Inspiration

I’m going to team up with Xinran Li to build a traditional Song Dynasty Scene. Our inspiration is from Building Fan which was a famous building in Song Dynasty. This painting was done by Xiaoyou Zhang, and it was painted in 1994.

Reference

This is what the scene will be looking like generally. We will do a time lapse from day to night, and show how the lights will be lighted. To the front, we will have one main large building, and three or four smaller buildings around the main building. And in the back, we will have something like an entrance or a gate to this scene. And there will be one or two small pavillions that’s above water. There are boats floating on the water too.

The style of the buildings will be like this. Green rooftop, red columns and white walls.

Storyboard

Schedule

Rought Layout

I did a rought layout in Maya to show that what the scene may look like and where everything is supposed to be.

First Building Modeling

I’m responsible for the base of the building, and Xinran is responsible for the roof.

After I got the rough roof from Xinran, I put on top of the base building. But I found something is misssing, which is “dougong”.

Dougong plays an very important role in traditional Chinese Architecture. The function of dougong is to provide increased support for the horizontal beams that span the vertical columns, or pillars, by transferring the weight over a larger area of a beam into each column.

There are also different types of dougong in different dynasties. During the Tang and Song dynasties, dougong was mainly used as a building structure to support the weight of the roof without too much decorative effect. During the Ming Dynasty, innovation brought about the invention of new wooden components that aided dougong in supporting the roof. This allowed dougong to add a decorative element to buildings, exemplifying the traditional Chinese integration of artistry and function. Bracket sets became smaller and more numerous, and brackets could be hung under eaves, giving the appearance of graceful baskets of flowers while continuing to support the roof.

This video explains how dougong works.

I want to find a tutorial of a dougong that looks like the dougong in our references to build in Maya. I didn’t find any tutorials, but I found this video of making a small dougong model as an example. So I watched through this video to understand the structure and followed step by step.

I found this step is really interesting because I actually never paid attention to dougong when I visited the Forbidden City. It’s my first time to know about this. I also respect how traditonal Chinese people figured out this complicated achitecture stucture and how smart this is.

The roof was updated by Xinran with more details, now I need to think about how to connect the gap between the base building and the roof. In order to avoid the gap, I had to modify the top of the base building.

Pavilion

Firstly, I had no idea how to create this pavilion especially the roof. I watched through some tutorials and found this one.

I followed this video to start with bended plane as roof base. Then use lattice tool to shape it. Next is to created two tiles to get ready to create Mesh network for Chinese roof tiles.

And then he used the Create Mesh Network tool to duplicate both tiles along the roof base. He converted the edge of the base roof to a curve, and he extruded a square with the curve to create the edge border. Then he duplicate special to duplicate 5 more groups together to form this pavilion roof. Lastly, he finished up the top with CV Curve tool to draw the shape and extruded it.

I followed step by step and I found this is not I wanted. It looks like it is a pavilion roof but it’s not exactly correct, because the top of the roof is very narrow and small, and the direction of the tiles is also wrong.

This is a comparison of the wrong one and the correct one which was rebuilt by myself later. And you can see that the base roof is also not bended from top to bottom but left to right. So I decided to make a new one, but this tutorial did give me an inspiration of making the tiles.

The shape of the base roof is very important, it decides the general shape of the pavilion. I created the base roof very carefully. I did same steps in the beginning, duplicating the tiles with Creating Mesh Network tool.

And then duplicate special to get the rest parts. I extruded the edge border and bended it to make the tips up like in the image. Obviously, this is a pavilion with two layers roofs. I duplicated this roof to make another layer of roof. I noticed the tips are also layered one by one, and it looks like it’s cut half through. So I modified the tips to look like that as possible as I can.

I created a plane and inserted edge loops along the patterns, and then extuded out to get this decoration. Then, I duplicated them for the windows.

Rough Render

Main Building

I modified the first building that Xinran and I did before, and turned it into the large main building. The first thing I did is to changed the connection between roof and the building. This was a challenge for me because I was so confused about the structure around Dougong. I looked through lots of references and see how it exactaly is.

Then, I started to create the winow. There are so many different styles of the traditional Chinese window, so I just picked the one that I can understand the stucture easily. I saw this image, and found that it’s made of many squares, so I tried to create the patterns that’s shown in the image.

After I’ve done the first layer of the building, I duplicated it to create two more layers.

Rough Render

Progress In UE5

Xinran has started layout the scene in UE5, she imported everything into the scene and rendered out. The scene will be surround by mountains in the back and more buildings. There will be also more corridors and plants around the buildings. The boats and the buildings with materials in the back are downloaded from online.

Expectations

Plants

Finalizing the model

I added more details to the main building and the pavilion. Xinran built one piece of both the white and red fences and resembled by me. After I did all the UVs, I exported the model as FBX and imported into Substance Painter.

I added more details to the main building and the pavilion. Xinran built one piece of both the white and red fences and resembled by me. After I did all the UVs, I exported the model as FBX and imported into Substance Painter.

I added more details to the main building and the pavilion. Xinran built one piece of both the white and red fences and resembled by me. After I did all the UVs, I exported the model as FBX and imported into Substance Painter. I also modified the main building to another smaller building in the scene.

Corridor

I created 3 groups of the corridor, which are left, middle, and right. It’s easier for my teammate to organize and resemble a long corridor in UE5.

But soon we reallized a problem that we need a corner for this corridor, so I’m responsible for this part.

Progress in UE5

Compositing

For this shot, Xinran tried to add depth of field in camera in UE5 but it didn’t work really well, so I added depth of filed in Nuke. However, I know how to do it when the sequence is rendered in Arnold, I’ve never tried with Unreal Engine.

Then we found this perfect video which tells you how to render out the Z pass (the depth pass) in Unreal, and how to composite in Nuke.

Firstly, I shuffled the channel to get the depth pass. And then I used Zdefocus node to get the camera depth of field.

The edge got a bad result after I defocused it. So I rotoed the area to add another defocus to the edge.

I used the same way to add depth of field to each shots. Lastly, I edited and color corrected in Premier.

Final Video

My thoughts

I’ve learned a lot from this project, and I had a good time when I worked with Xinran. We figured out many problems together, and we learned how to find out the problem and solve the problem by ourselves. I’ve learned new tools and new software. It’s challenging for us to create such large scene for the first time, and especially using the new software Unreal Engine. We are creating something while learning. Xinran did the most part in Unreal Engine since my computer is not fast enough, so we learned to talk frequently to make sure everyone is happy with the idea. I found communication is the most important part in the teamwork. If there is not enough communication between everyone, there would be something wrong. And you should always tell your ideas, what you think if you are not happy with anything, or the problems you encounter. The best way to work more efficiently with other people is the communication.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/13548565211030454?casa_token=czHNOBP0SnYAAAAA%3ARjuWdjX_BhvIm9-NBvuW9B8dsKpMTOr6wZ7pGmomR2YMofOktD3zSlHwDvgltNbScaWULIqdakqSHQ

The dominant issue with deepfakes, though, is not so much the act of image manipulation itself, but the potential of such manipulations to deceive or mislead viewers, and their uses by bad-faith actors for persona appropriation, political interference, and involuntary pornography.

 At the same time, it could be argued that the act of circulating a photographic or video replication of an individual’s face on someone else’s body, even playfully, if done without the individual’s permission, is never 100% ethically benign.

https://www.wittenberg.edu/sites/default/files/media/alcf-2019/Wahl.pdf

The ethical challenges of recreating deceased actors are potentially great and have not
been adequately addressed. A few examples of this potential include recreating actors and not
paying their estate, placing deceased actors in situations on film that they would not have been
comfortable with, and eventually, the possibility that actors can be essentially created in CGI and not based on any existing person. Once this technology becomes widely available, there would not be a need to hire actors

https://mediaethicsinitiative.org/2019/02/13/the-ethics-of-computer-generated-actors/

many films have used such CGI methods to digitally de-age actors with striking results (like those found in the Marvel films), or to create spectacular creatures without much physical reality (such as “Gollum” in The Lord of the Rings series).

I was thinking about something I wrote in the first term. I wrote about how the team finished the film in Fast and Furious 7. They replaced Paul’s head with CG head in the film, and underneath is Paul’s brother’s body. This VFX techique is definitely amazing and mind-blowing, but what if this has been used for some people who have bad intentions to do something against morality.

https://www.respeecher.com/blog/de-aging-technology-changing-hollywood-future-film-making

In this article, the author talks about how the De-aging technology is destroying the films. They used the CG technique to replace the actor’s face or make them look younger, and tranfer the actor’s to the new charactor. What if they become ‘eternal actor’, then the deseased actors can stay on screen forever. He also mentions that everyone can become an actor in the future , which causes ethical questions.

https://www.bfi.org.uk/sight-and-sound/features/rise-deepfake-tom-cruise-tiktok

Anther article that I found talks about the deep fake. The author also mentions that the issues of ethical and the challenge to the law. So I believe that the CG face replcement or the deep fake is becoming a common issue on ethical and copyrights.

I’m really interested in Japanese style streets and buildings, especially the small alleys at night. So I want to create a scene of a Japanese alley in the night. Through this project, I want to improve my 3D modeling, texturing, and lighting skills.

Moodboard

I found some works from other people did on Art Station to decide what kind of style I want for the final render. I want to create a style that it’s in between realistic and cartoonish.

The Textures

I found some detailed textures I need for the scene. All the houses will be wooden textures.

First Shot

I drew out how the lighting and the whole environment will be. The camera will move forward and go into the alley. It lasts for 6 seconds.

Second Shot

My second shot is to show the details of the alley, giving a warm atmosphere. The lanterns will be slicely swinging. The camera is static for 3 seconds.

Third Shot

This shot will be a pair of money cats on the front desk of the restaurant. The white cat will be swinging his arm back and forth. Camera is static and will last for 4 seconds.

Last Shot

This shot is to show the food. There will be a closeup of Japanses dangos and hot green tea in the scene. I want to show some closeups of the environment to build the whole atmosphere. Camera slowly zooms in for 5 seconds.

I will model the houses which are closest to the camera. I’m going to build four very detailed houses, then duplicate and modify to make more different houses and put them further away to make my alley longer. I might download some basic models of the houses and work from that, so that I can focus more on the houses that will be showing closely in the camera. My goal is to finish one textured house each week.

Time Schedule

Week 1: Referencing & Design

Week 2 – Week 5: The modeling and texture of four houses

Week 6: The Money Cat & Food

Week 7: Texturing & Animation of money cat and food

Week 8: Lighting & Test rendering

Week 9: Rendering

Week 10: Compositing

After I rendered it out, I found that the tracking is messes up, the machine is moving too much.

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So I tracked two more times, and it worked well in Nuke but not good in Maya. I imported everything again and again, and check all my attributes, it just didn’t follow the track.

Until I saw the framerate in Maya was 24 fps, I realized that why it moved a lot. Finally, the tracking works well in Maya with 25 fps.

Final Render

After I rendered it out, the lighting is completely wrong. Nick told us that there should be one light coming from the left corner, and the other light is coming from the right corner which hides behind the wall. The left light should be pointing down. And we should look at the shadow of the stones on the ground as out lighting reference.

The shadow is very solid and has hard edges. So I created a spot light on the right side.

I used CTRL+T to change the target of the spotlight. And I put a cube as a reference to see how the light works on the shadow. I also turned down the shadow density to modify the darkness of the shadow.

After I’ve done everything with the machine, I imported the scene as a reference to a new scene for importing camera and locators. In this way, I could go back to the reference scene and make any adjustment, and it will update automatically in the new scene. Then I imported the camera and locators that I exported from Nuke as OBJ files.

I locked the position of the camera in case that I touch the tracking information on camera accidentally. And then I imported the foortage as image seqence from camera. It’s important to check the box of Use Image Sequence, it’s the reason that my backgound image didn’t move at all in the beginning.

I lighted the scene, and I found that the texture of meters is black. I search on google and saw someone said that it might be the transmission in the render settings. So I checked the render settings and the transmission is 0. When I turned it up to value 2, the glass is not black anymore.

We came up with an idea that we are going to make an diamond-like female statue, and place it on mountains. The statue can be a part of the mountain or it just lying on the ground.

We got this idea because we saw a sad news which happened in China, and it just came out recently but it is very shocking to us. It’s a mother of eight children who has been trafficked to an remote village, and she got locked up in there with a chain. I cannot believe that this happened in nowadays society. Then we thought we could create a female statue, and combine with some elements that indicates female.

Link to the news can be found here:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-60194080

Reference

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The Model

I did this female crystal statue in Maya. In the beginning, I had no idea how to make this kind of hard and flat surfaces. And then Nick told me that I could use Quad Draw Tool to draw the surfaces on a model.

First, Yuhang sculpted this female model in Zbrush. And I used this model to draw the surfaces. My first problem was that the surfaces I drew were too small and too dense, which increased the reflection and the model looked too messy in the render view. It’s always good to start from larger surfaces, and I can cut more surfaces later on. So I started all over again, this time I intended to draw larger surfaces. I tried to draw as irregular as possible. This tool is so easy to learn and so convenient. I can delete any edge or surface but it still keeps the faces together, so I don’t need to bridge or fill the hole.

Yuhang did some smoke effects to the bird cage. We abandoned the old idea which is to fill the cage with marine animals. The cage can be related to the mother in the news, it could be the symbol of no freedom.

Texture

I applied the texture in Substance Painter and connected them in Maya Hypershade. In the beginning, the texture didn’t look good, and then I was told that the color space of each texture needs to be RAW except the base color, and I also need to turn on UDIM for UV Tiling Mode because I drew the textures from substance.

Next, I need to do the texture for the meters. I found this image online but I have to remove the pointer in Photoshop and remodel it in Maya. I also made a copy and changed the text for another meter, so that the two meters are not exactly the same.