Cinematic: Project Mech

My first cinematic work in Unreal Engine 5! I got into Animation because I grew up on cinematics from Warcraft III and StarCraft II. The beauty in the visuals and the story telling behind them are what helped me pursue art and eventually land up with a degree in Technical Animation. This project was essentially a culmination of knowledge I've gained not just from my Bachelor's degree but also from my first job where I worked extensively in Unreal Engine.

As a former photographer I have an inherent love for lighting and cinematography. In this project my major struggles revolved around learning how to use Unreal Engine's Niagara Fluids and optimizing it for better Real Time Rendering. Once I had the sequence of shots I wanted in my head I began to create the environment by pulling assets from Fab. While the Mech itself was fully modelled and textured by me, the environment was made from using pieces of the Polar asset pack.

I still felt I was missing an animation component and so I opted to use assets and animation from Mixamo to add to the cinematic feel. I spent a day figuring out how to debug and visualize different parts of Unreal from Lighting to Texture optimization. After optimizing the editor it was time to optimize the renders. I managed to take a 4 hour render with passes down to 30 minutes to render with passes. Once I had renders I was happy with I moved to get some music to accentuate the mood, and lightly comped an Ambient Occlusion pass on top.

Hope you all enjoy it this as much as I enjoyed creating it!