Hello, this is the fourth lecture of Unreal Cinematics
Creating the environment level for cinematics in Unreal
The object of this lecture is to learn and understand
making the environment level for cinematics in Unreal
Then starting now, I'll explain about ways to create the environment
First is collecting reference images
We can't create a cinematic environment right away, from scratch
Therefore, choose a well-made reference
and we need to practice making that reference in Unreal
The image you see here
is a screenshot of a Japanese artist's video on Instagram
We'll try making this environment the same way
First, in the shown image
we need to analyze what sources we need
Analyze the large props first, and once the analysis is over
sequentially analyze the detailed props
and organize the needed sources
When the needed sources go through modeling and texture job
it will take too much time
So search for the environment sources
in the Market Place that Epic Games provides
and purchase sources similar to the corresponding reference
After you obtain the ingredients
let's produce the environment in the project
When you start environment production
the layout arrangement is very important
Therefore, it's good to set the layout of the floor
which can decide the corresponding areas
For me, in order to depict water on the floor
I used the function called blend material
In order to use blend material
the floor mesh has to have lots of vertex
And using the function of vertex painting
you can express the feeling of water of blend material realistically
For this image, blend material was produced
and the water effect was added on the floor surface
Next is creating the sidewalk
I used the source provided by Megascan
In Unreal, with the spline format made with blueprint
the corresponding source can be easily arranged
Expressions of linear lines and curves are possible
However, when path tracing is used
sources of spline type are not rendered on the screen
If you're going to use path tracing
it's possible if you change the spline actor to mesh
A way to change it is shown on the screen
Follow after it, and you'll be able to change it
First, I'll show you how I made the floor
Like this, the floors were first arranged
in a tile form
As for the sidewalk
the mesh was downloaded from Quixel bridge
The downloaded mesh has been mapped as blueprint
And they have been arranged like a sidewalk
As for the floor tile mesh
as you can see, there's a lot of vertex
There's a lot of vertex because
later in Quixel bridge
you can make something called blend material
There, in the texture
you can express the feeling of wet water
To use this function in a detailed way
the tile needs to have a lot of vertices
The water gets expressed based on this vertex
so if there's a small number of vertices, it won't be expressed naturally
Until here, I explained about the floor tile setting method
Now, we'll arrange the large props
just like the reference layout image
The sources used here
were purchased in Unreal Marketplace
The props relatively located towards the back of the layout
don't require a high level of detail
So using simple sources for them
will help with preventing the project from becoming too heavy
The props located in the front of the layout require detail
There are many ways for expressing
but the method I chose this time
uses modeling data expressed in individual pieces
And I've expressed the building by stacking blocks
Like this, I put together each individual prop
and made it look like the layout as much as possible
Just for arranging the layout
it took me about 2 days
When you create your own sources
it will take longer work days than this
Therefore, when you practice cinematic expression in Unreal
rather than doing the modeling and texture job yourself
bringing in the provided sources and expressing them
will save you a lot of time
This time, for the arrangement of large props
I'll show you the method of how I made it
If you see here, in order to make it look similar to the layout
For the front parts
I wanted to make it detailed
So like this
rather than a building made with one piece
I put together various meshes to express the building form
And the relatively less important parts
The parts that are not important in the angle
were arranged in big chunks like this
If you look at the back side
The mesh itself has all the expressions of buildings included
These are normally called Lowpoly buildings
Just like this, in order to arrange the layers on the back
I used Lowpoly buildings
Then after arranging the large props
I added middle sized props
and even smaller sized props on the arrangement
I decorated it like this
There's no correct answer here
For this, look at the reference image
and decide for yourself to what level
you'll decorate the environment, when you're arranging them
So the important part here is
arrange the large props to set the layout first
and then the middle props
and then arrange the smallest props
Going down to the details
This process is very important
so remember the order of this method when you practice
After arranging the front of the layout with assembled building
this is how it looks after arranging the detail props
This is the state without the environment lightings
Unreal's material method that generates its own light
called emissive lighting, is only applied
The project setting is in lumen
and just by arranging the props in emissive
there's still a bit of lighting
However, we can't have lighting with just emissive
we must arrange the light source provided by Unreal
Like the left picture, when only emissive is used
the expression is weak in the cinematic perspective
Here, add Unreal light
and we need to increase the quality
These are the expression methods before adding the lighting effect
and after adding the lighting effect
As you can see, the way of expressing can be freely done
but in order to make the environment closer to a cinematic expression
lighting job is mandatory
This time, for the lighting arrangement
I'll show you the way I did it
At this state, only the emissive is arranged
so it's relatively dark
So first, to show you how to arranged the lighting
Like this
I added a bit of more light elements
Just like I showed on the slides
if only the existing emissive is used for lights
It may look okay up close
but from far away
that fluorescent lamp
That light that provides light doesn't look that strong
The light expression isn't that strong
and it looks relatively dark, so definitely
by arranging lights like this
Showing that there are lights coming out of here
is what I expressed
There's no correct answer to this
If you like this vibe, then you can go with it
But later, when you make the overall environment
only using this, definitely
won't look as pretty later
So always use sources like light
and arrange them in the environment like this
I recommend adding additional lights and arranging them
Next is about setting up the main light
I arranged directional light and sky light
As you can see, I made the image bright because
when expressing the dark parts in Unreal
I wanted to reduce noise as much as possible, so I aimed high
This is my own personal method
I arranged atmosphere and fog
For fog, I used volumetric fog
This is post volume arrangement
These are the adjusted items for post volume
Bloom, Exposure, Chromatic Aberration
Lens Flare, Image Effect, and Color Grading
By arranging post volume
we can see how we can express the cinematics
and based on how we use post volume
whether we can create the cinematic quality or not
gets decided
Here, the results from the test job
will be shown on the computer screen
and we'll review them again
This time, I'll show you how I added the main light and fog
and I'll also show you how I arranged the post volume
Before that, first of all
At the state of emissive arrangement and emissive light added
I first added directional light
As you can see, there isn't much difference
And next, sky light for expressing indirect light
Once I added sky light, as for me
I set the intensity scale to 20
and this is actually a large value in Unreal
But I made it like this in this environment because
this environment is overall dark
It's a dark environment
So later, in post volume, I wanted to lower the exposure value
I was planning to express it by lowering the exposure value
Like I wrote on the slides, first of all
in Unreal, the dark parts have noise
have lots of issues with noise
So in order to reduce that as much as possible
I just made it very bright
Then, in latter adjustments
I would lower the exposure
That's the choice I made
So to continue explaining
I first arranged the sky light like this
And then I added exponential fog
Then finally, I arranged post volume
Just like this
You can see how the look was completed
Now I'll tell you good habits to have
First is organizing the outliner
During the environment job, so many actors get arranged on the level
So if you don't organize the outliner
When you need to make corrections later on
or need to find a particular actor
you will end up wasting time
Therefore, you need to get into the habit of organizing them as you work
And same thing for this, you need to get into the habit of organizing them
In this lecture, in order to show you
what happens if you don't organize
I showed you an instance of a disorganized state
We'll learn about this through the computer screen
Good things to keep in mind during environment work
Those are what I will be explaining right now
Right now, I organized it a bit clumsily
Later, when the environment is made
there will be a lot of actors
Even now, it says that there are 442 actors
If these are arranged without organization
as you can see right now
you will take forever to just find them
So in order to prevent these
The things that you use often
should be placed at the very top
It's good to organize them in a folder at the very top
For the other items as well, if you organize them like this
Later when you need to adjust the environment
it will definitely take less time
And same thing for content browser
If you look here, I used so many things
so the folder is very messy right now
For this too, you may remember it at the time of work
but when you open this project later on
you won't remember what was in which folder
For these too, so that you'll be able to know later on
it will be good to organize them
Now we'll try making the sequence
For camera and animation
set up the corresponding source and do the keyframe job
Then add camera shake in Cine Camera Actor
Add additional characters and add animations
And then sequence animation
I set it up like this
When I play this guy
You can see that it appears like this
In OCIO, color changes can be made between softwares
and in order to use images created in Unreal
in other softwares, you must have this setting
Create OCIO in Unreal
Search for OpenColor in content browser
Move the downloaded OCIO file
move the downloaded OCIO source into the Unreal project folder
The source destination can be set to whatever is preferred by the user
And then when you open the OCIO window
the location where the source can be mapped appears
For this OCIO source, I'll use ACES-1.2
After setting the location
in Color Space and Display View, 'Add Element' was done
by clicking each add button, and index was added
2 were added for color space
and 1 was added for display view
In order to select the item, in index
click the down arrow
And the color setting list that you can choose will appear
Here in Color space, add Utility - Curve - sRGB
and add ACES - ACEScg
In Display view, I added ACES - rec.709
In viewport, in the list that you get after selecting Lit mode
Scroll to the way bottom and go to OCIO display
and you'll see the window where you can select OCIO
Here, you can apply the OCIO that you just created
After selecting Curve-sRGB and ACES-ACESsg
this is the viewport screen you'll see
From the left, it's before applying OCIO
then after applying rec.709, then after applying ACEScg
As you can see there's a huge difference
This time, I'll explain how to apply OCIO
As for me
as I explained, I downloaded the OCIO file
After linking the file, I added the item
Then in viewport, select Lit, then OCIO display
Activate it first
Activate it
Like this
The source I'll read is sRGB
and the exporting source is rec.709
Then this is the viewport screen you'll get
Here, if you change rec.709 to ACEScg, like this
You'll get a completely look from what I intended
As for this setting
as I'll explain later, when making adjustments in the later processes
matching the color space is very important
Then this function will have to be used then
But without those
if you're going to end it in Unreal
you don't necessarily need to use this function
It won't matter to just set the look in the basic settings
Just like the other softwares
in order to match the color space
OCIO setting is mandatory
Then when should OCIO be made and applied?
Actually, you need to set it up as soon as you create the project
That way, you can create the cinematic look that fits that particular color space
In this lecture, in order to show you examples of what happens
when OCIO is worked on later
I tried making the settings after creating the environment
If I don't use other softwares
and I only work in Unreal and make the image sequences
then OCIO setting isn't needed
But even though Unreal is a powerful tool
in order to create a more cinematic quality
you need to understand that you need to use other softwares
The work produced in Unreal
will be further worked on in Davinci Resolve
And this is how to do it
This is the link and the source
This link leads to a video
where Unreal sequence image is sent to Davinci Resolve to work on
In order to derive the corresponding image
we need to carry out the Movie Render Queue setting
Set the image format to png and export the image
Comparing the original video and the video that we just made
although it's not completely different
it has a pretty similar environment
Remember the environment production method I showed you
and please practice it in the same way
And I hope you produce your own awesome environment
In order to give you a lot of information
I did explain pretty fast
Be sure to review it, make it your own
produce your own videos
And I hope you become a great artist
I'll end the lecture here. Thank you
Creating the environment level for cinematics in Unreal Creating the environment Way to arrange the layout is important, and layout setting has to start from the floor
In blend material, in order to give the water effect, create the mask map at the part where vertex paint is applied
At the top part of Unreal menu, use the function of Actor -> Merge actors to make it into Mesh, and rendering will be possible even in Path Tracing
For the props relatively in the back, use simple sources to prevent the project from becoming too heavy
Emissive is a lighted state using the Unreal material method that makes its own light
However, only using Emissive isn't enough for lighting, and the light sources provided by Unreal must be arranged
By arranging post volume, the possible cinematic expressions can be viewed Outliner organization and content browser list organization are needed
Detailed functions of sequencer Creating the sequencer Make the settings and keyframes for the corresponding sources such as camera and animations Add camera shake in Cine Camera Actor Add additional characters and add animations
Setting Movie Render Queue OCIO: can change colors between softwares, and in order to work on the image produced by Unreal in other softwares, this setting is mandatory
In order to create OCIO in Unreal, search for OpenColor in content browser Move the downloaded OCIO source into the Unreal project folder
When the OCIO window is opened, the destination for source mapping appears, and the corresponding source uses ACES-1.2
After setting the location, click the Add Element button of Color Spaces and Display-View to add Index
OCIO has to be set up as soon as the project is created, in order to create the cinematic look that fits the color space