CYBER CITY ENV & VFX
ROLE
Environment & VFX Artist
DESCRIPTION
A Sci-Fi Cyberpunk Animation following the investigation of a drone which is seeking out the suspect of a murder outside a nightclub. What seems to be a routine hunt and capture is turned on its head when the drone chases the suspect below the city, entering a long forgotten part of the past, the city, reliant on the power produced by the automated machines down there.
YEAR
2023
GENRE
Steampunk meets Cyberpunk
PLATFORM
Unreal Engine 5
ENV BREAKDOWN
CYBERPUNK ALLEY
When creating the environment, I wanted an alley that was the hub of life. This was surrounding the subway station, where a DJ had setup his music and street food vendors attracted the public. Red light district with night clubs and lower class housing brings the whole scene to life.
SUBWAY
Being an often frequented subway, I had to ensure that the design reflected this. Stains on the walls, posters of missing children, cigarette butts and crushed drinks cartons littered the whole place. Broken pay phones, the homeless, overflowing bins, and vending machines, ensured that it felt like a natural environment.
STEAMPUNK RUINS
The remains of a steampunk past revealed itself with pipes transitioning from metal to bronze. Entering through a Victorian alley helped reveal the remains of buildings, robots, and gears. Power was being generated by an automated coal machine as smoke filled the air.
VFX BREAKDOW
MEDICAL HOLOSCAN
The Medical Holoscan projection was made with a combination of After Effects UI elements and a DNA sequence animation, which I then saved out as a video, and a holographic Material shader I created, I embedded the video into the Material which produced the results as shown.
DRONE CAM & REMOTE VIEW
The Drone view was created using a video I created using after effects elements and VHS banding. This was achieved by mixing both a CCTV Material with the method used on the Holoscan effect. The Follow Cam was cast to the Material in Realtime. The border and hologram effect was made similarly to the one used for the holoscan.
CRT CCTV EFFECT
I achieved this effect by creating an RGB pixel in photoshop, I then added this to a Material, pasted it along the screen and made each colour's opacity change depending on the colours in the viewport. Finally I fed this through a Sine Wave and clamped it low to produce a screen flicker effect.
MATERIAL, BLUEPRINT, & EFFECT
MEDICAL HOLOSCAN
The Medical Holoscan animation was created using After Effects UI elements and a DNA video, this was then put together in Premier Pro.
DRONE CAM & REMOTE VIEW
The Drone had two cameras attached to it. A follow cam which broadcast to a material, and a primary view cam that hosted the post process effect. The HUD and border effects were created using After Effects UI elements and Premier Pro.
CRT CCTV EFFECT
By attaching the camera to a CCTV cam asset, and creating a blueprint that rotates the cam back and forth, I was able to produce this effect. After applying the CRT post process I created to each camera, I was then capable of switching between any of the cameras placed around the city.