MIRAMAX/OPEN INNOVATION 'MEMORY PALACES' - TECH ART & ENVIRONMENT DESIGN
Highlights from the finished film
The "Keeper" avatar hero model. I translated the original (Blender) materials into Unreal Engine materials
Early volumetric fog sim test (made using Niagara Fluids plugin)
During production, the fog simulations for the 'Lobby' environment were authored in JangaFX EmberGen and exported as VDB sequences
Bottom fog wall for 'Lobby'
Floor fog for 'Lobby'
The parallax effect for the portals was achieved by prerendering a 1:1 move in each room then playing the sequences during the final render. This first attempt proved the method would work. An automation script was then used to render the rest
'Garden' environment look-dev
Wind simulation
For the gravel, I used the instanced foliage tool to scatter Nanite-enabled rock meshes
The hero trees were made using SpeedTree
'Arcade' environment look-dev
'Theater' environment look-dev
'Library' environment dressing/prop placement block-out
'Metaverse City' environment
I lead the initial environment blockout with the creative director in Unreal Engine. Metaverse City's landscape was loosely-based on Point State Park in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
The final landscape was then made using Gaea
The four texture maps exported from Gaea:
Height: 16-bit Linear Raw (r16)
Albedo: 8-bit sRGB
Normal: 16-bit Tangent-space
Splat: 8-bit Linear RGB (used for material blend, slope, and detail-mapping)
FWB building selection (before)
FWB building (after)
Park plaza building selection
Park plaza layout. Once approved, the meshes were modified to fit to the landscape.
After park plaza placement in level
World partition minimap view. The city's buildings were ~90% placed.
Optimizing this level was by far the most difficult. After the 1st pass, avg draw calls went from 7500+ to <3000. The level still required ~18GB VRAM in-editor and ~30GB to render.
Early concept environment for the 'Garden' level I designed during pre-production
MIRAMAX/OPEN INNOVATION 'MEMORY PALACES' - TECH ART & ENVIRONMENT DESIGN
A showcase of various stages of development of the short film 'Memory Palaces', in collaboration with Miramax & Monstera. We at MetaLVX were subcontracted by Monstera to produce the CGI in the film. I was Lead Technical Artist on the project, and also designed a couple of the environments (referred to as "Rooms" in the film) as well. I worked with and helped manage a team of four other artists during production. Together we designed all 10 rooms to match the director's vision and storyboards. I was also in charge of the rendering pipeline (every sequence had to pass through me before being delivered to the client for approval) and optimizing each level to strike a balance between visual fidelity and performance.
Development took place in Unreal Engine 5.1-5.2
Overall, the project's development took around 11 months, and deliverables included:
- 11 custom "rooms" (levels), including an 8x8km "Metaverse City" environment
- Rendered cinematic sequences for each room (and associated runtime logic for prop interaction)
- All levels migrated to Unity Engine (client request) for future development
- AOV sequences/render layers, etc. for Monstera's 2D compositing team