INTRODUCTION

Science fiction story The Primitive Pride sets it scene on Planet Mars and its orbit space. This is a story about sacrifice, rescue and redemption​.

The Primitive Pride is my personal post-master-thesis work, the goal is to accomplish a 10 minutes virtual production short rendered in Real-time game engine. The original drive for me to start this project comes from my passion towards video-game-cinematic and motion pictures, to figure out a proper pipeline with school resources and off-the-shelf software (DCC Applications). The main project file has been updated to Unity 2019 HDRP and will render out with GI raytracing system. I am aiming Pitch Visualization for the final quality.

My Role: Writer & Director, Technical Producer and Cinematic Artist

Writer & Director
  • I am the creator of The Primitive Pride story; its concept,  setting and tone.
Technical Producer
  • As a student project with limited budget yet high quality standard, I am responsible to search for the best resources in town and on the global internet. Establish long term collaboration with most talent artists and make sure their skill, aesthetic and technical workflow fits the project vision. Quality assurance the delivered assets and negotiate with Zemeckis Center for Digital Arts and Institute for Creative Technologies which provides cutting edge  photogrammetry equipment and virtual production set.
Cinematic Artist/ TechArt.
  • To merge my Physical Production experience with Interactive media production workflow, use the advanced realtime rendered game engine to tell a story.
  • I proposed the very first draft of storyboard to figure out the pacing and camera language, then work closely with my professional storyboard artist to polish the scene.
  • Layout and Previs animation, 7 out of 9 scene were 100% assembled by myself ( Space station INT scene and Greenhouse INT scene were built by Dan Qiao). All Previs animation were made by myself.
  • Tech Art. Optimized over-polycount asset and re-textured some to make sure all asset at the same standard ( 4k resolution), Shader graph in Lit shader to fit the HD render pipeline. Realtime render lightmap optimization. Rigging for character and ground vehicle. 

PHOTOREALISTIC CGI DIGITAL DOUBLE

PROCEDURAL TERRIAN WITH PHOTO SCANNED MIXED MATERIAL

These materials made for mars terrain were 100% photogrammetric based from the Megascan Library and other online library, and I have made mixed and tweaked in Mixer as well as Photoshop to make sure they fit the story context for planet mars and unique for the project.

GALLERY (WIP)
Original Scene with Scriptable Render Pipeline

VEHICLE INTERACTIVE ANIMATION CAPTURE

Optical Track Motion Capture

The motion capture sessions were accomplished with optical track system and Motive software. Stage of scene was built in refence to the scale and measurement of the virtual scene after mo-cap volume calibration, to achieve the most optimal animation quality as possible.

Motion Builder Multi-Constrain

A multi-constrain system were used to make sure props and other objects in the scene will snap to the right position in reference to the actors' gesture. Selected constrain animation were baked in the base animation layer then edit by adjusting the F-curve and add-animation layer.

Character Animation Track Body-part Overwrite 

To further remove the unwanted data due to relatively small Motive volume, Character overwrite sub-tracks were created, these tracks were each responsible for specific character's body parts. This way of editing in combine with character controller and pose control system can further improve the animation quality.

Story Tool in Synchronize with Video Track

Video references were captured during performance captured session. These videos were imported inside MotionBuilder as reference source of the footage and sound to make sure everything is Synchronized during pacing adjustment phase, i.e. to create time and trim time on the animation. Fixed scenes were plot to a new take.

Story Tool Animation Blending

Actor's performances for the same scene, yet different volumes were stitched  together inside the Story Tool. The blending was performed in aid with ghost tool at the beggning and end of each animation clip.

PRE-PRODUCTION PLANNING