Recorded on October 7th
Project Introduction
In this project,I hope to design a scene about Cthulhu mythology and religion,a story centered around horror elements including character and monster modeling.Reference comes from all kinds of wooden houses in the forest, deer head monster in myths and legends, and great old ones in Cthulhu mythology.
reference & Inspirations
Storyboard
The story takes place on a terrestrial planet, where two explorers fly in spacecraft to explore unknown ruins and encounter giant statues of unknown creatures. They are eventually tracked and killed by unknown creatures
Character producing process
1.concept art
Firstly, I drew a concept art for my character, The inspiration comes from the Gargoyle, which has wings composed of a deer headed Gargoyle body and wings made up of tree branches.Deer head is a scary monster or spirit, a tree spirit, a common classical element on the body, a part of religious belief, and the tentacle is a classical element representing Cthulhu’s mythical style. I hope to design strong limbs for its body structure, with bark or dinosaur like skin, to showcase its sense of oppression.
2.Deer head modeling
I choose to use zbrush for modeling deer heads, I first use the Move brush to draw a rough model of the head, and then use brushes such as ClayBuildup, DamStandard, smooth to draw details.
3.monster body parts modeling
The body parts are carved and designed to be very robust, with sharp claws. Added noise to the entire model during carving，the texture was added to the surface of the model, and many tree like tissues were designed, as well as many outward growing branches on its back, to depict monsters as creatures similar to tree spirits and demonstrate their connection with nature.
4.Low model topology, UV layout, Model baking and texture drawing
I use ZBrush for topology and Maya for UV layout ,baking and painting with substance painter. As in the concept, dark tree cortex material was added to its skin, and tumor like tissue was added to depict it as an evil and dark creature.
5.Bone binding and skin weights
I use Mixamo to achieve the effect of quickly binding bones and skins, but because my model is not a regular humanoid, there are multiple errors in the skin weights. Therefore, I chose to import it into UE5 for modification
Before skin weight correction
After skin weight correction
6.Binding of models for other characters, IK Rig binding and retarget
I searched for an astronaut model to serve as another character in this project, created his IK rig using UE5, and redirected the model to the character animation model I needed.
7.Binding of tentacle bones and animation production
I bound bones in Maya, made skins, and created controllers to complete this animation
Rendering effect display
Scene design process
This is my first time creating a scene, so I chose UE5 for production because it not only has a large number of assets, but also makes it more convenient to draw terrain, add volume fog effects, and lighting effects. I first drew the basic terrain and materials, then added some trees and made water materials for the plane to create puddles
1.Create terrain and basic drawing
Add terrain material
Add water material
Create water surface materials, add depth and adjust transparency
2.Add more environmental details and create lighting
In order to make the forest more realistic, I added many details such as fallen leaves and stones, adjusted the lighting to make it more like night, and added volume fog to make the environment more layered
Add more trees
Adjusted the lighting and added volume fog
3.Add interactive water
In order to make the water surface more realistic and interactive, I used the Fluid Flux plugin to simulate a real water surface
The effect of stepping on water splashes in the water
4.Interior Scene Design of Ruins
I designed the interior of the ruins as a canyon like scene, with many braziers as light sources. In the center of the scene is a huge monster statue, with its half body stuck in the valley, symbolizing an evil god who is bound by the mountain and about to escape.
In the scene, it was agreed to add a lot of vegetation, such as fallen leaves and moss, to symbolize the long history of this relic
Shot 1~5
The first shot I designed was a spaceship flying through space to explain the background time and location of the story. I used a model of a spacecraft and niagara effects to complete this shot
Next, from lens 2 to lens 4, the two astronauts entered the forest after landing to observe and eventually discovered the ruins. I used some animations from Mixamo and created some animations myself to complete these four shots
shot 2
shot 3
shot 4
shot 5
The building in shot 4 is composed of houses and trees, and I hope to present it as a relic hidden in the forest, so it is wrapped in vegetation as a gateway to enter the relic
Shot 6~16
The scene begins to step into the ruins, and in this animation, I created animations of characters touching and reaching out, as well as two first person animations, which are also one of the challenges. I have to use a wide-angle lens when making first person animations, but even so, the characters’ heads and body parts can still affect the lens. Therefore, while processing the character’s hand animation, I also created a transparent material for the head and body parts of the character model to ensure that they do not appear in my first person perspective animation
shot 6
shot 8~9
Character Touch Animation
shot 11~12
Added Hitchcock zoom to the lens and created a first person model
Skeleton meshes used for first person animation production
Shot 17~19
In this scene, the monster appears, and I used niagara to create a special effect of blue flames as the monster’s eyes. My last shot was one shot to the end, showing the character running and falling in first person, and creating an animation of monsters catching the character, throwing it down, and jumping and pouncing
shot 18
Monster animation
Final work