Overview of VFX Project
This assignment page will document my process and design concepts of my VFX final video. My VFX assignment will be created in Unreal engine 4 instead of unreal engine 5 due t o the fact I’m not comfortable with unreal engine 5 just yet for the user interface and wanted to choose a piece of software I was relatively comfortable with rather than having to learn a new one in my final year modules for a main assignment.
My project will ultimately be a video game trailer for an open world environment with a teaser to combat early on in the sequence as well as having a variety of effects and post processing techniques including the lighting and consideration of how the visual effects interact with the environment I have chosen to use and the character I will be having within it.
Planning and Concept
Ive decided on makign a 3D environment trailer for a open world rpg game in unreal engine 4. This trailer would feature two scenes one being quite a short intense scene with a fireball and arrows flying at a character, this is to simulate the feel of a intense dungeon with alot of combat and risk with a tease to a magic based combat.
The other scene will focus on a more scenic peaceful tone with the camera panning around the environment and back to the fireflies for a peaceful scenic fading out to black. The combination of all of this and a slow paced camera panning focusing on the environment and effects will be to show off a more open world environment the player of the game would be experiencing and would be able to explore a lot more than what is teased in the trailer.
I have continued to use a suite of software called Zenkit (Axonic Informationssysteme GmbH, 2016) to plan and organise all of my assignment work and help structure things. This allowed me to conceptualize the assignment before actually starting the practical work for it as well as plan out the various VFX that I want to use for my assignment.
Story Board
I have designed my whole story board digitally and it logs some of my key events in the video project I will be implementing including the visual effects, lighting emitters as well as the directions and movement of things.
My story board is made up of 11 key events that happen from the start to finish directed y black arrows between each scene. Below i will do a break down of every single one of the sequences and what they entail and describe in their visuals.
Any annotations are in blue and yellow. Blue showing movement of objects, Yellow showing light emitting effects.
Duration: 3-7 Seconds
Effects: Portal, Arrows, Fire Sconces
Description: This scene is the opening to the game trailer, for this the character will be running towards the portal and making a quick 180 turn facing the direction where arrows will be coming at the character from. The camera will be either doing a 180 view of the dungeon, or following the character from behind as they run towards the portal.
Duration: 3-10 Seconds
Effects: Fireball, Arrows
Description: This scene will have the camera behind the character or in the perspective of the character to give a simulation of some form of combat. The arrows will be flying towards the character as indicated by the blue arrows. I am undecided in the development of this if the camera will zoom intoward the arrows and then going back to the character as they charge up a fireball.
Duration: 1-3 Seconds
Effects: Portal, Fireball, Fire Sconces
Description: This sequence is mostly to show the camera work between sequences, the effects will be very repetitive as this is just camera work capturing the effects from different perspectives. The character will be casting the fireball towards the darkness before making a rapid ajustement in animation.
Duration: 2-5 Seconds
Effects: Portal, Fireball
Description: The camera will be starting to move inward towards the portal to frame it for the next sequence, It should also capture the fireball firing away from the character into the darkness.
Duration: 4-6 Seconds
Effects: Portal
Description: The character will enter the portal and the camera will start focus the portal and once the character has entered the portal, they will no longer be in the scene and the portal will close. As soon as the portal has closed it will start a fade to black sequence.
Duration: 2-5 Seconds
Effect: Fade to black
Description: This fade to black is designed to be a form of transition sequence between the two scenes as the character goes from portal to portal.
Duration: 5-10 Seconds
Effect: Fireflies, Portal, Torch Sconces
Description: A short sequence of the character exiting the portal as the camera pans down towards their view and perspective getting a close up of the character capturing their reaction as they enter this very different, scenic environment at night compared to the dark chaos of the dungeon.
Duration: 5-10 Seconds
Effect: Fireflies, Portal, Torch Sconces
Description: Once the camera is panned in close to the character, either in the characters perspective or a close up view of the character, they will be captured looking around being unfamiliar yet at a form of peace with the new environment they have found themselves in.
Duration: 10-20 Seconds.
Effect: Portal, Torch Sconces, Fireflies,
Description: The camera will be panning around different parts of the environemnt capturing what is to be seen, aswell as following along with the character as they make their way walking down the road.
Duration: 5-10 Seconds
Effect: Fireflies
Description: Camera pans back over slowly towards the fireflies inbetween some trees, this gives a peaceful and steady end capturing more of the environment the player would get to experience in a full fledged game.
Duration: 2-5 Seconds
Effect: Fade To Black
Description: The Final scene fading to black once again to round up the entire VFX animation project.
List of effects and assets needed
For my VFX Project I will be exploring the effects I require to make my game trailer. The effects I need will be mostly focused around the environment that a character will be walking through. I’m going to use a combination of these and camera work in order to get the main feel of the vfx project to be a game trailer.
The effects I will be exploring involve the following. Flickering fire and Smoke, a fire ball, arrows flying, fireflies glowing and flickering, a fog effect, particle effect from staff to portal to activate it. These will make up my main effects. As well as the main feature of the environment being the portals.
This would be the start of the the game trailer and look to be a fast paced scene. Arrows flying at the main character, along with the main character running towards the portal as it activates. During the departure of the dungeon, the character would throw a fireball into the dark mist of where the arrows are comign from.
As for generalized assets i will be using a small combination of found things and my own custom made such as my portal frame i will be using in combination with the portal effect itself. The environment of the production video will be set in two locations. A dungeon as the opening sequence i modelled myself to keep it simple and easy as well as a premade environment.
The second scene would be set in more of a scenic environment within a forest and a small path. The effects in this scene would be the portal, fireflies and fire sconces. The main character would walk down the path and the camera work would be panning around between the environment and effects.
Effect Breakdown
This segment of my project production log will be dedicated about my effects and what I am wanting to get out of them as well as the steps I took to create them for the final pieces for the video assignment, with a mixed media of Images, writing and gifs of the affects. All effects have been made in unreal engine 4 with the Niagara plugin with various effects. I have not used many tutorials at all for this experimentation and have chosen to learn a lot of it myself looking at more realistic references to create my effects. Along with this i do have Raytracing enabled in unreal 4 giving a more realistic lighting as my GPU does support raytracing natively.
Portal Effect
For my main center piece of the environments i have designed my portal frame. Within this the portal is designed to be a magical effect portal which i would have to consider common colours used for magic portals such as blue, green and pinks. My portal frame will have a portal swirling effect. I have experimented alot with the colouration and different patterns within the effects to help decide what should be my final effect for the outcome. The main forest environment will have alot of green as its within a forest with the portal surrounded by rocks. I was origninally wanting to use a green portal frame as its rather iconic for magic however i thought this would be to similar to the rest of the environment. The portal would be made with a taurus shape with simple sprite burst, by altering the spawn rate and emitter state i could create a full ring of particles for the basic shape of the portal. Adding a Vortex effect to this spun it and made it look like it was pulling inwards.
I experimented alot with different elements within niagra to make all the effects primarily to do with the spawn rate, vortex, spawn shape and curl drag. This basic green portal has quite a high vortex and drag however its colour blends too well with the environment and i was rather unhappy with it. To break up the high ammount of green i experimented with some blue effects adding in more of a wormhole effect to the portal.
For the colouration i started settling on a purple effect. Temporarily i removed the moving particles that come out of the portal, and replaced it with a large blurred simple burst of particles, with a vortex velocity applied giving it the swirling effect within a certain boundary, for example. The portal frame. As the experimentation went on i added the hanging particle effect back and ajusted the curl noise force nad drag more aswell as adding the vortex back on to it. I made it less exagerrated and added a blue static glowing particle. These combinations and experimentations would create my finalized portal effect which i belive has a good colour for contrast of the environment aswell as looking magical as this portal is intended. The portal swirl and particles have a light emitter tied to them giving the portal a glow in the dark theme of the environment also.
The blue effect added alot of particles and made it rather unoptimized and had some issues with responsiveness aswell as quality. overall i still felt this did not fit the portal effect i was lookign for for my environment. I removed the blue swirl and experimented alogn with some more different particles that swirl and move away from the portal while it is open. Still indecisive on the colouration i am aiming to achive. I started looking towards the colour wheel and colour theory to what contrasts green and the natural colouration in the environment.
To create my portal effect in full these are the nodes and systems i have used in the blueprint. Two Simple Sprite bursts aswell as two hanging particle nodes from the Unreal Engine 4 Niagra blueprint.
each of these particle nodes have a variety of modules attached in which i have ajusted their base values to create each of these effects in the way i want them.
Fireball effect
The main character in the scene is a mage of sorts with a background in fire magic. Part of this I will be making a fireball effect to be fired off from the mage during the dungeon scene. This will also be more traditional in the colour of the fire for the fireball but will be part of the opening scene to the game trailer giving a hint of mage and magic combat. The camera will be behind the the mage character capturing a third person view after switching from the arrow as it almost hits the character, while they are firing off the fireball into the dark foggy distance the camera will be switching around to capture the character before and during going through the portal.
Making my fireball was my first effect to be done fully without major experimentation or a tutorial. Through out the project and experimentation with the portal and other effects i felt like i had enough confidence and knowledge on what it was that i needed to be doing for this effect.
This was also the first effect i had made from scratch with a empty emitter allowing me to fully customize it and put in different nodes and updates each affecting the particles in different ways.
To create the fireball it wasn’t as simple as using just particles as they don’t conform with a fire texture or shape. I had to create a material blueprint for the fireball to apply instead of a basic sprite vendor. To do this i used a texture found within the Unreal Engine 4 starter content and used a couple of multipliers with the alpha channel and base RGB value pinning them into the emissive colour and opacity. Doing this allows the texture sample to be coloured correctly within the niagra plugin.
Arrow Effect
One of the arrows would go on to build suspense for the scene as I have set a camera to track on a 180 degree view as the arrow as it comes in close contact with the main character. This would all be done with a Camera and the arrow itself moving position by adjusting the transform settings within the sequencer. As the arrow flies through the scene it does rotate to add realism for arrow movement.
For my arrow effect I was looking at how I could approach it. Instead of using an actual visual effect like the fireball or portal I have decided I would go on to model a basic arrow with a appropriate texture applied I made within Substance Painter.
Once the arrow had been textured i could import it into unreal engine 4 and set it up with the sequencer like the main character. Doing it like this would allow for a effective, detailed and simplistic approach rather than trying to manipulate particles into an arrow shape. I had considered making a trailing effect on the arrow however given my time frame I had and the fact the arrows will be going through smoke making them harder to see, I opted not to and put more time into things like the fireball and the portal. This effect would have been made using simple particle spawns with a high rate of spawn so it would make an effective trail that would decay over time by adjusting the lifetime of those particles.
Fireflies
This effect is supposed to be mimicking the movement and rough look of fireflies. I have chosen to experiment with stylizing them however giving them more of a unique and magic infused look to match the area of the portal. I’ve chosen to go with a blue colour to contrast the environment but to compliment the portal colour subtly. Using this colour will help them stand out and feel matching with the portal giving it more of a “magicky” feel rather than going with the traditional yellow which does contrast purple directly on a colour wheel. I feel like this is a acceptable colour to do what I want complimenting the environment and portal.
The extra effects i have used to create my blue fireflies are curl noise force which adds more movement to the particles making it look both more realistic and natural with randomized movement; and I’ve also adjusted the life span and spawn rate to decrease the amount of fireflies at any given time but lengthened the particle life to give them a realistic looking duration of the fireflies as they fly about. The fireflies will be along a tree line in a forest for the scene.
This gif shows the start of my fireflies visual effect just as slow moving blue orbs. To achieve this i have used the unreal engine Niagara plugin with a Hanging Particle preset and adjusted the colour as well as adding a vortex force to give them some slow movement.
To make the final particle effect I have added a couple of extra effects on to the hangign particle to give it a more natural and lively movement. I used a youtube video by BBC Earth to help understand how fireflies act during mating periods to understand some of their movement and how their abdomens glow and how their movement works.
For the fireflies i only had to create one hanging particle effect with niagra. For this effect to work it was very basic however i determined keeping it basic allowed it to look more realistic aswell as optimized for the scene.
The effect had to have a light emitter to add realism in what it was based off. Other than that it had some curl noise and drag giving it the realistic movement for fireflies.
Floor Smoke
To achieve the effect it was very basic compared to my portal, however it did require a external texture which I had created with the basic unreal 4 content after researching how to make a good more realistic smoke effect rather than using enlarged particles on their own. I did use a tutorial for developing this smoke effect as i was struggling more with this than the fire effect.
Overall this visual effect didn’t require much experimentation from me to achieve what I wanted, I have experimented a lot with the portal effect and learnt more and more with the Niagara tool, doing this has made a lot of my effects afterwards easier to achieve without the use of tutorials and irrelevant experimentation on things that wont achieve my goal.
This effect overall will be similar in the way of the other fire ball however this will be more of a thick foggy smoke on the floor of the dungeon scene giving it some more depth and immersion for the dungeon rooms. Rather than a fire flickering effect.
I will be using the same method and the same textured effects overall that I had created with nothing more but the basic content from the unreal 4 tool box, the smoke from the torch sconces will be similar however this will be much more dense and a darker colour. To achieve this compared to my other smoke effect I had to increase the spawn rate and the life time however I had to find a balance of both to keep this a stable and optimized partial effect as it would be covering a large area compared to my other effects. The colouration in this gif will not be final however the effect is complete. The flickering of the effect only happens when its being previewed.
Atmosphere and LIghting
Scene one will be in a dungeon. This will be a very dark environment with little to light it up. however for the cameras to capture the visual effects and the main character i will have to implient some form of lighting to allow me to capture the environment and effects for my project.
For my atmosphere and lighting i am aiming for a night time effect for the second scene, this would compliment the effects for my project as most of them have light renders on them. I will have to consider the darkness of the scene as using cameras and rail systems they will not see the scene i will need to capture.
This has improved the overall view of the scenes darkness however has created many shadows that were originally unwanted. However I have decided this plays in to the scene itself and gives a good balance for the environment playing out as a bright full moon light with it being white lighting rather than having no lighting atall.
This test render of scene 1 allows me to view how the effects and animations work in a low light setting. I am happy with the portal lighting for the character however as the character runs down the dungeon it is very complicated to see the scene properly. I will have to address t his with lighting however I cant have the light too bright otherwise it will ruin the effect of the environment.
Overall both of these environments the dungeon and the forest scene have too dark an environment. For the out door scene I have corrected this by using a directional light and having it on a low intensity. This looks much brighter in the actual editor so I have opted to not use a screenshot of its affect in there as it would not produce a realistic view of what it has changed. However it is visible properly when playing the scene or having it rendered out and will be visable in Test Render 2 Scene 2.
Smoke + Fire for Torches
This was going to be another effect i was going to use for my scene, having flaming torches within the environment however I changed my mind half way through. While I believe they would look rather interesting for the environment I don’t see them fitting my theme of the magic combat game trailer all too well with what I have got so far. To create this effect however would have been rather simple and i would have had to use techniques i used in creating t he fireball as well as the floor smoke combining these together. Instead of them being a sheet or a spherical shape they would have been more of a directional cone going upwards with a colour fade so the longer they are present they s tart fading out of the viewport giving it a realistic effect, however I also had concerns about the torches messing with the lighting of the scene more taking away from the camera movement and the portal effect.
Ultimately I do feel like it would have been nice to include here however I did not believe in its benefit for my environment and opted not to use them.
Animation + Camera Work
For my main character to be able to interact with the environment I will be requiring some animations. As I do not have the time to fully rig and animate a model of my own creation i will be looking to external sources for a 3D model and Animations.
Between the block out and the final renders i had a better understanding of my environment and how I wanted the camera to capture the animations and effects. Some adjustments were made from the block out versions including adding more camera rails and arms to capture more natural and dynamic angles allowing for better transitions and control. This allowed me to capture better angles and really highlight some of my visual effects and the importance of them to the scenes.
After much experimentation with models and along time of looking I could not find any that fit my theme and environment for free so I resorted to looking on an Adobe tool suite called Mixamo (Adobe, 2019) which I would then go on to source all my animations and the 3D character from this tool
All of the animations and the model to the left are from Mixamo (Adobe, 2019) and would be implemented in to the sequencer within unreal engine 4. Once I had implemented them I could then blend them together on the time line to get them to interact together and transition smoothly.
Along with consideration for the animations during the blockout stage i have had to consider how i want to be using the camera and positioning of it. Within unreal engine 4 there are arms and rail systems which can be used to control the camera besides the camera just moving and panning itself which can lead to the camera control quite difficult when it is moving within a large unreal environment. The images below are top down views of my block out made within maya highlighting the camera planning with pink extruded cubes acting as plans for the rail systems.
Final Tweaks
Between the final camera work and the final render of the video i had made some minor ajustments to the environment. These changes were adding some more trees from the Meadow environment pack (NatureManufacture, 2019) aswell as darkening the overall environment a little more from 5 Lux to 3 Lux on the directional light controlling the view of the out door scene.
Reflection
Overall I feel like this project has been very successful on my part as I have learnt a hell of a lot throughout this assignment. Experimenting with the portal early on as my biggest visual effect felt like it was very beneficial to me as I ended up creating effects from scratch knowing full well what I was actually doing and what I wanted to achieve. I did not use many visual references in general for this assignment and I don’t feel like that was a problem for me at all.
If I had to change anything for this assignment, I would spend more time on every effect and just make the entire thing overall longer and more in-depth, as I was trying to achieve a video game trailer covering the feel of an Open world and magic based combat and that there would be dungeon crawling. If I wasn’t concerned about deadlines I would have put in more characters and more work in with the animations besides the one character I had that I used from Mixamo (Adobe, 2019). as everything else in this was created by me except the Meadow environment (NatureManufacture, 2019). Along with this I had noticed in the final render of my video that some of the camera movement near the end of the scene seems a little un natural and I believe I would be able to smoothen this out given more time and more attention to the detail of the rail system. This was my first attempt using it and I do believe I could make some adjustments to help the fluidity and nature of the camera to be more organic.
I opted for not putting audio in this final render however I do wish that I could have. I was looking for audio and in my previous attempts they were being flagged for copyright claims, as I was doing a game trailer I did not wish to use sound effects for the environment and wanted to use a form of peaceful music that encouraged openness and freedom with the drive to explore for an open world video game. The ones I had tried I could not either get working with a high enough quality or overall sound tone to work with the rest of my assignment or would get copyright claimed and muted within YouTube.
Final Render - Assignment 2
References
Adobe (2019) Mixamo. Mixamo. Available online: https://www.mixamo.com/#/.
Ashford, D. (2021) UE4 | UE5 – Tutorial – Simple Smoke / Steam Niagara! www.youtube.com. Available online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eV_NOql9hMw [Accessed 10 Mar. 2023].
Axonic Informationssysteme GmbH (2016) Zenkit Suite. Zenkit. Available online: https://zenkit.com/en/.
BBC Earth (2021) Fireflies: Nature’s Femme Fatales | Animal Einsteins | BBC Earth. www.youtube.com. Available online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nXz4yUDHo98&t=32s [Accessed 10 Mar. 2023].
NatureManufacture (2019) Meadow – Environment Set in Environments – UE Marketplace. Unreal Engine. Available online: https://www.unrealengine.com/marketplace/en-US/product/meadow-environment-set.