Category: Personal

After completing the scene in Unreal Engine, I divided the cameras into three shots and exported them to After Effect for editing. In UE, I set up such as camera movement and depth of field to make the picture more cinematic. I used 2.43: 1 for the part of the picture size. To present a more cinematic effect, I use different focal lengths of the lens according to the distance lens, medium shot and close shot so that the audience can see the whole picture more clearly while including the details of the scene.

In AE, I mainly do editing and colour correction. The scene made in UE looks flat. I wanted the picture to look more layered, so I used the Curve tool to adjust the contrast between the front and back. In real scenes, there is often fog in the distance of the ground, so I blurred the horizon of the mountain and sky to make it more realistic. Then I also adjusted the overall tone because I wanted to present the cold feeling of the project. I chose a blue tone to make the environment bluer and more consistent overall.

For the music part, I used symphony-like sound effects, paired with the quilt and the spectacular snow scene, to make the audience feel more involved. In addition to this personal project, I am considering adding this scene to my graduation production.

Next, I began to think about how to combine assets with the existing terrain. The points to be considered included the objects’ composition, size, and rationality. I used the rock of Quixel Bridge, the iceberg model downloaded from the Internet. What I want to do is in the polar ice field, so the frozen glaciers are formed by the mountains in the distant view, and the real scene, there are often huge rocks around the snow mountains.

Because the rocks are not covered with snow, to blend into the scene, I use the nodes in the blueprint to cover the stones with snow material. This is the most difficult part of the production process because of the nodes. The concept is relatively complicated, and I need to understand the concept and try many times to achieve the best effect I want. Then I use Foliage to generate freshly made stones on the terrain.

The pictures below is the final scene I made, with more details than the previous version

The first part of this project is scene set-up. In the initial stage, I found some materials and assets that might be used in Quixel Bridge. It contains many materials, including snow, snow-covered rocks, and snow with footprints. The assets are also quite rich, including snow-covered rock walls and icebergs.

Then I mixed different materials into a Blend Material to draw different textures on the terrain. This is a very practical tool for Unreal Engine. In a Blend Material, different materials can be drawn through different channels.

In the process, I watched many tutorials. In addition to using Unreal Engine more familiarly, I referred to other people’s works to arrange the existing assets into a more cinematic scene.

In the first stage I painted the base material which consisted of the frozen lake, rocks covered with snow, and the the snow.

Since I mostly did architectural and interior scenes in the past, I decided to build a natural environment this time. I have always liked cinematic scenes like Blade Runner 2049, which can greatly impact the audience visually. This time I plan to make a snow scene because I have found a lot of example works, and the snow field is a type that I have not tried. I like the snow mountain map in the Battlefield 5 game because it can make me very fascinated when playing. I use Unreal Engine because it is a powerful and versatile game development engine that can be used for creating realistic and immersive environments, among many other things. In addition to realistic assets, it also renders real-time, so you can directly see the effect of the current production, and the rendering speed is faster than other rendering engines.

I hope to use Unreal Engine to create a realistic environment for this personal project. Since college, I have been studying 3D for more than 5 years. I have actually made it from modelling, texturing, lighting, rendering and other processes. Then I discovered that the part I’m most interested in is texturing and lighting, especially making natural landscapes or interior scenes.