Haowen Wang
This is a Sci-Fi film with my favourite superhero style and robot element, It is the first time for me to make animation with Unreal Engine 5, hope you enjoy it
About
Hello everyone, my name is Haowen Wang, I am an MSc Animation and VFX student at the University of Dundee. I am so proud of finishing my first personal short film and showing you. This is a sci-fi short film with a superhero-style story, with exciting battle scenes and giant robot elements, the story happened in a world that was controlled by robots, and some heroes characters fight against a giant robot and save the world. I have been a superhero fan for many years, and have always wanted to make my own superhero film, now, I got it.
This is a 100% original story I created, and I was in charge of storyboard design, character design, 3D model & texture making, film making and so on, it was a huge project for me.
This short film was made with the newest cinematic production tool, the Unreal Engine 5, I had researched about Unreal Engine the whole academic year, and I am happy to master this skill and make this film successfully, it is a good start.
About the software
For the main making software, I chose Unreal Engine for the animation and render part, I had known about the advantage of Unreal Engine 4 the early last year before I study, and I know the new generation Unreal Engine 5 would be released soon which have more incredible features like Lumen Lighting system, Nanite mesh which supporting million-level faces model. What I like the most is the Real-time rendering, it would save much more making time to see the final output. and I’ve also known from CG articles the game engine has become a trend and has already been changing the game, film, and animation industries, especially, the Unreal Engine is applied in the new cinematic technology for high-quality environment effects, lots of VFX famous companies are using UE for their movie projects. So I think it is time to learn it and make something to keep pace with this trend. In Semester 1, I did some research about making movies with Unreal Engine and wrote a paper in the Research & Development course. It made me have a further understanding, in theory, then during semester 2, I started to learn some tutorials about film-making in Unreal Engine and some skills I might use, this includes how to import assets, how to set lights, how to use the camera, how to use the sequencer, how to custom MetaHuman and use Motion capture data apply on it, how to render video, how to make VFX with Niagara & chaos systems... something like that... Luckily they are not as difficult as I thought, the official documents and some tutorials from Youtube gave me lots of help and gave a perfect reflection on my working process. Besides. I also expanded my workflow with my friend’s help, During my making process in Semester 3. I heard about Unreal Engine can work together well with Houdini, My friend Phillip plays Houdini well, so we collaborated on a few shots with VFX. This experience made us know deeply about this two software and more interested in them According to the Information of lecture from wild child and Axis studios,I know the importance of Unreal Engine, and how few people in this industry know how to use UE5, this prompted me to learn it well.
Design of story and character
In Semester 1, I made three concept design images for exploring the theme of my sci-fi film, I selected the robot killer theme eventually. It reminds me of some paintings I drew years ago, I‘ve always been a fan of stories about robots, giant machines, and superheroes, so I think it would be fun to make my own big robot and superhero film with these concepts design, then I made a rough storyboard for creating my story, thought about the battle environment, characters with their action, and camera angle as well, I tried my best to make story simple, the story happened in a world that was controlled by robots, some hero character fight against a giant robot and save the world After I had my story, I turned to designing my character, I remained with the main concept of a robot killer and paid more attention to the three hero characters. The character design part spent me half a month. Actually at the film-making stage, for making sure the short film could be completed, the story had to be scaled down, and one character was cancelled, I also adjust the structure of the story to fit the temporary change, and add some attractive VFX ideas in the story.
3D assets Preparing
3D assets part included models and textures, it was a long process for me and spent almost three months and a half, Before I start, I watched a lot of Zbrush hard surface tutorials on Youtube channel to review modeling and texturing knowledge, I also learned a new software Topogun for topology, Then I mainly followed the concept design I’ve drawn before and add more details and visual interests, I am happy to see the final modes and satisfied with it, For the head of female characters, I used MetaHuman, a program of Unreal Engine, which allows me to use facial motion capture for facial expression. I changed the colour of her hair eventually because I think the red looks better than the previous blue one. There are two robot characters, one is a removable bad guy, and the other is a static robot body for the background that was modified by my model I made in Semester 1. The environmental elements are all damaged buildings made up of kitbash assets, and I added lots of fire and smoke elements to battle the atmosphere. Check my personal blog for full details.
Update the short film
During semester 3, every week we had personal tutorials or presentations, I can get tons of useful feedback from my supervisor and classmates. I recorded all those feedback for each week and then adjust my film to follow those advice. Let me give you some examples, in my first design the color of the robot was light green and blue, and the feedback from sang was a light color not seems aggressive and dangerous, and looks close with male hero colour, then I change a dark look. Number 2, after my lecturer saw my first render sequence, she said the atmosphere of the battlefield was not enough, then I added more fire, smoke, bricks elements in the scene to enhance the atmosphere, and the scene has improved dramatically. Number 3: my supervisor pointed out the neck of female character looks stiff in my early version, I updated it as well, I also change the lighting and colour tune and rendered second version sequences, my classmate helped me with the second version lighting, I learned a lot from him, here is the compared video for my update.
Final short film
I was so glad to see the final short film, it mostly narrow my initial idea for this story. It serves my purpose that use Unreal Engine to make my own superhero style Sci-fi short film, and I have also found my weakness and gained lots of valuable experience when making it, I became more confident when facing new things and I have also built a further aim for my future career. I will keep going and studying deeper and further and make contributions to the animation & VFX field.
Support this graduate
I will keep going and researching Animation and VFX, follow my social media if you are interested, and I will keep bringing more related interesting CG works or animation short film.