EDEN - "Lizzie & Mark" - short film in Unreal Engine 4.27

Lizzie and Mark embark on a dangerous roadtrip towards Eden facility 47, where they will have their consciousness uploaded onto the cloud, ready to live a new life without physical bodies, away from the unliveable surface of planet earth. Lizzie doubts if their decision is right, but dangers on the road will challenge her to make a heartbreaking choice.

Last year in june, I created a little scene (one of my first ones in UE5) called 'The Facility'. It remains one of my most watched videos to date on youtube, and probably with good reason. The Eden-idea has been living in my mind since the start of the covid-pandemic and many stories set in that universe are swirling through my mind. The story of Lizzie and Mark is one of those, and provided a perfect 'send-off' to UE4 for me. I will ofcourse still be working in UE4 professionally, but since a lot of the bugs in UE5 have been fixed, I might be switching sides again now for my personal work.

I've been using a lot of new tips and tricks in this one, leaving lumen and nanite for the 'old school' raytracing technique, combined with Realtime Virtual Texturing, new console variables, my awesome Kitbash3D kits and the good old Megascans Library. And of course, Metahumans.
However, I tried to focus a little more on the art direction and the composition of shots (after having read Light & Color by James Gurney and Window into Worlds by Devin Elle Kurtz) rather than the extremely technical side.

If you like this short film, you can always check out some of the tiny little written stories I added to my artstation portfolio, delving a little deeper in the heartbreaking journey of Lizzie and Mark. You can also check out 'The Facility'-scene on my YouTube channel.

Leave a comment, Leave a like, tell me which shots you would have done differently, I know they're not all perfect, some engine-limitations were met, and every day is a day to learn!

Cheers,
Sam

- Lizzie's voice over by the lovely and multi-talented Anouk Heyligen -