In week one, Victor Lin (compositor and lighting artist), Vivi Kang (material and lighting artist), Jessica Teague (FX artist), and me (immersive and environment artist) were assigned to a team. We started off by introducing ourselves, and telling what our goals are and what we expect to get from this class. Each of us has different specialties and we kind of kept that in mind as we brainstormed our ideas. Initially, we came up with four concepts for our first in class presentation and after hearing some feedback we narrowed down to one.
After the feedback session, we met to go over it and decided, as a team, that we want to combine some elements from all of these ideas into one. Since we are using a real-time engine, we want to harness it as best we could by including some interactivity at the beginning to showcase the "real-time" aspect. Victor is also planning to do some Live action integration which can also be done in unreal in real-time. We went for a gamey theme since it allows for a lot of cool effects that Jessica can tackle with.
I have worked with multitudes of teams and in various collaborative environments before, and I honestly enjoyed our team meetings a lot despite how often we meet up. Our team has a really good dynamic and we are comfortable voicing our ideas and concern but at the same time we are mindful of each other's goals which makes moving forward as a team really easy.
As for me, I want to focus on making cool and realistic looking environments while also giving it some fantasy Sci-fi aspects.
This is our team's idea.
With the theme in mind I started off by looking at a loooot of references and automobile videos. I could list them out but that would be pretty long. I also have to keep in mind that most of the members are more inclined towards night scenery for this project.
The colour selection scene starts in a sci-fi car garage/charge station environment. Then the car is chased by drones towards a tunnel and to the highway. At the end, the car jumps out of the screen into a room.
My concern was how I could make the environment looks realistic and sci-fi at the same time. A lot of the sci-fi references that we found are not realistic enough, so I had to look at a lot of real life references as well.
In the image above, the second picture in the first row has the aesthetic that I like fitting for the colour selection shot. I really like the shapes and the chamfered edges found on each of the asset. It looks futuristic but also has that industrial touch to it which I think is perfect for our theme.
As for the outdoor scene, I try to scope the things that we have to do since we do not want to go overboard with the assets. Making an entire city would be too unrealistic for a remote 10-week collaborative project of which realism is the main focus. So I decided to go for the tunnel+highway route. I wanted the tunnel in our scene to create that beautiful shift in lighting as the car exits the tunnel. Plus, both tunnels and highway scene requires less assets than an entire alley way.
The next thing I decided on is the colour scheme and the overall lighting. I want each lighting scenario to enhance the feeling of each shot. At the very beginning of our sequence, I want it to be calm futuristic and sleek and I feel like the touch of the magenta, and the overall palette being a little brighter than the up coming scene sell that idea nicely. For the car chase scene, I want to emphasise the sense of danger and the intensity so I chose a darker shade of blue with a red accent for the scene. Lastly, the live action integration scene is on a desk in a modern looking home. I want it to look modern and cozy, so brighter warmer colours make sense here.
I made this concept sketch in photoshop to help me and the team visualise the first shot better.
As for the other environments, I figured it would be faster to do it in unreal.
Here is our previs video done in Unreal Engine. I am mainly responsible for the block out and the rough lighting.
Here is the block out I did in Maya.
Ultimately, I want all of us to walk away from this class with something that they can proudly show off on their portfolio, and also have fun in the progress!
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