Winter: Intro to Virtual Production

This blog contains my progress for projects completed in Intro to Virtual Production which will feature predominately Unreal Engine work.

And these ones are some honarable mentions:

In all I was attracted more towards outdoor shots as I felt they had more detail than many of the interior shots I found, as well as night shots (I really like the shot on the road with the headlights from "No Country for Old Men". In general I found it hard to find a scene with a lot of detail that wasn't also full of people or set in a time/place I don't have any assets for. All said and done the images I am considering the most heavily are that of "Schindler's List", "Parasite", "Jurassic World",  "Natural Born Killers". The only issue is that half of these images contain water or glass which we were of course cautioned against. I think I am up for the challenge though and would have fun exploring these issues.

Pre-quarter

Before attending class 1 on 1/7/2024 I wanted to summarize any notes I had after completing the "Your First Hour in Unreal Engine 5.2" course as per the syllabus and pre-quarter assignment. To stream line these notes and make them more readable and thus easier for me to refer to later, here's a  list:

• Light Mixer- Just need to start using it more and familiarize myself with it, similar to MI's mentioned below

• Replace Actor button when right clicking an asset (great for MODULAR assets).

• Lighting types (I just always used moveable and was not sure what the differences were):

  • Static: Basically free performance wise. Baked, DOES NOT CHANGE DURING GAMEPLAY ETC. (Must be built when complete).

  • Stationary: Same as Static except SHADOWS CAN CHANGE (Must be built when complete).

  • Moveable: Everything is dynamic and can change during gameplay, most performance intensive REQUIRED TO WORK WITH LUMEN.

• I need to be better about creating and using material instances going forward. I am familiar with the work flow just need to practice it more and solidify best practices.

• Packaging for sharing section was a lot of new info for me! 

  • In Epic Launcher when hitting the drop down on an engine version, clicking options shows the various platforms that can be exported for. You must select and download the desired platform to then create a compatible export in engine.

  • Under platform button near top of viewport, platform mentioned above and be selected and then the desired export location as well. This will then create a packaged folder. When opening this file it opens to the default map- change the default map to the desired location.

  • In project settings > Packaging, you can find more options to include other maps etc. and customize more

Now that I've watched through all these videos and looked over the syllabus for the course I want to address my personal roadmap for this course and things that I hope to learn and or continue developing my skills in through my current understanding of what the projects will be. Before taking this course I have been fortunate enough to have the opportunity to shoot on the stage previously, as well as having taken Professor Gaynor's Real-Time Lighting class. In addition to this I did an independent study where I focused on environment creation and Gaea techniques further expanding my UE knowledge.

• Procedural Content Generation

• Light Mixer and Material Instances best practices

• Sequencer- I often feel limited by the sequencer and it's controls always thinking to my self "There has to be a better way?" so I hope to learn more about sequencer and develop my skills in that area

• Learn as much as possible about rendering techniques

• Bring another project to the XR stage? Not sure exactly what the expectations and or goals for these class projects are quite yet, but if I could bring another project to the XR stage that would be amazing.

• Learn Disquise! I had briefly discussed this with Xristos Sfetsios last quarter and he shared where I can find the resources to learn Disguise. (Writers note, I had not looked to hard into these resources yet but WOW, I am impressed with the depth of the online courses Disguise Learn offers and the fact that as far as I can see, they are all FREE!)