LEGO Animation: Amelia Watson relaxes on top of a mountain

on

 I made this animation of Amelia Watson in a kimono relaxing on a mountain using Unreal Engine 4. 


Fig 1. Amelia Watson in a kimono rendered in Unreal Engine 4


I first created the model of Amelia Watson in a kimono using Bricklink Studio. I created two versions of her outfit, one with her robotic goldfish inside of a plastic bag on top of her head and one with twin tails and ribbons. I used the latter. I imported this model into Mecabricks and exported it as a .obj file.

Second, I created a height map using the software TerreSculptor. The dimensions I set for the height map are 1024x1024. I generated a gradient noise map with the rough mountains preset. After that I played around with various properties such as size, layout, detail, gain, and more. I then set erosion type to rain and rain amount to 1/2. I exported this file as .raw file format.


Fig 2. The final height map in TerreSculptor. I did additional adjustments to the height in UE4 to increase the scale of the mountains.
                                                     

Third, I did the following in Unreal Engine 4. I set the mode to landscape mode and imported the height map created in TerreSculptor. I then used UnrealSensei's auto material for mountains as the landscape material. After that I browsed Quixel Megascans and looked for various textures I could use for the landscape. In the end I settled for Clover Patches on Grass and Lichen Covered Rock with a 2K resolution. I updated the two main materials of the landscape. I replaced each material's color, normal, and roughness with the textures I downloaded from Quixel Megascans. I then imported the Amelia Watson - Kimono LEGO model and added it to the scene.



Fig 3. UE4 scene with level sequencer

Fourth, I added volumetric clouds, a SunSky actor, and Exponential Height Fog to the scene. Since Amelia Watson is on a mountain, I played around with the layer settings for the volumetric clouds. I settled for a layer bottom of 2 km and a layer  height of 5 km to make the clouds look slightly overhead. For the SunSky actor I set solar time to 14 because it made the lighting appear balanced. I added just a bit of fog so as not to obscure the whole landscape.

Fifth, I added a cinematic camera to the scene. I added a level sequencer to create keyframes for the camera to move. I set the FPS (frames per second) to 60 with a total of 5427 frames. I exported the animation as a .png image sequence. I imported it into the blender video sequencer. I used an orchestral remix of Amelia Watson's background music arranged by "Just Some Trashy Music". To make the film sound as if you are on top of a mountain I used Wind__Artic__Cold.wav, a sound effect recorded and remixed by cobtratronik from freesound.org and lowered the volume to 0.4. I exported the animation as an FFmpeg video with an MPEG-4 container, a video codec of H.264, a lossless output quality, and slowest encoding speed. The result is a film with a file size of 5.09 GB. To lower the file size without sacrificing quality, I used a software called handbrake to encode the film. I used the preset Fast 1080p. I modified some settings. I set the the file format to MP4 and clicked "web optimized". I set the FPS to "same as source" and the constant quality to 23 from 22. I then set the encoder preset to slow. After encoding, the resulting file size of the video was a mere 75 MB.



Fig 4. Blender video sequencer with the imported image sequence
   

Making this animation was a fun activity. Not including the time it took to make LEGO Amelia Watson in a kimono, it took me about 12 hours to make this animation. I wanted to learn how to quickly create a somewhat realistic landscape and add it to a scene in Unreal Engine 4. After spending around two hours scouring the web for learning resources, I discovered World Machine and TerreSculptor. I settled for TerreSculptor and found a very helpful tutorial from Jonathan Kron on Youtube. It was exactly what I was looking for.

I wanted to make this animation because I was amazed by the scenery of New Zealand in the Lord of the Rings Trilogy. The landscapes of Death Stranding also served as an inspiration for this short animation.

The following are the learning resources I used as well as sound effects and textures:

  • Digital Landscapes Easy and Fast [TerreSculptor, UE4, Blender] | English by Jonathan Kron https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OxWFtDOjsUA
  • Quick Volumetric Clouds! - UE4 Tutorial by Ryan Scott https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWRRviFYsR4&t=26s
  • How to INSTANTLY TEXTURE your landscapes in UE4 - Unreal Engine tutorial by UnrealSensei  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mP8eHwVEA0o
  • Amelia Watson's BGM - Orchestral Ver. by Just Some Trashy Music https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQTtvI2ZGKA
  • Wind__Artic__Cold.wav by cobtratronik https://freesound.org/people/cobratronik/sounds/117136/
  • Lichen Covered Rock 2K https://quixel.com/megascans/home?category=surface&environment=tundra%20biome&assetId=vjbode1mw
  • Clover Patches on Grass 2K https://quixel.com/megascans/home?category=surface&environment=tundra%20biome&assetId=sgmkajak

















 


Comments

Post a Comment