Mission To Minerva - A film made with Unreal5

After spending a year working in unity3D and getting familiar with all the features, I found even though unity is pretty easy to use but sometimes it’s hard to create high-quality render results even using the HD render pipeline. I started to try unreal and see if it can provide better results than unity. So my first unreal project is trying to create a short sci-fi film using unreal engine 5.

Client: Personal project
Role: Environment artist, Animation

Watch the film video

Click the video above to play or watch on youtube

The Story Inspiration

The main story is about humans revisiting earth after moving to another planet for hundreds of years. So the earth looks pretty wild without too much human touch. The scenery is Inspired by the Icelandic landscape which looks misty and dark.

Create the scene

I used a lot of Megascan assets from Quixel store. The Iceland collection contains all the rocks and materials I needed for creating a moody and unique environment. With the help of lumen, it’s very easy to create high-fidelity renders using photo-scanned meshes. A useful tip for creating an environment is not to waste time on where the camera can not see.

I also create the landscape using the landscape tool. To paint the material more efficiently, I created an auto material that can change material automatically based on the slope angle.

For the vehicle and the architecture, I download the KITBASH3D assets. These assets help build a sci-fi environment in seconds.

Animate in level sequencer

The camera was animated on each shot, and for some shots, I added a little camera shake for realistic camera movement. The aspect ratio I used for this film is 2.35:1 which gives people a more cinematic feeling. For the characters, I downloaded some basic walking and talking animation and then imported them to unreal in the last few shots.

Render and editing

I created several level sequencers for all the shots in this film, and then render them using the unreal movie render queue for the best quality. All the rendered images were then imported into Premiere Pro for final editing and color grading.

What I have learned through this project?

How to create a realistic natural environment using landscape and Megascan assets.
How to use sequencer for animation
How to set lighting for a nature outdoor environment
How to make character animation