Category: FMP

This blog will show the results and process of the project. It includes a video of the final project, a showreel of the coursework, and my summary and reflection on the final project.

About My FMP

About My Showreel

Summary & Reflection

Escape at Sunset is about the relationship between a daughter and her mother. A child in the rebellious period may have their own secrets and thoughts, and the child may be afraid to talk about the changes they are going through, and the parents may be confused about the changes in their child. The mother in the story chooses to support her daughter’s changes and differences because she has been through this too. I hope this story conveys the idea of thinking about change and an exploration of degrees of liberty among family members.

The project took more than three months to do, and it took a month to go from the idea of the script to the design of the characters. Then learning character rigging and importing to UE5 took another two weeks. Of course, the animation part is the longest part, it took one month, not only the character’s action production, but also the camera movement and transition design, including the final music is also my own production, also spent a whole day. So, it was really very difficult to go from nothing to producing a complete work in three months by myself.

I’m proud of how the full process was done, as well as some of the camera transitions, character designs, and post color designs are all parts of the process that I feel were done successfully.

Also, there are many shortcomings. Firstly, I think I still didn’t do enough storytelling, and probably didn’t do enough to reflect the identity and standpoint between the mother and the daughter. Secondly, my scene model is still quite simple, I originally intended to make it more beautiful, but I didn’t have enough time and chose a more basic scene model. Lastly, my character animation was not vivid enough, and for the mouth animation, there were some sections that were not standardised enough: Reason 1 was that I didn’t plan the character’s lines before, so I forgot the exact lines of the mother in the second section, and there was confusion when I did the mouth animation. Reason 2 is with ADV import UE5 controller is Blendshape mode, so there is no way to fully move the shape of the mouth, it looks a bit fake and unrealistic mouth movements, this part needs a lot of modification, and it is difficult and time-consuming, I don’t do a good enough job at this part.

This blog is about post compositing of films and the edition of sound effects. I will divide them into two parts to describe.

About Post Composition

The main software I use for post-production of my films is Premiere Pro, in which I import rendered images, do color adjustments, film editing, text editing, and sound compositing.

About Sound Effect

I found my preferred sound effects on the sound resources website, listened to them and compared them, and then chose the right sound effect.

This is a website that can be generated based on music ai, where you can change or adjust the instrumentation and tempo according to your favourite clips. Here is the URL for this site：

soundraw.io

I simulated the sound of the character’s lines on a voice acting software

This blog focuses on documenting the rendering process in UE5.

This is the UE5 rendering page, as you can see in the bottom right corner is the data I have set up, it has the advantage of rendering very quickly and without noise, which is why I learnt and chose UE5 rendering.

This video is my process of modifying the rendering, there is a shot where the main character’s clothe have some through-moulding, maybe the weights of the clothe were not adjusted properly causing the model to through-mould, so I fixed the through-moulding points with a brush in PS to make the image better， it’s just a little bit tiring.

Setting up lights in UE5

I don’t add a lot of lighting in UE5, I mainly use sky light, what I have to do more is change the colors of the lights, as well as change the brightness and atmosphere of the lights depending on the plot

This is the scene of the protagonist’s bedroom, the light source is divided into two main parts, one is the skylight outside the window, which is the main light source, the colour is the warm yellow of the sunset. The other part is the point light source, as the indoor part is too dark, the protagonist’s face is not illuminated, so 4 point light sources are added around the protagonist

About the change in lighting

In this section of the scene there will be shots of the protagonist controlling light magic, so I needed to show the light of the magic with rapid movement and color changes in the lighting.

Firstly, the main light source for the whole scene is a sunset light, orange-red in color and low in brightness, which is used to create a mysterious atmosphere. After that I used a point light as a source of light magic for the main character. I set up keyframes for this light to move quickly, and then the path moves quickly from the protagonist’s hand to the ground, through to another dimly lit alley, and then disappears.

The light source for the scene in the kitchen, a cool blue light at first, is meant to create a tense and icy atmosphere

As the protagonist and her mother talk and their relationship eases, the color of the light changes from blue to warm pink, so I set the light to change color and brighten it up considerably to give both characters a sense of being enveloped in light.

This blog features an animation of the last clip. This animation is after the witch opens up to her mother, returns to her true self and enjoys her free time.

Firstly, I need to make it clear that I didn’t make the model for the last scene myself. These model resources come from UE5’s official resource online mall, they are free resources for a limited time, all users can log in to download them and then build the scene in UE5 with it.

The Witch’s model and the Broom’s model are unrelated when imported. So I’m going to keyframe animate the character and object separately.

I keyframed the broom individually, and it takes a very large number of keyframes to control.

Here’s a clip video of the animation to modify the legs：

This blog is about the shots and animations that follow on from the previous post.

The previous shot linked here, in which the character falls from her inner monologue to her bed, is a metaphor for her return from her own world to real life.

About the protagonist’s fall into bed

On to the kitchen part of the animation, there are 8 shots in this scene, one of which is detailed here for the main character.

Here’s a line from the main character. “Mum, I know I look strange.”

This blog is about the recording of the second part of the animation, which will include an important transition animation, as well as a portion of the character’s self-description of the mouth animation.

About the transition animation

This part of the animation shows the character turning her head, with a very dejected expression, and then raising her hand, with a flame burning in the palm of her hand.

About the animation change of the character’s eyes

The part where the character raises her arm, using the FK controller, but I may not have done a good job with the model weights, so there is a slight problem.

There is a transition shot designed here, where the camera turns quickly from directly behind the character to the left, and then the camera focuses on the alleyway on the other side.

This is followed shot, where the character turns around and floats in the air.

It ends with a monologue from a character. “I am Unhappy.”

The next task is to complete the animation part, which is divided into 5 scene parts, with a total of three character models. I will mainly record in detail the animation and camera placement of the city scene.

The production process of animation

This is an animation of walking. The first step is to move the feet, and the gap between the front and back feet is 12 frames. After playing, I felt that the speed was a bit slow, so I adjusted the gap to 10 frames.

After adding keyframes for the feet, add forward following actions and changes in up and down vibrations to the character’s waist.

Finally, add the forward and backward swinging movements of both hands. The controller for the hand is FK, so I need to gradually add keyframes from the shoulder to the arm and then to the wrist. These are mostly repetitive steps, and to improve efficiency, I will copy keyframes according to time.

Then, it is necessary to adjust the head movements and add facial expressions, which reflect anxiety and confusion.

The lens of this clip moves from a distance to the front of the character, and the focal length changes from far to near.

What I need to do in this section is mainly two parts. The first part is to import the rigged model (including controllers) from Maya into UE5. The second part is to complete the animation production and camera placement in UE5.

About Importing Models

The method for importing models from Maya into UE5 comes from the following video：

This video introduces the method of importing a model with ADV controller into UE5, but there are still differences in actual operation and some problems may arise during this process. Next, I will provide a detailed introduction to how I imported it, as well as the problems I encountered and how to solve them.

Firstly, I need to open the plugin options for ADV5 in Maya. There are several files I need, one is the FBX file for the model and maps, and the other is the Python file for the controller. The most important thing to note is that when doing facial rigging, I need to select Blend Shapes and then select the game engine mode. Because I need to import the model and controller into UE5 later, the game engine cannot adapt to facial joints. At the first operation, I didn’t know what to do, so there was a situation where my face couldn’t be controlled. I checked it many times to finding the reason. Finally, complete the import of the controller.

This step is to import the two files into UE5 separately. The first step is to import the model and map files, and then create a control rig based on the model. Release the automatic compilation in the control rig, and then find the path to custom Python in the tool, copying the path I exported from Maya. Of course, this is the ideal model and controller. In fact, I have failed many times. Every time I finish copying the Python path, my model controller always falls to the ground at a 90 ° angle, which cannot be animated because there is a problem with the controller’s coordinates.

So how to solve this problem is very tricky. I tested it many times to find out where the problem lies. Later, I found the answer in a Bilibili blogger’s video, which is that in Maya, the group of model geometry and joint controllers should be level and not within the same group, otherwise it will cause coordinate disorder in UE5. As shown in the above figure.

Thanks to this problem finally being solved, I got a model with controllers that can do animated keyframes in UE5! This is a big breakthrough, because the problem about model rigging and controller importing has been bothering me all week!

The task during this period is to rig the three character models using the ADV5 plugin tool. Then, complete facial rigging for the three character models. The final step is to import the characters (including controllers) that have been rigged in Maya into UE5. Next, I will provide a detailed introduction to the part of character rigging in Maya

Introduction and learning about the ADV5 plugin

ADV5 is one of the mainstream plugins currently used for animation character rigging, mainly applicable to Maya. I didn’t know about this plugin at first, and I didn’t know how to rig it. I learned a little in a workshop class before, and then I learn all the knowledge about the rigging part of ADV5 on YouTube.

The first step is to organize the outliner, clean and inspect the model, and create a new file. Make sure the correctness of the model, place and adjust skeletons according to the position of the joints.

About facial rigging

This is the action test after rigging the face