For my VFX assignment i decided to create an intro vfx sequence for a hypothetical videogame, the cutscene involves showcasing a part of the first level the player will start in and what happened prior to their arrival, for this sequence i settled for a dark andcreepy manor house environment as the darker shadows and tight spaces gave me some good initial ideas for particle and camera placements.

What i did intially that worked for me first was to quickly sketch out multiple layouts for the sequence and pick the best and one that’s a good size so then i can accurately plan out the storyboard and what effects and techniques to use so that i don’t overscope and leave out things i wanted to keep, this is just what helped me.

After awhile i was concerned of possibly doing more than i could handle so i decided to keep the scope small and modify one of my sketched layouts to accomodate my change, i went for the middle and cut away some areas that didn’t seem useful or were pointless entirely, i cut most of the right side and just stuck with two adjacent rooms and a hallway, after this i began to plan some early rough ideas of what each room would be and where cameras may travel, coming up with an identity for the rooms helped me narrow down what kind of particles i would need too, i figured i could make some loose flying paper caused by an open window and for the corridor some ambient dust.

After this i jotted down a list of vfx particles i would need and then moved on to storyboarding to start drafting a rough early version.

For the environmental storytelling i took inspiration from HP Lovecrafts the Colour out of Space, i involves a strange colour that causes danger to the environment especially rhose that get close to it so i wanted to do something similar to help match the creppy house theme i wanted, this gave me an idea on where my storyboard could go.

I went into Unreal and started blocking out the area following from my basic layout and then adding more detailed features and assets later, i also did some blocking out of the lighting to help see in the meantime, when i had the corridor completed i added imported a decal i had created in substance painter into the area to help with knowing where exactly to place my camera for framing when i was ready as the decal is the main fixture for midway through this part.

I also used a particle emitter that i modified for the decal to give the idea of it being active and moving, i used basic floating particles but just changed the drag and air speed, the colour was changed to match the decal too.

In the same corridor with the decal there are candles i wanted to put in, one at each end of the corridor, i wanted the first set of candles when the camera first passes through, to not go out when lighting hits, but when the camera reaches the second another loud clap of thunder comes and kills the flames on the second set of candles leaving the end of the hallway in darkness except for the emmissive decals that guide the shot to the library room.

To make the candles i looked at how others had done it and found that the easiest method which is probably the right one, is to import a candle flame image with an alpha black background, create a material and then attach the image by rgb to emmissive color and opacity, then you add a panner, which gives the illusion of movement to the texture of the flame, adding textcoord is important as you only want one flame to be present.

I used a candelabra from an epic store pack to use for my candle flames, i created a blueprint and added a static mesh element and some point lights along with a niagra particle system, when i added the candle stand and point lights to the blueprint i created a niagra system using the single static particle emitter option, when i opened it i scrolled to the render option at the bottom of the menu and searched for the flame material i had created and applied it, so now the static particle is my flame even with the flame movement added in the material.

I left the candles alone at this point as i would only need to apply triggers when using the sequencer near the end, so now i focused on making the rain for the outside of the building, for this one i used the fountain emitter, and applied more gravity to the particles so they would fall straight down instead of flying in the air for a couple of seconds, when i did this though the partciles were still round so i had to change the dimensions in the settings to something more rectangular.

In the initialize particle menu i changed the sprite attributes to be 2.0 on X and 60.0 on Y which is what gave the rain it’s rectangular shape, i also modified other attributes of the fountain emmitter by altering it’s colour to a more blueish white trying to get it closer to water, and also increasing the particle count slightly with an added collision attribute in particle Update so the rain won’t fall through any geometry i create, audio was something i couldn’t get working the way i wanted it to on particles so the only way around it was to just add sound over shots of the particles when using the sequencer.

For the library the particles i wanted to create was the fire and the loose sheets of paper flying from the window due to the thundering rain, i started with the paper first as i really wanted to get that working first as i’d love to have it in the scene, i tried for awhile to get the particles to conform to the shape of paper, this was until i remebered you could change the sprite shape through materials in the renderer just like i did with the candle earlier, so i used a parchment paper decal from megascans and used the same process and it worked flawlessly making the partciles look like actual loose sheets of paper, i made some slight colour tweaks after to make the sheets easier to see, but after that it was a quick set up to get them working.

When making the fire for the fireplace i followed closely with what i learned in labs with using the flame tile sheets for the material and then setting the correct scale, it was pretty straightforward however i did have trouble with getting smoke to work with the fire, i went as far as making a second niagra system just for the smoke but everytime i made it using the smoke sprite sheet it didn’t seem to render properly in the scene so the quality of my fire had to be dropped a little, but it was still noticeable as i had placed it within a framing shot when the sequence moves through the door, it sits in the center of the screen so it can be seen glowing.

At this stage i was creating some more emmissive decals for the set dressing and also working on lighting improvments as some areas were quite dim, i played around in the post process and raised the exposure levels by around 200, which gave it a good balance. For the two windows in the library i wanted some stronger moonlight casting through so i decided to use two medium intensity rect lights and scale them to the same size as the windows and that gave the illusion of some stronger moonlight, it also gave me inspiration for making the lighting effects for a later shot, as by this point i had been thinking of manipulating the exposure in post processing through a sequence trigger, i also used a spotlight to cast some very low intensity light onto the wall eith the painting and flipped bookcase as i wanted to emulate bounce lighting.

For the final sequencing i had to employ many techniques i’d never practiced too much before, particularly in the corridor section of the video in which the thunder had an affect on the lighting, at first i added all the flames and lights to the sequencer and then set triggers for then to all turn off when the lightning struck, the flmaes disbaled but the lights didn’t, so instead the workaround i had was just to disable the whole candelabra and visually it pulls of quite well and was a much more efficient way of mimicking the candle going off than indivdually having to set each flame off.

Reference list

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Epic Games and Sychov, A. (2018). Deep Elder Caves in Environments – UE Marketplace. [online] Unreal Engine. Available at: https://www.unrealengine.com/marketplace/en-US/product/deep-elder-caves [Accessed 2 Oct. 2023].

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