The project
As a part of my collage we had to make a short video in teams. Personally, as you might know, I have quite some experience in working with the Unreal Engine.
In short, we had the task to create a little story with the theme; another world. The video may be a maximum of 5 minutes and have at least 4 shots. My team was inspired by this image. We thought it would be fun to make a story in a post apocalyptical world that has flooded. The character would sail in a small wooden boat. Everything would be peaceful. To contrast this world above the water, underneath the surface everything is dark and evil. We thought of a dragon like creature.
After assigning the roles, we went straight to work. Since I had by far the most experience in Unreal, it as my job to be a unreal handyman. And this was handy indeed. Most of my time I spend tutoring the others. And I really like tutoring, so that’s a win. And if something was more difficult, I would take over the task.
Real time water and procedural alge
To challenge myself I decided to work with real-time water simulations. As it turns out, Unreal is packed with tools to do this. I have played with some particle based simulations, but for the water in this scene I needed a shallow water simulation. Luckily Unreal Niagara has a tool to make these kinds of simulations.
In the beginning I gave the water random forces to create the natural ripples on the water, but later I decided to use a noised based texture to create the small ripples due to performance. After that, it was time to create white water on places where the water was moved. This added the realism needed.
The next step was implementing the simulation in the scene. The water surface was too big to simulate. So I only simulated the area’s needed. The water didn’t blend well with the rest of the environment. It looked like the water has just spawned in. No damage or dirt on the rocks nor water.
So I decided to work on that. First I made an edge detection to the water material. Using this data I layered some gross alge on the water that would not move. I matched the structure and size of the alge to some reference photo’s. After that it was time to add dirt to the rocks and other elements. For this I made a system that detects the waterlevel. And depending on the distance to it it ads the same alge material. Besides that it makes sure the materials under the surface look more dull.
The result
After two weeks, the project was done. And as always, there is a lot to improve. But overal, I think the result is decent. All the shots are decently polished. And they tell the story. Personally, I wanted to make a bigger story. But it is what it is. Even though I have worked in Unreal a lot, I’ve still learned some new things about the simulations and shading workflow.
Credits
Regie
Head of Unreal
Head of Animation
Creature sculpt/Textures
Blockout
Sound design
Inge Wenneker
Thijs Smeele
Guus Frijns
Rood Bik
Milan Verhaeg
Merel Koomen