Unreal Templates
From the moment Unreal 5 came out, the team and I began working on how to develop levels, crowd simulations, animation libraries, lighting set up, material libraries, and custom made levels to cut our production time by more than half. Here are some customized items we built over time with my supervision.
Blue Print Crowd Simulator & Recorder
We developed a crowd system using blueprints that allowed you to import any rig and even shoot projectiles that interact with the crowd. With a strong enough computer we were able to simulate over 150,000 in one single horde.
Material Library
From car paints to metallics, skin, and transparent materials, this material library has it all. And best of all they are all instancers. SO, no need to reinvent the wheel, these instancers have every setting you can possibly imagine to make anything from metallic objects to eyeballs, hair, and much more!
Fluid Materials
In a lot of our creatives we found ourselves in need of fluid materials, but we couldn’t just have an ocean that didn’t move. So we developed animated fluid materials that can act like water, oil, honey, mud, and even lava depending of the type of viscosity you are trying to emulate.
Custom PPV & PPV Materials
Unreal 5’s Lumen render is amazing, but for our artist, we were unable to get clear and controlled AO or even depth of field. So, we developed the custom PPV materials that range from a variety of effects that can be implemented in the scenes.
Biped & Quadruped Animation Library
One of the most challenging issues was how to make sure we can use different types of animations when we were not provided assets, or did not have the time to animate. Thanks to Mixamo, along with some other helpful tools, we were able to build an animation library where you can swap out the animations regardless of the rig for both Biped and Quadroped.
FX Library
Ever wanted to just plug and play waterfalls, giants suns or electro magnetic pulses? Well now you can. AND you can scale them up or down to your liking. With more than 200 different effects, this library gives you everything from sci-fi to horror and fluid effects! By far one of the most challenging libraries to build but well worth it at the end.
HDRI Library
How ever would we be able to light anything without an HDRI library. Developed for all types of interiors and exteriors, this library was the source of our realistic lighting in a simulated world.
Heatwave Level
Every level was developed with the artist in mind. If the creatives was meant to be a desert level, we had a heat wave interior and exterior with the proper lighting, time of day, and material PPV to help sell the idea.
Frozen Level
The frozen level that feels like a cold tundra morning. You get gold just by looking at it. The artist only need remove the blueprint scene placeholder and install their own. This scene also helps guide them for references.
Storm Level
A storm level with automatically simulated lightning that you can control. Control its timing, color, and even add a little rain in the scene. What more could you ask for?!
Toon Level
Toon shades level allows you to export items with their materials as toon like objects. HERES THE BEST PART, its a PPV overlay so you do not have to change the materials! Simply turn on the PPV and adjust the outlines to your liking.
Mid-Night Level
Wondering what a mid-night scene would look like if it’s lit in an interior or just lit by the moon as an exterior? Look no further. The mid-night levels allow you to have lighting set up for those tricky night shoots we all adore. This level in particular cut our lighting time by half.
Dusk Level
The final afternoon level to end the day, has the sun at exactly 6:30 for that golden sunset hour.
Dawn Level
And finally our morning level that allows us to start the day just right. These levels allowed our artist to easily pick what kind of lighting they needed for their objects, but they best part of all, they are all interchangeable. Make a hot morning, a stormy afternoon, or a bright starry night.