Recreating The Lord Of The Rings Doors of Durin in Unreal Engine 5

As you probably know, I have been learning more in Unreal 5 and find it pretty amazing. This article goes into to some interesting lighting techniques I wanna make a note of.

“For this project, I used Lumen for GI, screen space reflections (Lumen reflections didn’t support translucent materials in early access 2), and Virtual Shadow Maps to be able to get nice soft shadows in the Nanite meshes and also increase the shadow resolution overall. For the post process, I kept the exposure locked at 1 for minimum/maximum brightness. I also used a LUT with a subtle color correction that I did in Photoshop.

I added a lighting function in the directional light to create pockets of lights and shadow that gave a more interesting look to the scene: as if the clouds were moving and creating those light openings. To achieve this, I used a material with panning noise for the light function. Since this was a small scene with not so many elements, I wanted to introduce as much dynamism as possible to give some life to it, so the moving clouds, the wind in the trees, the moving particles used for the fog, etc., really helped the scene come together. “

New Work in the Wild

Some product renders I did for Specialized went live at some point, check them out. Pretty happy with the lighting and tone. Models were provided, had nothing to do with that. I had dabbled in photogrammetry but never really got to this level with it. They were quite nice I will add. Great art direction from the folks at Hovercraft here in PDX.

Unreal 5 Test Render

Been starting to work in Unreal 5 since it’s release and have been finding it pretty interesting. The idea of being able to animate easily in it has a lot of appeal to me for loops and music videos. With this still life I was just kinda blindly messing with the camera and post settings to see what kind of realism I could get out of it. Pretty happy with this result.

Yachats Oregon

Just got back from a little trip to Yachats on the Oregon coast and here are a few snaps from our walks. Great place.

Better late than never: Falling in love with Yankee Hotel Foxtrot on its 20th anniversary

Cool write up on AV Club about Wilco’s YHF.

“His lyrics expertly capture conflicting feelings, often seeming like he’s attempting to make sense of them in real time. That sentiment is expressed in “I’m The Man Who Loves You,” with Tweedy struggling to find a way to understand his thoughts and put them into words, allowing him to explain to his partner how he feels:

All I can see is black and white and white and pink with blades of blue /

that lay between the words I think on a page I was meaning to send to you /

I couldn’t tell if it’d bring my heart the way I wanted when I started /

writing this letter to you

Can’t he just hold his partner’s hand and show her how much he cares and loves her, rather than go through the brain-wracking process of putting those emotions into words? It’s a relatable feeling.

The pacing of the song is arranged in a way that sounds like the way scattered thoughts trickle in, with a rapid, thumping beat. You can tell he knows how he feels deep down: It should be as simple as that. But the lyrics also come from an anxious source, that understands that love isn’t clear cut. It’s a sentiment delved into throughout much of the record, including songs like “Radio Cure” and fan-favorite “Poor Places.”

And here is a brand new track from them that came out. Happy Friday!

Happy Friday!

Have some music to lift your day and burn this past week to the ground.

Houdini Doodle

Here is today’s Houdini doodle using some of the scatter tricks I used on the album artwork from the other week. My coffee sketch from this morning for the concept as well.

Outgrowth Podcast Soundtrack Artwork

Just finished the cover art for the soundtrack to the podcast Outgrowth. It’s a horror story set here in the PNW. You can check out the soundtrack by We Are Parasols on Bandcamp now.

Bandcamp is joing Epic Games?

Wow, did not see this coming. Bandcamp is joining Epic Games? Wild stuff. I wonder if they are going to make a easy pipeline to get artists into video games or something. Interesting for sure.

“I’m excited to announce that Bandcamp is joining Epic Games, who you may know as the makers of Fortnite and Unreal Engine, and champions for a fair and open Internet.

Bandcamp will keep operating as a standalone marketplace and music community, and I will continue to lead our team. The products and services you depend on aren’t going anywhere, we’ll continue to build Bandcamp around our artists-first revenue model (where artists net an average of 82% of every sale), you’ll still have the same control over how you offer your music, Bandcamp Fridays will continue as planned, and the Daily will keep highlighting the diverse, amazing music on the site. However, behind the scenes we’re working with Epic to expand internationally and push development forward across Bandcamp, from basics like our album pages, mobile apps, merch tools, payment system, and search and discovery features, to newer initiatives like our vinyl pressing and live streaming services.”

If yer burnt out, work out!

Interesting white paper here.

“Conclusion: In conclusion, this study suggests that a single bout of acute aerobic exercise supports regeneration of cognitive flexibility performance and of subjective well-being. This holds true not just compared to artificial active control treatment but also compared to widespread leisure time activity, namely watching TV.”

So when you are fried from work, get a work out in. Like, you know, when you have to do 20 part colors ups on 25 freaking product shots or something…

Bandcamp over Spotify any day of the week.

With all the crap coming out about Spotify and the fact that they pay crap I was just digging around for other ways to buy and stream music and Bandcamp has really came out on top. They pay the artists 90% of the money from a sale for starters. Check out this good write up from NPR.

“Spotify and Bandcamp could not be more opposite. Where Spotify highlights playlists, most often of its own creation, Bandcamp sticks to the album (or any other format, as determined by the artist). Where Spotify pays royalties according to little-understood formulas that can only be analyzed by reverse calculation, Bandcamp lets artists and labels choose their own prices. Where Spotify requires working through a limited number of distributors to access their services, Bandcamp is open to anyone. Where Spotify has revenue streams dependent on ads and data, Bandcamp operates on a simple revenue share with artists and collects no information on its users.”

Quixel Bridge fix for Houdini/Redshift (Update)

New update to make Quixel behave better with Houdini and RedShift was just released on Denes Dankhazi's Blogfolio. Gotta love anyone with “dank” in their name you know. Get the RedShift fix Here.

Basically, Quixles textures come in wrong, especially the displacement and this fixes that. Wrong might be the incorrect way as it’s fine in Unreal, just a RedShift implementation in Houdini is odd I guess?

“The Quixel Bridge fix for Houdini/Redshift.
For Houdini, I changed the 3D Asset, the 3D Plants and the Surfaces part.

How to use it:

  • Install the latest update (4.5) for Houdini in Quixel Bridge
    The plugin path is something like this: Megascans\Library\support\plugins\houdini\4.5\MSLiveLink\scripts\python\MSPlugin

  • Download the files and replace the original ones: download

    • ImportSurface.py goes to the AssetImporters folder

    • Import3D.py goes to the AssetImporters folder

    • ImportPlant.py goes to the AssetImporters folder

    • Redshift.py goes to the MaterialsSetup folder

  • The changes are significant

    • Subdiv settings

    • Shader settings

    • and most importantly Color Management settings for the RS Texture nodes
      Without this you can’t render correctly anything.
      Now the colors are using sRGB and everything else is linear as it should be.

  • You still have to fix the Displacement EXR textures thou.

    • Open in Photoshop (for example)

    • You’ll see there is data only in the red channel

    • Copy that as an the RGB layer and merge (Ctrl+E)

    • Sometimes you still have to linearize the data, use the exposure adjustment layer with gamma 0.454

Cheers, D”

Unreal Engine and film making

I have been wanting to start messing around in Unreal Engine for some time now. With Unreal 5 coming out soon it might just be the time to see what it is all about. Doing some research the other day I found this video that is pretty interesting.

Houdini Macro Fluid Sims Using Vellum Fluids.

Was doing a bunch of R&D into close up fluid sims and discovered some pretty cool stuff. I Started with FLIP sims but could not get the detail I wanted, so I started trying out Vellum Fluids. Started getting some interesting results that let me punch in pretty close and they hold up. I went down to 0.007 on the particle size but with some Vellum Post Process it cleans up pretty well.