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Project GEN
With virtual production technology becoming more and more accessible, I sought to take advantage of all the new tools and assets and test the limits of producing video content. For my senior project, I sought to build out as many mini-projects as I could using Unreal Engine 5, motion capture from Mixamo, and the video production skills (video editing, sound design, cinematography, and videography) that I have learned at my time in the Integrated Digital Media program at NYU.
Lightswitch Man
This project is a short music video where a racer man dances in a cyberpunk-ish-themed set.
My first complete project in Unreal Engine 5 where I put together video editing, motion capture, and camera movement into a render.
Shuffle Showdown
A soldier and a robot must face off in a city at night, who is the best dancer/fighter?
Wanting to take things a bit further and be more ambitious for my next project. I decided this video would include a bit of sound design as well and experimented with slow-motion (rendering at a high frame rate).
Ahhhh
The video speaks for itself, but yeah it's just a bunch of cubes falling.
If my other projects were small, this one is teeny tiny, but I was trying to figure out how to animate multiple objects at once as well as how to drag-select, and I thought the result was funny so I decided to include it.
Is it weird to pick up robots in space?
A short little romance scene between two robots, can they find time to enjoy each other's company in a space full of dangerous creatures?
This video took a considerable amount of time and effort compared to the previous projects. Especially since I had to build two scenes from scratch for this one and learn more about lighting in Unreal. Also a ton of crashing with this project.
Super Speeder
A racer that races his whole life, because that's what he does best.
This video was a huge challenge since animating cars meant that I had to dig into hand keying and animation curves to get some of the shots for this short film. I had a lot of fun playing with text to speech and google translate though.
Conclusion
Overall this project was incredibly fun and insightful. I was able to talk to many people involved with virtual production in the industry including faculty at NYU and creative directors at other metaverse/VR production companies. I was able to learn so much in just a semester and have a ton of projects to show for it.
I'm incredibly excited for the future of VR production since it's getting more and more accessible! Motion capture suits and rigs are quite expensive, but tools like Unreal Engine 5, Quixel, Mixamo and more are completely free to anyone, and as long as they learn how to use those tools they could produce the same if not better projects than the stuff I've made above.
All in all, this has been a fun, stressful, and rewarding experience, and I definitely want to continue making these videos and my journey to learn and grow my skills working with virtual production and video production.
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