LEGO Animation: Death Stranding - Anya rests at a timefall shelter and encounters other porters and a B.T.

on

I made this animation of Anya Melfissa resting at a timefall shelter and encountering other porters and a B.T. (Beached Thing) using Bricklink Studio, Blender, and Unreal Engine 5. It took me a total of four days to finish this project.



Fig 1.  Anya "Porter" Melfissa receives likes from a local porter



This animation is dedicated to Anya Melfissa and is inspired by Death Stranding, one of the most immersive and beautiful games I've ever played. Going on long walks is something I enjoy doing in real life. Mountaineering and hiking are activities I don't get to do a lot and they are integral parts of Death Stranding which captivate me aside from the lore and music.

Last year I recall briefly watching Anya Melfissa play Death Stranding. It was a laidback, cozy, and relaxing stream to watch. This year she continued playing Death Stranding again. I had this idea of making a Death Stranding themed animation based on an artwork of Anya Melfissa in Sam Bridges' attire created by Pako Sun (https://twitter.com/pakosun/status/1502596193934749702).

Just like my previous animations I used the original "Smol Ame" template I made in 2021.

Most of what I did for this project is similar to my workflow in my previous animations. 

Read about them here:

LEGO Animation: Pikamee spends time alone and has tea

LEGO Animation: Ninomae Ina'nis spends quality time with a takodachi

LEGO Animation: Amelia Watson relaxes on top of a mountain

LEGO Animation: LEGO Houshou Marine encounters Gura while riding a raft

LEGO Animation: Gura and Amelia Vibing by the Campfire

LEGO Animation: Nanashi Mumei receives a flower a from Ouro Kronii after skiing

Making the models in Bricklink Studio took two days. I spent the bulk of my time on the timefall shelter, the odradeks, and BB (Bridge Baby). The timefall shelter is purely cosmetic; I made it for the animation. While all the parts are connected well, I did not add the necessary supports for it to stand on its own. I might revisit this in the future and make instructions for it after I make the model stable enough to be built. I made instructions for Anya Melfissa and the two porters.

Download the instructions and parts list on Rebrickable: 

Anya Melfissa - https://reb.li/m/105875

Porter (Premium) - https://reb.li/m/105985

Porter (BT detected) (Premium) - https://reb.li/m/106009



Fig 2. Anya Melfissa rendered in Blender


Fig 3. Porter 1 rendered in Blender


Fig 4. Porter 2 rendered in Blender


Fig 5. Anya Melfissa in Bricklink Studio


Fig 6. Anya Melfissa, the porters, and a timefall shelter in Bricklink Studio


Fig 7. The final models in Bricklink Studio

To create a landscape I used TerreSculptor to create a 4096 x 4096 height map. I then imported this height map as a grayscale .png file as opposed to a .raw file which I did in a previous animation. I did this because I ran into an issue when importing a heightmap with a .raw extension into Unreal Engine 5. The landscape did not resemble the heightmap and the dimensions were skewed disproportionately. Exporting the height map as a .png format solved this.  I used snow and cliff textures from Quixel Bridge for this mountain landscape.

I was able to make the odradek of the porter near the B.T. rotate by using a Rotating Movement component. I set the odradek to rotate 180 degrees in the local Y direction. I had issues recording this to the sequencer but I was able to solve it. I solved it by adding the odradek to to the sequencer along with the rotating movement component and auto rotate setting. I then unchecked the rotation, scale, and location by right clicking on the transform sequence strip. I then clicked the play button to simulate the movement and recorded this to the sequencer. This worked because the transform strip has default values for rotation, scale, and location which are the same throughout the entire timeline unless keyframes are added manually. I wanted this process to be automatic and so I used a rotation movement component. This is similar to what I did for my animation for LEGO Houshou Marine encounters Gura while sailing.



Fig 8. The rotating movement component added to the porter's odradek


Fig 9. The rotation component, which is only active in PIE (play in editor) simulation, can be recorded to the sequencer as keyframes.

I was able to add the B.T I made using Niagara particles to the sequencer by following UnrealSimon's tutorial. I added the B.T to the scene. I then added the B.T actor to the sequencer. To show the animation of the particles from start to finish on the timeline I added a Niagara System Life Cycle Track by right clicking on the B.T actor in the sequencer. After that I right-clicked on the system life cycle and on properties and set age update mode to desired age. 



Fig 10. Add a Niagara life cycle, right-click, select properties, and set age update mode to desired age

I animated the cinematic camera using transform key frames on the sequencer. For each camera angle and change in location I used an interval of 10 seconds or 600 frames. There was some bumpy movement in some angles and so I added a delay of 1 second in between key frames. In one particular key frame I added an interval of 5 seconds or 300 frames. This key frame is the one where the porter's odradek rotates in a counterclockwise manner near a B.T. I did this so the viewer can focus on the odradek's movements for a bit.

I added a glow effect to all of the colors close to the color blue and orange in my LEGO models. The colors in  bricklink studio are medium azure and medium blue. I created a glowing material by multiplying the base color with a scalar parameter which I named emission and connecting the result to the emissive material output. I set the scalar parameter's value to 100.0. I had some issues with the color orange. Since Anya Melfissa has some parts that are color orange, I had to create a new material and replace the glowing material with it. I did this by clicking highlight on all glowing materials with associated parts and replaced the material. I did the same for the glass material which I applied to the glass of Anya's BB (bridge baby). The glass material is a material I made for my previous animation of Pikamee spending time alone and having tea. The material is based on a tutorial by Matt Aspland.



Fig 11. Click on highlight on any material to view which parts are associated with it.


Fig 12. Anya Melfissa in Unreal Engine 5 with a proper glass material for BB's pod.


Fig 13. Glass material based on Matt Aspland's tutorial


Fig 14. A porter with an odradek glowing blue in Unreal Engine 5


Fig 15. The basic emissive material I used for the porters' odradeks and the lights of the timefall shelter

I followed Sem Schreuder's Niagara particle system tutorial to create a B.T.

I used the hanging particulates as the template for the particle system. I set the simulation of the particle system to be GPUCompute Sim instead of CPUCompute Sim.

To create the material for the particles I checked material override and set the material to be similar to the material of a dark LEGO piece in one of my models. I was thinking of making the material from scratch but using that material was quick solution.

To get the particles to become smaller over time, I added "scale mesh size" to the particles update tab of the Niagara particle system. I used "vector from curve" for the scale factor and set the initial values to 0.13 and 0.0 respectively. 

I added the following forces. I added a wind force and set wind speed to 22.0 in the x direction and the main wind speed to 20.0. I added a point attraction force and set the attraction strength to 100.0 and attraction range to 3000.0. I added a gravity force and kept the default values. I added a vortex force and set it to 640.0. There were some issues with the video I followed. Some parts of it were outdated and so I read some comments and read through forum posts on the Unreal Engine forums. I had to change some values to get the particles to  look somewhat similar to the particle system in the video. Based on the comments I set curl noise force strength to 6000 and noise frequency to 1.0. For the second curl force I set noise strength to -7000.0 and noise frequency to 3.0.



Fig 16. The B.T Niagara particle system I made based on Sem Schreuder's tutorial


After playing with the various settings, one issue I encountered was the particles disappearing entirely. I found a solution from a thread created by Virgil Sisoe on the Unreal Engine forums. To fix this issue click on the entire Niagara particle system node, look for mesh attributes, and set mesh scale to uniform. I also had some issues with camera clipping related to the particles. To fix  this I adjusted the ranges fixed bounds of the particles. I set the minimum x, y, and z ranges to all be -300 and the maximum x, y, and z ranges to be 300.0.

I did the following for the lighting. Instead of setting up lighting by manually placing the actors, I used the environment light mixer which I learned from William Faucher to quickly set up lighting for the scene. Through this mixer I was able to quickly add a directional light, sky light, sky atmosphere, and an exponential height fog actor. I played with various settings. In the end I simply stayed with the default settings but did some other things. I adjusted the color for rayleigh scattering to be a bit darker and duller than the default blue color. I set skylight intensity to 1.0 and directional light intensity to 3.0. I adjusted the angle of the directional light of the scene to stretch out the shadows. I set fog density to 0.1.


'

Fig 17. The environment light mixer

In Death Stranding, the sun cannot be seen because of all of the chiralium in the atmosphere. To get the sun to not be visible, I added a BP sky sphere to the scene. However the default zenith and horizon colors affected the appearance of the sky. Instead of being a pale, slightly dark blue it became orange. The lighting was also affected. I learned that this is because of the setting "colors determined by sun position" enabled by default.  I unchecked it and did the following. I set the zenith color to be dark blue, the horizon color to be light aqua, and the overall color to be grey.



Fig 18. Disable colors determined by sun position so the BP Sky Sphere does not affect the sky


Fig 19. The BP sky sphere colors that I changed

I disable lens flares again for this project using a postprocess volume actor. I also adjusted bloom slightly. To get the bounding box of this actor to cover the entire scene, instead of scaling it up like in the previous animation I checked "unbound".



Fig 20. Set postprocess volume to unbound so you don't need to scale it up to cover the entire scene

I exported the animation in Unreal Engine 5 as a .png image sequence.

I used some audio clips from my own gameplay footage from a copy of Death Stranding which I own on PC. I used the Xbox Game Bar to record videos as I played the game. I used handbrake to extract clips from select time frames. I then used VLC's convert/save option to convert the .mkv videos to .mp3 audio files. 



Fig 21. My gameplay footage of Death Stranding in Handbrake


Fig 22. With VLC open, click on media" on the top left, click on convert/save, select a file, and convert it to .mp3 audio file


I used sound effects from Freesound and music by Scott Buckley.

I used Blender's video sequence editor to put everything together. I had issues with importing audio clips at first. Sounds could not be played back properly and started at random times. The audio strip would also be longer than the duration of the sound. To fix this I found a solution from a thread by Blenderguest on Blender stack exchange. The solution is simply to set the player to A/V sync. I then exported the animation and reduced its file size from 10.6 GB to 333 MB using HandBrake.



Fig 23. The final animation in Blender video sequence editor 

Thank you for taking the time to read this. Any support however small is greatly appreciated.



Fig 24. Keep on keeping on!


Days after posting about this animation and the models I made for it on Twitter, legendary videogame designer Hideo Kojima, Kojima Productions, and vtuber Anya Melfissa liked and retweeted my posts 😭. I was overjoyed because I poured my heart and soul into making all of this.



Fig 25. Hideo Kojima retweeted the animation


Fig 26. Kojima Productions retweeted the animation


Fig 27. Kojima's retweet of the animation in his Japanese account



Fig 28. Anya Melfissa's retweet of a render of the animation


Fig 29. Anya Melfissa liked the animation


Learning resources that helped me and assets I used:


Change log:

March 21, 2022 - Added Blender render of Anya Melfissa. Updated blog post to indicate that instructions for Anya Melfissa are complete. Added a link to the instructions on Rebrickable. Updated image numbers.

March 22, 2022 - Added Blender render of a porter. Updated blog post to indicate that the instructions for one of the porters is complete. Added a link to the instructions on Rebrickable. 

March 22, 2022, 11:01 PM (GMT+8) - Added Blender render of the second porter. Updated blog post to indicate that the instructions for the second porter is complete. Added a link to the instructions on Rebrickable.  

March 23, 2022 - Added screenshots related to Hideo Kojima, Kojima Productions, and Anya Melfissa having noticed the animation. Updated blog post.




Comments

Post a Comment