Film Room Evaluation

New project: Film room.

We began a new project ( Film Room). The brief stated we where to recreate a 3D scene from a movie with a 12 second movie/matinee scene as a final product. Teams were assigned to us for the remainder of the project, therefore as a team we had to come up with a scene from the movie in which we will recreate. This Essay will be giving a detailed over view and process of the creation of film room Chappie (Chosen Film Room).

The project began by the team analysing different movie scenes that we will recreate. Mood, atmosphere overall theme and dynamics of the room where all points in which the team would analyse each different fill rooms. After the extensive research the team was able to narrow the search to three different film rooms. Movies; Warehouse Chappie room, Elysium rebel control room and hobbit Living room. The first discussion was to pick a film room with dynamic textures and immersive lighting.

The first movie still that came to light was the warehouse room from the movie 'Chappie'. This was a particular interesting scene as it was a room within a big warehouse. Due to the placement of the room, lighting and dynamic textures. Re creating the room would add a immersive atmosphere whilst the 3D scene is rendering in engine. Looking around the scene we where able to spot graffiti and various posters on the surrounding walls adding a range of different visual interests to the wall, which would add a new level of interest to what would have been a simple wall. The lighting of the room was also another key interest of the scene due to the variations of different light colours (green, yellow and natural light). The mixture of the different light sources and colour added the atmosphere and feel of the room, it was the key feature to bring out the overall mood of the scene. Textures of the room was also another key aspect in which the team analysed the scene. Analysing the various grungy textures and mix of a wide range of colours was another key reason that lead this movie room being in our top three movie scene consideration.

The rebel control room from the movie Elysium was The second movie scene that made the top three considerations. This was highly influenced once again by the dynamic lighting and grungy textures, however this particular scene included a wide range of interesting assets which added another element during discussion. The various screens not only add interesting assets for the scene but also adds the dynamic lighting the team was researching into whilst searching for scenes to do. Layout was always the forefront of the movie scenes discussions, the layout had a linear organised feel to it however added a very busy and interesting scene to walk around.

The hobbit living room was the first chose that was proposed for the movie scene purely as it was able to draw the audience in with the dynamic atmosphere and iconic movie connection. The addition of time era and simple assets organised to build up a room with thick aesthetics, lead this scene to have a strong potential of being the chosen scene to build. However after analysing the room the size became a problem and would not allow a 12 second movie as a final product.

Chappie warehouse was the chosen still in which our team would build. I was personally rather relived with the chose as the team will be able to capture the overall theme and mood in the 3d space. the texture and layout was also the forefront of my involvement in getting this scene as the chosen one.

Before creating my assets, I began by gathering various screenshots from the movie showcasing different angles of the scene. With these screenshots the team allocated different assets among our selves. The assets that I got allocated where the three lockers, Speaker set, black box, shark teddy, plates and mugs.

I began by creating the three lockers, the first problem I encounter was getting the scaling correct. To over come this I analysed the lockers in adjacent with other models in which the scale was clear e.g. the bed side table.

With the lockers done I was able to begin creating the speaker set. The main problem I in counted was finding a way of creating all the speakers with the least amount of tries possible. With my first attempt of creating the speakers, the tri count became considerably high. To minimise the tri count I created all the same speakers and just duplicated them around the scene this also allowed me to unwrap one speaker and keep the same unwrap for the rest of the speakers.

The speakers where my most complicated asset to create, once done I was able to move on to the simple assets. The first simple asset that I tackled was the black box. The only problem I came across whilst creating the box was gathering realistic textures to take the box from a simple box to an interesting asset.

The plates and mugs was another simple asset which I had to create. Creating the plates was simple however as there was various different plates around the scene, the problem of making the plates different from each other arose. By adding different textures on each plate I was able to create different plates that can be placed randomly across the room.

The hardest asset to model for me personally was the shark teddy, It had a lot of none linear shapes that where increasingly difficult to make. To over come this I made a very simple low poly model that would be brought to life with textures and PBR in engine.

The lockers was the first asset I began to texture and unwrap. The problem with the textures for the lockers was getting all the different stickers to look rough and natural. To do this I was able to make simple planes for the stickers that stuck. I made different UVs for each separate object within the asset. Looking back now I would been able to create all the textures onto one texture sheet and save textures space.

As there was so many various textures for the speakers, to save texture space I was able to make a multi sub object and apply the textures through that method. The was a lot of speakers with the same UV layout, so I began by aligning the speakers that had the same textures on top of each other saving texture space. Due to the speaker set not only having speakers by other various objects with different materials I began by unwrapping each object on a separate texture space so I was able to apply the different normal maps for each object with different materials.

After finishing the models I was able to begin importing the assets into engine, with the assets in engine experimentation on the PBR materials began.

With all the textures and maps done in an empty unreal scene, the next problem was gathering all the materials and maps and finding a quick efficient way of importing them into the chappie room scene. I was able to just migrate the materials and exports into the scene however had to re upload the bitmaps and base colour designs.

Looking back at the project I was considerably happy with my team's organisation skills , within the first day of the project we where able to allocate the assets, complete the asset list and begin white boxing out scene. With this organisation we where able to begin creating our assets within the first week of the project, However as I had the main

assets modelled within the first week I began to go back on the models looking for every way to improve them which lead me to get behind with the overall schedule. Creating an action plan for improvements I was able to figure out the greatest issue that I and the team encountered. Time management was this issue, separating and allocating the different aspects of the project within the 5 week deadline, for example the team could of set weekly deadlines within the main deadline to ensure all assets where created and added to engine within the project deadline. E.g. week 2 texturing and unwrapping. This would allowed all of the team members to have assets as place holder in the engine allowing us to continually tweak the scene until it is on an acceptable level.

Analysing the final product, the project could have done with more tweaking through out the project to ensure all the assets fit with in the theme and mood of the scene. The main reason we chose the chappie warehouse room was due to the feel and mood it portrays to the audience, however with the completed scene and matinee, I believe we weren't able to capture the overall warmth of the scene during final rendering time. To over come this, I think adding a warm filter to the camera during matinee would have greatly benefited us on capturing the overall mood of the scene. Also more carefully placed lighting would have aided us on capturing the mood and atmosphere of the room.

Team Manifesto

For the film room project our team chose to recreate an area from the film Chappie. We looked at several different scenes before deciding to recreate Chappie’s bedroom which is located in the abandoned warehouse where Yolandi and Ninja live. The entire film has a unique look to it that reflects the style of the two main characters, and so we chose a scene in the film which reflects this particularly well. Chappie’s bedroom is full of unusual objects and the walls are covered with colourful graffiti which make the room quirky and fascinating to look. You are always noticing new things about it. We decided that this would be a far more interesting room to model and recreate than one filled more traditional, plainer furniture and it would be a good chance to showcase our skills and learn a variety of new things. There is a wide range of objects made of different materials so the scene would be dynamic and show a lot of diversity. The lighting in the scene is what really makes it because it consists of several different colours and has a cosy yet cool feel to it. This makes the open space of the warehouse feel more closed in and contained.

At the beginning of the project we created an asset list which listed every asset in the scene along with a tri budget for each object and estimated time frame it would take to complete them. We then divided these assets amongst the group, ensuring that each person had a few larger assets and a few smaller ones so that they had a similar amount to model. Each of us modelled, unwrapped and textured our individual assets although we all helped each other with any problems along the way. Jade made the clothes rail and clothes, shoes, hanging fairy lights, posters, pink dinosaur, owl teddy, picture frame and bike. Ellie made the small and large lamps, chest of drawers, miscellaneous objects on the drawers, large rug and the hedgehog teddy. Perrie made the rubber chicken, rubber duck, fan and small shelves, hammock, giraffe/dinosaur teddy, pillar, flamingo lamp, concrete blocks, ammo box and the beanbag. Carrie made the bottles and glasses, small metal case, teddy hot water bottle, walls, doors, floor, ceiling and wheelchair. Danyal made the bricks, small bugs, cartman, small rug, bed/duvet, pillows, graffiti decals and the curtain. Mugisha made the plates and mugs, shark teddy, lockers and the speakers. The lighting and the cameras were done by Danyal as he was mostly in charge of the Unreal scene. We all imported our own assets and materials into the scene, and throughout the project checked our scaling in comparison to the rest of the objects.