Roles: All 3D scenes; Environment Design, Characters, Layout, Lighting, Simulation, Rendering, Animation

Client: Prof (Rapper), HobbyLA

Software: Unreal Engine, Blender, Substance Painter, Photoshop, Houdini

I was asked to join on this music video project, late in production, to create multiple unique environments in Unreal Engine 5, one needing to match existing footage shot on a small LED volume with an older environment. Additionally, I created semi-realistic copies of the actors from the footage with Metahumans, and layout cameras + lighting for all of the 3D shots in the video.

I used the standard Metahuman Creator Engine to get the semi-generic models as close to the actors as possible in-terms of body type/hair/skin, and then created custom textures to match the partial nudity from the actors.

The environments were all created in Unreal using various kitbashing and custom material techniques, encompassing a large mountainous, rolling hills environment with fields of flowers; a massive end-of-the-world cliff edge for the people to jump from; and a asteroid love-pit floating in space, where our actors end up after the jump! All lighting is Lumen with Raytraced Shadows.

I used Houdini to create a crowd simulation, with basic softbody physics, constrained to a pit with rotational forces, split out into various color groupings, and exported into UE as alembic files. I paired that with some converted static meshes of single frames in the crowd sim to fake depth and scale while maintaining decent render times.

Great project on a SUPER tight deadline, and really fun to work on. We took this one from being in a really rough patch into a proud work of art!