Category: Collaborative

General overview

For this project, we used Factual Theme as the basis for a short film based on the Cthulhu, medieval theme – The Mist. In this project, I was responsible for concept design, character creation, mapping, model modelling, scene construction and rendering, as well as final editing and colouring.

Software used

For this project I used Blender to create the models, Zbrush to add detail to the models, SpeedTree to create the tree assets, Metahuman to create the characters, Marvelous Designer to create the character costumes, Substance painter to paint the costumes, Unreal Engine 5 to build the scenes Rendering, final editing and colouring in DavinciJ, video output

Background, Concept

The MIST is a short film based on a medieval setting with a Cthulhu worldview, based on Gothic architecture and costumes, combined with the story of one of the outer gods of Cthulhu mythology – Yuggothoth. -The short film is based on Gothic architecture, costumes and the story of Eugenthotus, one of the outer gods of Cthulhu mythology. The concept is based on Gothic architecture and costume, and the story of Yuggothoth, one of the gods of Cthulhu mythology, who is mysterious, manipulative and infinitely wise. This resulted in the design of the THE MIST set and the story of the film.

Backstory

For some time now, the world has been shrouded in a perpetual fog. Trees and flowers began to wither, people began to die unnaturally, or to go mad.

The young girl, who does not know why she is on the beach, wakes up suddenly when she hears the call of “that man”, and, in a panic, runs into the misty forest, through the middle of it, to the church in the centre, a church that never existed in the eyes of ordinary people.

As the sunlight streamed in through the magnificent windows, the maiden was bathed in the baptism of a “god” that seemed to be slowly beginning to emerge – a huge, strange creature that had never been seen before. The god seems to beckon to the maiden, who seems to be unaware of its presence, and the maiden seems to see again the green forest, the pale ocean, and the never-ending, but hopeful, mists.

Scene1： the Sea

In this film I have created four scenes: the seaside, the forest, the church outside the forest, and the church interior.

For the first seaside scene, the scene was built with the knowledge I had previously learnt from UNREAL ENGINE5. I then went on to learn more about the UE5 material node and created a seawater material with animation during the production process. In conjunction with the scenes, the story hopes to present the audience with an atmosphere of calm and crisis.

The Forest

This was the first of the four scenes that I worked on and in addition to what I had already learnt, I learnt how to combine Metahuman for the final rendering of the characters, costumes and clothing materials.

Firstly I created the basic face creation through ZBRUSH and created the base character by sweeping the face model through the metahuman plugin in UE5. I then used Marvelous Designer to create the character costumes and simulate the costume animations, Sbustance Painter to paint the costume models, Mixamo to create the animations and finally put them into the scene for rendering.

Outside the church

In this scene, I learnt how to create more detailed model assets, and after gathering elements related to the Gothic style, I modelled the church and learnt how to add broken details to the model using Zbrush. The final import into UE was done by mixing multiple material spheres through procedural nodes to create a realistic church scene.

Inside the church

In this scene I tried to use Midjourney to generate the material textures, Materialize to generate the replacement, normal maps, import into Zbrush to optimise the face count of the model and finally put it into Unreal as an asset for rendering.

Conclusion

I learnt a lot from this project, but I still realise that I still have a lot to improve. Firstly, as a scene, there are many old and broken scenes that are still not quite realistic, the colours and lighting are not yet uniform, and finally, during the editing process, I found that there are many simple and repetitive shots, and how to create scenes that are better integrated with the story. These are the things I think I still need to improve on, and I hope to do so in the future.