Due to the project’s schedule constraints, I could only complete the first part of the film in time, which was the scene where the sea monster emerged from the water. In the subsequent plot, I designed a scene where the magician faced off against the sea monster, but I didn’t have the chance to finish it in this assignment. In the future, I will choose a date to complete the subsequent part.

Overall, this project facilitated my gradual engagement with VFX in 3D animation, including fluid simulation, fabric simulation, and Niagara particle systems. Since last semester, I have progressively familiarized myself with the independent development workflow of UE5 short films and explored advanced sub-functions within UE, such as fracture simulation and Niagara. Moving forward, I will remain committed to my studies and apply these techniques to the production of the Final Major Project (FMP). It is undeniable that this project exhibits several technical limitations, such as insufficient refinement in fluid simulation and inadequate mass dynamics in Niagara particles. Nevertheless, this project serves as a foundational starting point. Through the process of following various tutorials, I have achieved significant improvement, accumulating invaluable experience for the advancement of future projects.

Once all the footage were rendered, I did all the composition works in After Effects. The main task of compositing is to create sound effects for the film and color grading.

The first step is to calibrate the color of the project file after importing the EXR sequences. According to the export Settings I made in UE, I used the ACEScg color space. The color Settings in the project are as shown in the above figure.

Subsequently, I gathered sound effect materials from the Internet and positioned them at the corresponding points on the timeline, including sounds such as storms, waves, cracking stones, and crows’ caws. As I am not a sound design expert, there are certain challenges in achieving an optimal balance across audio channels:( Nevertheless, I have made every effort to adjust the settings to ensure a reasonably balanced auditory effect.

After all the adjustments are made, export the film and this project is completed.

The sky dome light plug-in Ultra Dynamic Sky was used as main sky dome light source for the scene. Its highly detailed and customizable parameters enabled me to add a realistic cloudy sky to my scene. At the same time. I used the ultra dynamic sky blueprint to add a rain effect to the scene, which perfectly matched the image of a dark sky on a rainy day of the scene in my mind.

Fill light with multi-channel lighting

Under some certain circumstances, multi-channel lighting is required since we only want the main object be effected by the light. In this case, make sure the object and the light source are in the same channel so that only the object we want be illuminated.

As the images show, only the character was illuminated while the other objects were not effected.

In the scene, I used the Niagara System to create two particle effects. One is the red light effect of the idol concentrating energy to summon the evil god, and the other is the flock of birds surrounding above the temple. At present, I have no knowledge of the Niagara System at all. Therefore, these two particle systems are modified from ready-made templates. In the following text, I will briefly introduce these two systems.

The red light effect system comprises two emitters . First, particles are emitted via bursts and exhibit a vortex-like rotation due to the influence of the vortex force field. Additionally, another emitter is established as a sub-emitter, which generates secondary particles based on the existing ones to produce a trailing effect.

Another one utilizes the Niagara particle system to generate flocks of birds. This system employs a simple emitter, where the mesh renderer is used to replace particles with bird animations. Additionally, vortex force and cone initial velocity are incorporated into the particle setup based on the Fountain configuration, thereby creating the effect of bird flocks flying around buildings.

Add Particle Cache

Here is the way to render Niagara particles in a sequencer, follow these steps: 1. Add NiagaraComponenet under the particle system in Sequencer. 2. Add the Niagara System Life Cycle Track. 3. Add cache for Niagara particles. After completing the above steps, the niagara particles can be rendered correctly and ensure that the playback result is correct after caching.

4.Animation

4.1. FBX sequence import

When importing animations, I divide them into two forms: alembic and FBX sequences. Among them, character animations are imported in the form of FBX sequences, while fabric simulation and fluid animations are imported through Alembic cache files.

When importing FBX animation sequences, I encountered a technical problem that I had never encountered before. Axial confusion occurred during the import of the animation sequence, and the characters moved along the wrong axis, causing the animation to be completely disordered. After extensive investigation and studying the tutorial, I understood where the problem lies:

Under the Advanced options for importing animations, there is an option called “Use T0 As Ref Pose,” which is not enabled by default. According to relevant tutorials, when exporting animation sequence frames that do not start from frame 0, Unreal Engine (UE) may use an incorrect reference pose. This can result in improper distortion and tearing of the animation. To address this issue, it is necessary to enable this option so that UE uses the first frame of the imported sequence as the model’s reference pose, ensuring the animation is displayed accurately.

4.2. Alembic Animation

For fabric and fluid animations, Alembic cache files must be imported. When synchronizing creature animations with fluid animations, it is crucial to ensure that the scaling ratio and position of both animations are aligned to accurately match the fluid simulation effect. After importing the liquid cache, I encountered challenges in creating the sea surface effect, as the extent of the Alembic cache was insufficient to represent the entire sea surface. Consequently, I utilized the BOSS Ocean plugin to generate an effect resembling an interactive ocean by overlaying fluid patches onto the surface of the Alembic liquid cache file.

Although the final liquid effect is slightly thick and somewhat like “petroleum”, this is also a compromise under the constraints of the production schedule and computer performance. Subsequently, I will continue to conduct research in the workflow of fluid simulation to create better fluid effects.

3.Scene hierarchy

If a scene contains only buildings, it may lack a sense of layering and spatial depth. To enhance the spatial perception of the scene, I incorporated various elements into the composition, such as dead trees, fog, fences, etc. Among these elements, fog sheets were used most frequently. I strategically placed fog sheets of varying shapes in areas such as around buildings, on the ground, and along water edges to enrich the depth and complexity of the scenes.

The fog sheet is a semi-transparent plane generated by blueprint. Then I developed a material for the semi-transparent fog captured by the camera and subsequently integrated it into the blueprint follow by a tutorial. This material features multiple customizable and adjustable channels, including transparency, color, and attenuation depth, enabling its application across various scenarios with distinct requirements.

In the close-up area, I used some plants, tree stumps and fences to construct some “frameworks” of composition forms.

1. Architecture

After completing the character assets, the next step is to build the scene in UE. I selected multiple sets of dilapidated building assets in the medieval style and chose suitable individual buildings to construct the village as shown in the picture. The main building is a temple dedicated to the statue of the evil god, located on a desolate reef shore.

2.Environment

For the environmental lighting aspect, I use the Ultra Dynamic Sky plugin to create a realistic lighting environment, incorporating cloud coverage and rainy effects. Considering the camera movement, it was unnecessary to develop a highly detailed water body in this scenario, as doing so would have increased performance consumption unnecessarily. Instead, a horizontal plane with reflection characteristics sufficed. To achieve this, I employed two planes to simulate the water surface effect: one reflective layer and one water surface layer. The reflective layer material consists of a low-roughness, mirror-like reflective texture, while the water surface layer material is a mixed material combining basic textures such as ripples, aquatic plants, and bubbles. This combination effectively produces a convincing water surface effect.

2.1. Fabric simulation

I used Marvelous Designer for fabric simulation. The fabric simulation of the character wearing clothes was relatively simple. The character had no overly large movements, and only the cloak was involved in the fabric calculation, so it didn’t consume too much time.

2.2. Fluid simulation

For the fluid simulation, Houdini was selected as the primary tool. Within Houdini, the FLIP system was utilized to simulate the water animation of the creatures. Due to hardware limitations, a 50x50x50 cube containing seven million particles was employed as the simulation domain. Additionally, rather than rendering the fluid layers directly in Houdini and importing the camera into the UE production environment followed by an After Effects compositing workflow, the decision was made to cache the fluid Alembic after the simulation was completed in Houdini and subsequently import it into the UE environment for rendering. Although this approach may sacrifice some detail accuracy, it significantly reduces the complexity of coordinating lighting, camera angles, and other rendering settings across different software, making it more efficient for short-term projects.