Introduction
For Postproduction and Visual Effects (VFX), I was tasked to make a production piece that is 60 seconds – 2 minutes long, showing clear knowledge and understanding of VFX in a digital environment.
This assignment gave me free reign over what type of video I should make as it does not limit me to a theme or genre like Environment design did the previous year. I struggled with this from the outset as I had lots of ideas I believed to be both interesting to me and technically advanced enough to produce a well made VFX piece.
The Video Idea
The assignment specified that the video I produced had to be one of the following:
- A TV commercial
- A Video Game Cutscene, opening, intro or other action sequence
- The opening or ending of a Film or TV Show
- A particular sequence in a Film or TV Show
- A Music Video
- Or other sequence agreed with the Module Co-ordinator
My idea was basically a video game cutscene/trailer so that’s what I was going for.
For my video, I wanted to showcase multiple Motorsport classes and form a racing team that is in multiple parts of motor racing across the globe. The video would showcase the different cars and introduce a fictional racing team.
While researching parts of the idea, I looked on YouTube to find similar projects and how they had been presented. The video linked below game me some ideas as to what sort of things I could do.
With the videos intention to be showing off racing vehicles and racing as a whole, one thing I wanted to show off was the cars I designed.
I want to do this in a dark environment so set a tone while showing them off. I would have lights moving around the car. The light would actually be lightning. In research I saw lightning used in similar videos to what I wanted so it seemed like a good idea.
One of my shots would have the lightning moving from the front to the back of the car on its side. Another would have it curve around the rear of the car, one showing how aerodynamics would affect the car, etc. These all seemed like good ways to show off the cars so I wanted to try it.
For one shot in the scene, I want to pan around one of the cars and have the engine start. This would be at night so that lights can be turned on and it would let me implement some VFX to make the scene accurate.
For a certain part of the video, I want a very calm shot of the interior of a car and then a high intensity shot from the side of the same car. Ideally the scene would be at night with rain in both shots with the potential of music enhancing the change from calm to aggressive.
Many race tracks around the world have famous corners that are satisfying to watch. One such corner segment (or chicane) is the swimming pool section in the Circuit de Monaco in the video below. In my project I will have some on-track shots and I will most likely make a shot replicating this famous section or at least have a car go through a chicane of some sort.
In the chicane scene, I wanted to have spray come up from the ground as if the cars are running in wet conditions.
With the assignment focusing on visual effects, one shot I wanted to have was a car coming out of a corner or skipping over a curb at speed to have sparks kick up. The shot would probably be on a race track and would likely have 2 different cars shown (a Formula 1 car and either the GT3/GT4).
Near the end of the video, I have the idea of the car driving into the sunset on a bridge or highway style road. This would be followed by a black screen with text on it, to have some sort of meaning with the video as the entire idea is to show off racing and have it mean something. The image below is some artwork that I found, similar to what I would imagine the scene to look like.
With this being an assignment focusing on VFX, there will be some effects in this scene which will be mentioned in the VFX section.
Considered Ideas
As previously mentioned, I had many ideas of what I could make for this assignment. Ideas that would take me many different places whether it be fantasy worlds, multiple dimensions, soaring high above the clouds or in familiar settings.
An idea that I considered is based off of a scene in the movie Castle in the Sky. The scene follows the two protagonists (Pazu and Sheeta) flying through the clouds in the sky. With the movie being anime, it looks as if it had been drawn and this scene really captures that. With a lack of colour as the scene continues, the desperate/tense atmosphere is set. As they glide through the cloud cover, Pazu avoids the lightning that cracks around them.
My scene would be similar, with someone in an airborne vehicle moving through a storm and avoiding the elements. I would likely use an air-borne vehicle and there would be many opportunities for different VFX to use with things like lightning, rain, wind vapor, etc.
My second idea would be a Sci-Fi based video. The environment would a town square scene (similar to Times Square in New York City) with a futuristic style.
The video would be in slow motion. Two characters would be stood still, one with a gun raised at the other. The gun wielder would be built like a human but would had dark markings across their face, glowing eyes and a horn protruding from his head. The other character would be of a similar description, built a bit larger and stronger.
For VFX, rain would be pouring, fires burning and a few more would be dotted around the scene.
I didn’t put a lot of thought into using either one of these ideas as I was very invested in my original idea.
VFX
With the assignment requiring visual effects, I would need to clearly showcase these. There are quite a few effects that I could showcase with the vehicles and different environments I could create.
To start with, I researched what VFX actually was. Studio Binder defines VFX or Visual Effects as “imagery created, manipulated, or enhanced for any film that doesn’t take place during live action shooting”. The definition of this changes slightly to this assignment as there is no live action source to add the effects to. Because of this, I interpreted VFX as anything that is added to the scene in order to improve the visual satisfaction. This could include effects like fire, rain, snow, and specific lighting effects to name a few.
In the scene where I showcase the liveries, I wanted to put a lightning style of effect. The lightning would be arcing around the car and scene. An idea for why it would be there could be to display airflow across the cars. In Motorsport, the way air travels through the cars is very important and this could be showcased here.
One of the scenes I wanted to make involves a car starting up. Within that scene I would make a visual effect of flames coming out of the exhaust. Racing vehicles often do this and I wanted it to be showcased.
Something that F1 cars often do on circuit is kick up sparks. This is caused by the aerodynamic downforce generating enough pull to bring the car closer to the asphalt, scraping along it. Sparks can also be produced when cars are sliding with the main body in contact with the track due to car damage or when going over some curbs. The same effect can happen with the other Motorsport classes used in my overall video.
Anything that moves onto a puddle will kick up water. With cars, it’s more like a massive puff of water coming out the back of the car. There is going to be rain in one of my scene ideas and puddles in another. The spray will be created in the puddles when cars go over it. With the rain environment, the rain will be a visual effect itself and the rear spray being a separate effect.
In addition to these rain sprays or water splashed, I will just have classic rain. I imagine this implemented in a couple of my shots to give some difference between shots.
One of my planned shots would take place on a bridge which goes over water. This would be an easy visual effect to include and likely wouldn’t take too much time.
Creating the Livery
For the design of the cars, I wanted to create a fictional racing team that spanned multiple racing disciplines. This would include the more basic definition of a race car with a GT3 and a GT4 car, and then jumping up to the pinnacle of Motorsport in a Formula 1 car.
As mentioned, GT3 and GT4 cars are your average race car by simple definition. In the pictures below, there are varying styles of these cars with large manufacturers producing them such as BMW, Porsche, Lamborghini and Ferrari among others. Cars meet the requirements for these classes through things such as weight and engine power. GT3 cars tend to have a stronger engine, making them much faster.
For the models I will be using, I chose a Porsche 911 for the GT3 car and a Mercedes AMG for the GT4.
Formula 1 cars are drastically different to the other classes I’m showcasing. They use high levels of engineering and science to perform to their ability, and are significantly faster to the cars mentioned above. Below are some pictures of F1 cars from the 2024 season and a concept design for a team that doesn’t exist on a 2023 spec car.
For my model, I am using the AMR23 (used by Aston Martin during the 2023 season) which will sport my own custom livery.
Every team has branding and colours that are synonymous with it so that people can recognize them. Many people recognize any Ferrari vehicle as being red, or a dark green being the colour for Aston Martin. For my team, I wanted to create a basic colour palette that worked well in simple designs for each vehicle. While looking online I found many good designs and decent inspiration but ultimately settled on a matte white, neon green and black design.
Using these colours, I got to designing the cars. For each design, I just looked at the model and started applying colours and chose what stuck out to me.
I spent quite a bit more time with the Mercedes AMG as it was a more detailed 3D model. Because of that I didn’t have a enough time to implement all 3 cars into my unreal environments and video.
Something else I intended to do was create many different helmet designs that would be shown for the different cars. There would be 2 for the 2 drivers for the F1 team, the Mercedes AMG would have 3 helmets and the Porsche 911 would also have 3 helmets to be accurate to racing teams in that discipline.
Designing the Environment
Getting the Textured car into the environment was a simple enough thing as I’d done it before. All I had to do was export the textures from Adobe Substance Painter and then remake materials in Unreal Engine. Some of the textures hadn’t exported correctly into Unreal, or I’d made a mistake with some of the materials, but I decided to focus on the environment building as it was more important.
One shot I wanted to do was a show-off for the cars. I made a box that the car could go into and have lights and different visual effects moving around inside of it. The environment can be seen below.
The visual effect I made for this environment was lightning and would move past the car in certain ways.
For the interior shot, I effectively made a pitlane for a racetrack. Off to the right is where the pit wall would be, on the left are 2 model areas of an engineering space. Pit exit ahead of the car would lead it to the actual racetrack. The camera was put inside the car model and would be stationary throughout the shot. I put a light on the outside of the car (to put some light shining in) and then another light behind the seat. The inner light was made green and then was made to flash in the sequencer to show that electronics working inside the car.
For this shot I made a small landscape with a bridge for the car to travel down. I put some foliage on the mountain I landscaped to make it seem like the area was in a forest. I put lights across the bridge and also the cars headlights. The camera for the shot was on the side of the car. This shot would be placed immediately after the previous to show a very distinct change of intensity as I thought it would work well for the video showcase.
For the backfire shot, I duplicated the environment used for the interior shot. All I did was move a few things around to suit what I needed.
For this scene I used a fire visual effect to come out of the exhaust and the lights on the car in the sequencer.
With one of my shots, I wanted the car to go over a curb to create sparks as can be seen in many racing disciplines. As shown in the image below, I made an environment with a curb for my car to go over so that the sparks could be showcased.
For the final shot in-engine, I wanted a long panning shot. Using assets from packs, I made a bridge for the car to drive down, the environment around it with trees and then a nice looking sunset. A water visual effect was also added at the base of the level to fill the environment a bit more.
To end off the video I put in a simple logo that I had made, intended to be a sticker on the car. Below was the phrase “We Race As One” which was used by Formula 1 during the 2020/21 seasons.
Creating VFX
The first visual effect I made in the project was the rain. I followed a simple tutorial online and found out how to do it with the Niagra System. This will mostly look like the original view when you open a Niagra system with the Fountain preset, however there are minor tweaks inside many of the properties in the Fountain. This was used in the interior shot and also the side shot.
For the rain to be in the scene, all I had to do was drag the Niagra system into the Unreal environment and then put it into the position which I wanted it in. Mainly I had to move it so that rain was falling on everything in the camera shot.
In my bridge environment, I created water as a visual effect. This was done to fill the environment a bit more and looked quite good when finished.
Just like my rain visual effect, this was a case of dragging it into the environment from the content browser and adjusting the position so that it was where I wanted it to be.
For the engine start in one of my shots, I used some of the basic things in Unreal Engines starter content mixed with the Niagra system.
After I had made the VFX and put it into the scene I had to sequence it so that it triggered at a certain point. At the same time it the effect starts playing, the lights of the car turn on.
The main visual effect that is shown at the start of my video is lightning. This was fairly easy to make with a guide taken from the Epic Games developer site found here. After some minor tweaking, I got the lightning to move the way I wanted and would sequence it to move where I needed it to.
With one of my shots, I had the car go over a curb. I made a Niagra system to create sparks and then added everything necessary to activate/deactivate it in the sequencer.
Making the Video
For the video, I used the Unreal Sequencer to place and rig things such as cameras and objects. I also put in the majority of my VFX to have the scene activate/deactivate them based on the trigger I had set.
With me building each shot in a separate environment to one another, I didn’t have to struggle with switching cameras in the middle of a shot and it also made rendering the shots much faster.
After rigging and rendering every shot, I put it all into Adobe Premier Pro and put them in the order I wanted.
After that I downloaded a song to put into the background and cut it together to make the video appealing and to not have a silent video.
The audio I used was the song Addict (Instrumental) by NEFFEX downloaded from the YouTube Audio library (see video below)
Final Product
Below is the full, rendered video displaying VFX in an environment made in Unreal Engine 5.
FINAL THOUGHTS
Coming out of this assignment, I didn’t think I had done well. I should have considered my other ideas more before immediately dismissing them. The over-scope of the idea set me back from the outset and only got worse as I added more and more to the project.
Furthermore, my time management was not ideal and left me with lots of work to do closer to the deadline. In the end, I scrapped many things from the video; the rain spray scene, the chicane scene, 2 separate cars and the entirety of the helmet idea.
Looking at the project after finishing it, I’m not happy with what I did as there should have been more in general and of a higher quality.
References
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