'Launch' - Unreal Engine 5.3 - Short story with Metahuman Motion Capture
The last video of 2023! This year I've learned a ton and improved my skills and workflows when it comes to both paid and personal projects. Here with this short story 'Launch', I've combined a lot of my tricks and I hope you like it as much as I do. I worked on this quite hard in the past month and even though Unreal presented me with 2 glitches I was not able to remove, I'm very happy with the result, closing 2023 with a personal Unreal victory.
In 'Launch' I'm using @RokokoMotion Smartsuit Pro II and Smartgloves to create motion capture for my metahumans, playing the characters myself and doing the retargeting in Unreal. -- I've recently stumbled upon the wonderful @METATAILOR which enables me to ditch the old T-shirt and hoodie that come with the vanilla metahumans and create and auto-rig custom clothing to my metahumans. Absolutely essential software. -- I'm using a record amount of 7 different kits from @KitBash3D in this one scene, where I was able to leverage the power of Cargo, their bridge-like software, to quickly find and import the models. -- After not using it for quite a while I rediscovered and improved my workflow with @quixeltools Quixel Mixer to redesign and remix existing assets to fit the art direction I'm going for. -- After tinkering with @ImaginaryBlend's Fluid Flux for quite a while to get it right in my last video, I was surprised how easily I was able to implement it this time around, almost plug and play. -- @JessePitelaVFX's Niagara Fluids course enabled me to very intuitively create my own realtime smoke simulations in UE now, and I'm very happy with my pipe and rocket launch results. -- When it came to sound design I altered my voice with @elevenlabsio AI voice, to provide Cal, Hana and the Announcer with a unique voice. -- Lastly, after rendering in Unreal, I used the plugin @Dehancer for DaVinci Resolve, emulating real analog film profiles.
I always love hearing from you guys so I'll be happy to listen to any feedback that you might have! And let me know what features of Unreal that I'm using here are most interesting to you.
All the best, Happy Holidays and wishing you a great 2024!
-Sam
A w.ide view of the Wall. Lots of microdetail going on here. I snuck in the short film title in this shot.
WATCH the short here:
The first shot I locked for this video. Loved to finally do a long take that really changes from a long shot to a two shot for dialogue.
The continuation of that second shot. Really like the two shot we end with.
Another favorite shot of this video. Love this idea of depth along the immense wall.
One of two little inserts of Hana that I snuck in last minute to improve the edit
And the other insert I snuck in. Ended up liking the lighting on this a lot.
At first this shot was only fixed on the shore, but I then changed it to widely pan from the wall to the shore to sell this sense of scale.
The shot my idea was based on. Didn't end up being my favorite shot of the bunch. Funny how you discover your own project as it goes along.
That being said, I still do like the shot a lot.
Metahuman close ups always do it for me.
Lots of layers here. Did a bunch of rendering in another part of this environment, where I build a lush city where the rocket lauches, with realtime Niagara Fluids FX