Cyberpunk City - Creating a digital set in Unreal Engine.

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An Unreal Experience
Currently in this scene there are something like 1400 individual models . This short piece was rendered entirely in a game engine [Unreal Engine] (http:\unrealengine.com). It is a work in progress for a client who needs a digital set for a feature that they are working and live actors with be put into the scene after being filmed on a large empty sound stage and the composited in afterwords using an technique that most people call green screening or what is more technically known as Chromatic Keying.

Finding The Key
Chromatic keying, also known as chroma keying to green screening is a technique where actors are filmed performing surrounded by a back ground that is painted on specific color. In the case of green screen, a very primitive version of the final version of the set.

The lighting is set up on the set to be very even as the key to chromatic keying is to have a very pure representation of the keying color in this case green though any purely saturated color can work. The RGB value of this color is represented as 0,255,0 which shows that the color has no red or blue in it and is completely green.

Through software the green background is removed from the film. This leaves an image of the actors that has no other surrounding environment. It is just a shot of he actors. There is no other image what so ever. In the picture above you will notice that there is a desk that is also painted in this same green color. This type of set up is used when an actor will have to interact with physical things in the scene like a desk or obstacle such as buildings or other pieces in the set. Sometimes there will be added lighting in the scene so that the shadows that are produced in the scene can also be captured and projected onto the set. In our case the lighting is being set up so that the actors are very evenly lit and there are effectively no shadows. This is because the lighting of the set is far from finished. A specialized technical artist will work with me to light the scene. The lighting is so complex that a green screen set could not be realistically set up to match it on the sound stage. All shadows with be painted in by the compositing software as one of the final layers. A rendering pass with just the shadows will be cast over the entire image to give the appearance that the actors are actually located in the scene.

Why Use Chroma Keying
This movie is almost completely located in a large Blade Runner like city. There is no practical way of building a set or finding a an actual existing location to film the actors at because this is a place that does not exist. Also it would be far to costly to build an set of this size. So this movie is really an exercise in virtual reality

As a matter of fact a video game is being considered and because of the methods of producing the scene it will be very possible to make this game a VR title.

Camera Matching
The director of photography or cinematographer along the help of both the art director and the director for the movie will decide what angles will be used to record the video. The actual movements of the camera will be recorded then they will be used to create the camera movements in the digital set so that the images can be captured in real time and chroma keyed while the actors are performing. This real time chroma keying will help the actors and director know where the actors are in the scene and allows for the director to be see the scene as if it were being shot on a live set or on location. This allows them to know exactly what the shot will look like and adjustments can be made in real time to make interaction with the environment very convincing.

Keeping Things In Focus

On this picture an omnifocus camera will be used. On a typical camera there is a set point of focus where the objects of interest or the actors are kept in focus by manipulating the lens and are set to produce what is known as depth of field. Because this may be used to produce a VR game and a 3D movie having a fixed focus length will not work because the actors need to be able to be scene from any angle or distance.

My Tool Set
For this scene I have used several tools. Specifically 3ds Max, Adobe After Effects, Substance Painter, Modo and Zbrush. Each of these tools have their strengths. So far there are approximately 1400 different models many of these are comprised of more than one model. Many of the buildings have sub models in them bring the actual number of objects that are being produced or coming from a model library that is many times that number of 1400.

Millions of Polygons
One of the wholly remarkable things to consider is just how many actual faces of geometry are being produced to illustrate the scene. There are literally millions of individual polygons being produced and manipulated in real time by the computer when I render the images. This is a striking thing to think about as only a few years ago each frame would take sometimes hours to produce. Now this scene is rendered in real time or in the case of a few very complex scenes within just a few minutes.

If You Please
If you happen to enjoy this article then please let others know about it. Upvote, follow, and repost on this site and others. I also love feedback.

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