Film Room Project _ Essay

For our first project talk this year, we were asked to recreate a room from a movie scene in a 3D space. The room had to be realistic and also provide the viewer with a screenshot from the movie matched up near perfectly to the recreated 3D space in Unreal Engine 4 (UE4). For this project we were split into groups and had to decide between us which movie to choose and specify which scene, along with a screenshot from the movie to match the 3D scene. My group went over many movies trying to decide which scene environments would make a more interesting scene. We were asked individually to create a list of 3 movies seperate from what the group chose.

The Quentin Tarantino film, Inglourious Basterds was my first pick. This is probably my favourite movie I could watch over and over. But particularly the opening scene is my favourite, on a milk farmers countryside cottage. This scene also offers a great view of the room from all sides throughout.

Only God Forgives, is another one of my favourite movies. The movie is dark and full of deep thought with an amazing cinematographer. Set in Bangkok, the movie uses neon lights and colours throughout. The scene i thought about wanting to recreate in a 3D space is within a strip club. A narrow room filled with bright neon and a stylised esthetic looked stunning. However limited view of the room could be problematic and also may have been too basic for the brief.

There Will be Blood, is my third choice as this film as it stands out to me as another one of my favourites. Mainly for Daniel Day-Lewis's portrayal of Daniel Plainview. The scene i chose in this is at the end of the film, and the set is a wide open bowling alley built in Plainview's mansion. It is striking when you watch in the film as it shows such wealth, owned by morally 'poor' man. However, just like the Only God Forgives scene, it may be too basic for a whole group to recreate but I think it would have been a great project to do.

The group choice came down to the Movie, Kingsman: The Secret Service. The scene we chose occurs in a pub named the Black Prince. We all agreed that the seen has a good view of nearly all the walls and great assets we can model and recreate. I'm glad with the selection we came to as it is simple with a lot going on in the background.

I think the Kingsman Pub scene was great choice as in the movie, it shows every side of the room fairly clearly and being a real pub in London, the scene showed a lot of character. Within the scene, the pub showed plenty of assets to assign everybody and also had a lot of variation of objects.

The still from Kingsman our group chose is at the end of the film and gives the best view of the pub from all the scenes. The snapshot shows direct sunlight coming from the windows providing a good source of natural light to illuminate the scene.

However, the cinematographer of the movie has used a camera lens that has distorted the image. With the added lens and distortion the ceiling is warped making the final beauty shot from Unreal Engine harder to replicate. Another problem is the bar is blocked by a silhouette on the right hand side preventing the group from seeing how the bar looked in the movie.

When I started modelling my assets within week one, I realised that the usual way I model an asset I usually keep it all as one object. But half way through making my bench, I realised that a real bench and its pieces that make it are all separate. Therefore, why am I trying to model it asif each arm rest and the seat cushion are connected? I then started over and made separate parts for the bench and put them together like a puzzle. This method of modelling proved to be a lot easier than thinking of a topology for a bench but instead splitting it up so that I can assemble, fix and unwrap individual parts without having to alter any connected mesh.

After I had used this method of modelling I continued to model the rest of my assets in a similar fashion. This proved an overall better way for me to model each asset.

For this Film room project we were taught about PBR Photo Based Rendering when texturing. Within Mike Kelly's visual design class we were shown Bitmap2Material which is a program that allows us to import any image and create a 3D material for Unreal Engine 4. For the project I stuck with the website recommended to us called CG Textures to pick texture from.

The program takes the details of the image you import and amplifies them to form Normal maps, Ambient Occlusion maps etc. Using this tool is great as it makes creating material maps for UE4.

The first week of the project I had started to replicate the carpet pattern in the Kingsman scene. I finally managed to figure out the pattern that is tiled across the carpet but it took longer than expected.

For my bench, side door and stool I have used multi-sub materials for each asset. Within these objects I had created all tileable materials for pattern fabrics and wood texture, as well as a brass texture for the side door. For the side door asset I had real trouble trying to replicate a 'frosted' glass effect for the windows. I realised that instead of trying to replicate it best I can with one basic translucent material on unreal, I should instead use the time to create an albido map instead. since there is a pattern on the window where it is translucent I knew I had to create a mask and link it to the opacity to create the desired effect. I do think that using an albido mask worked really well to replicate the effect but I would have liked to of learned how to recreate an actual frosted glass material.

Being told we were using Unreal Engine did worry me as I hadn't really used it before this year, however since we had tutorials in the classes the fear of unreal engine soon went away. I think my textures came out great with the use of creating our own texture normal maps with bitmap2material.

The team I was placed into was great, we started straight away and produced a list of possible film room scenes. Then all decided to go with Kingsman pub scene. I found that I really enjoyed the team dynamic as setting up a Facebook chat allowed us to ask and give pretty much instant feedback. if we had any queries about the project we always helped each other. I do think also that everyone in the group pulled their own weight and no one felt left behind during the project. when importing the assets into engine, Mateusz pretty much guided us through the process of setting up a film room in the unreal engine scene, then began to edit together as a team. As a team we also gave each other assets that allowed everyone to model some kind of furniture as well as a few miscellaneous items. After a while the team did lose communication as the project went on, but we made sure that had meetings a few times a week to make sure we are all on the right track and help each other with any practical problems. I think each of us experienced problems with importing assets, mainly with the size of the objects. But after some resizing everything was set right. Therefore I think as a whole the team worked really well together.

The action points I set for myself were about time management. I knew by the end of the first week I wanted to have all my assets modelled and next week resume to unwrapping and texturing. By the third week I wanted to continue texturing and then texture in unreal engine. by week four I wanted to have everything in engine and address any problems that may occur. This proved eventful when during the presentation we gave the class, one of our classmates asked why the carpet texture is so much darker than the beauty screenshot we compared the scene to. this was because I had took the colour of the carpet from an earlier scene in the movie where there is no direct sunlight on the carpet, therefore I had to go back into photoshop and produce a newer, revised version. While doing this process I added to the carpet texture, adding in a roughness map I had produced that made the carpet seem as if it had damp patches from where drink was spilled. my action points had worked, giving me enough time to edit and improve upon my work before the final hand in. I think my performance throughout the project was very consistent and kept up to date with any of the team developments.

Team Manifesto:

We chose to recreate the post-credits bar fight from Kingsman: The Secret Service because it was the most balanced scene we could find in terms of asset distribution, difficulty, lighting and mood. The still is simple, but effective in conveying a mood of subtle tension through camera angles and character body language, but the scene itself is fairly simple. Light coming through the windows in a ‘god ray’ style evokes a very different mood to what the scene implies, giving the impression of a warm, welcoming British pub.

The still we chose also allowed us to take full advantage of the fact that the pub was home to a fight scene, with the swooping camera and multiple angles used giving us a clear indication of space, as well as a view of all the assets we would need to make, meaning very little would need to be guesswork or left out. The still also offered opportunities for us to practice creating many different kinds of surfaces and textures, with wallpapers, woods, plaster, glass and upholstery all available as materials we were able to recreate.

As a team we were required to evenly distribute out assets and make a work plan for the coming weeks, something we immediately established as soon as the project began. Our planning began by organising a facebook group where we would establish meet-up times, progress, updates and general discussion of the project. We knew this would be essential to keep track of everything so this was a very early step.

Another early group organisation tactic was the asset list- we went through the stills we had of the scene, individually picking out assets and putting them into an excel document, where we would decide tri counts for each asset. While doing this, we also organised assets into a priority list based on size and importance. For example, the benches were going to be higher-poly models, finished and put into engine first before something like placemats. This allowed us to create the ‘feel’ of the room first and make sure that the scale was correct, as well as ensuring that if we stumbled during development the essential, room defining assets would be done in time. During this, we set up a time frame for what needed to be done and by when, aiming for the essentials to be completed by week four, ensuring a two week long polish, and giving ample time to deal with any inevitable roadblocks. During the project, our team would also lend our models to each other in order to keep a consistent scale for assets that sit closely together or work in tandem, such as chairs, benches and tables.

This is the final beauty screenshot from Unreal Engine 4.