and in the nodes create my own green screen. as seen here: 

With this working a huge milestone had been achieved, now the next task was to create a 3D environment for my character to be in.

[n9691910cgtoolkits]

Sorry late post. I forgot to mention that I also learned how to make the camera look more cinematic.

[mmartdesignscg]

Milestone 1A - AUGUST 9TH

This week was based on render passes and using them to add an effect based on distance with After Effects.

Time Spent:

30 minutes spent on setting up the grey box

1 hour spent animating the camera and cylinder, working with the sequencer

1 hour spent in After Effects, adding the blue tinge to distant items and the video in the sky

30 minutes spent on the reflection

This week, as I started, I found I was a little rusty with my animation. Since I’d started experimenting before I did the milestone, I was familiar with the controls, and the animation is the only thing that took me longer than expected in UE4. I worked through it by spinning-top like animation I was planning with the falling animation I’ve done in the video. If I’d had more time, I would’ve have liked to work through the original animation idea and develop it to look how I imagined it.

I also had some issues with After Effects. Since I’d used it before I had some basic skill in using it but had trouble with the render passes. I worked with it for a while and kept confusing the luma and alpha passes with each other, ending up with a weird effect I had to fix several times so the blue tint and video wouldn’t be covered by each other. I learnt a lot in the process though, and figured out how to work with opacity and the alpha/luma channels to make a nice fog effect without completely covering the distant items.

Something I will have to learn after this milestone is how to change scene depth passes so I don’t continue to get really low contrast renders where they become nearly unusable.

Render Passes:

[mmartdesignscg]

Basic Geometry, Camera Animation, and Lighting

After following a tutorial (previously posted in references) about basic geometry brushes in UE4, I tried it out for myself and learned some additional things while making the box.

Time Spent:

1 hour spent in Unreal editing geometry, lighting, and camera animation

1 hour spent in After Effects working with render passes

I made the box using the basic geometry section of the actors, adding a cube and then setting the brush to subtract before adding another. Then I placed the camera and realised just showing a static shot isn't very interesting. I animated the camera slightly to get a better shot of the box and show that it was a 3D object. After that, the box was pitch black inside and I found that directional light was more skybox based rather than local. I experimented with the directional light for a while and found that a spotlight worked much better when lighting a specfic room.

Originally I planned this to have an edit that had a rabbit sitting behind the cube, but after trying to work through it in After Effects I lost the file. At that point I'd left it as it is, and decided to work more on the greybox for the milestone.

Render Passes:

[mmartdesignscg]

Basic Animation Experiment

While exploring UE4 I needed to take the time to become familiar with the new interface and navigation controls. For this I played around with a bouncy cube, using knowledge I had from previous 3D editing software to find the graph editor.

This was a catch up task to get myself better acquainted with UE4.

Time Spent:

1 hour spent researching videos and following starter tutorials

30 minutes spent animating the cube

10 minutes spent exporting the video and uploading it

Render Passes:

[msknb221]

I followed the recommended tutorial “ Full 'Cinematics with Sequencer' Project Tutorial “ to video 6 and rendered the result as a final image render pass. I then turned this into a video in AE. This tutorial was really helpful for me as I haven't animated in a long time (1 year break from animation). The refresher into animating and UE4 in particular was really good. I learned about animating the camera, sequencer, and animating various actor types.

[knb221ash]

A short animated sequence exported from UE4, Models created in blender.

In the process of creating the scene it was decided that a more dynamic camera action would show off more of the scene and as such a camera crane object was used.

From initial investigation, using the depth pass in after effects has a great dea of versatility. Aside from simply compositing basic shapes as was done in the milestone render, the depth pass can also be used to create realistic lens focus, to simulate exceptionally dark shadows as shown, which could be useful for either creating a darkened foreground such as a cave or creating exaggerated shadows for other purposes, or to composite 2d effects over 3d effects for a more realistic output.

Most of the time spent on this milestone was in after effects, as that was the program with which I have the least experience, which in comparison to the modelling and UE4 work which I found quite easy was initially difficult to figure out.

More time on this project would likely see an extended shot with additional cuts and a more coherent end product rather than simply a render of my experiments in addition to more screenshots of said experiments. The pipeline was different than I am used to working within, though it does conform to what I knew previously of animated film production.