Level Sequence:
When I had both of my environments built, I put the exterior environment in the same area as the interior environment because I knew there would be a transition in the middle of my sequence that would take the viewer from the interior to the exterior. I wanted to achieve this so that I could transition the player between the two environments in the engine, making it simpler for me to render and export. In addition, this would provide users the same experience if they were to play the game while wearing a VR headset.
I then created a level sequencer for my scene so that I could start adding items and animating it. I relocated all the assets to the level sequencer and toggled them on and off depending on whether I wanted the environments to be visible or not in order to simulate their appearance and disappearance.
Making/ Animating characters:
I was certain that the mad hatter would be at least one of the characters in my animated film. I began to model the character in Fuse after studying various iterations of the design. I heavily drew inspiration from the original cartoom design for the character while also adding some of my own.
Making things simpler for me and enabling me to have a character without having to model the character myself, I was able to use fuse to make a fully clothed, semi-realistic looking character. I resized and modified the mesh after taking the model to Blender so that it would properly import into Unreal.
I imported the character model that I had created into Mixmao in order to add a Skelton to the model and apply some animations. I added a seated animation as my first addition. I did this because I was certain that the Mad Hatter would be seated in my scene and because I wanted to check how the animations would apply to my character.
I imported all of the animations into Unreal and applied them to the scene after obtaining a few more that I knew I wanted. I can apply the character’s motions in the sequencer and keyframe the character’s position to make it appear that he is walking towards the spectator, as in my storyboards and animatic.
By include more characters who had been killed by the hatter, I was able to make my scene more graphic. Originally, I planned to include additional characters from Alice in Wonderland, but I was unable to create or locate any, so I chose to create human characters instead, giving them masks so they would appear to fit the environment more naturally and allow me to add dialogue to explain their purpose.
Similar to how I created the character for the Mad Hatter, I created these characters in Fuse, imported them into Mixamo, and then finally placed them in Unreal.
Particle Systems:
I intended to create several particle systems to increase the level of immersion in my environment. I wanted to add a blood spirt effect to the body at the rear, so that was the first one I created. I placed an emitter to the desired area in order to create the particle system. Then, using that emitter, I adjusted the force and velocity to create the appearance of a fountain. I made a few adjustments to the size of the particles after changing the hue to red to make it appear like blood.
I also wanted to create a ball of smoke or wisp particle to direct the viewer’s attention to a particular region of the environment. I used one of Unreal’s basic template particle systems to create this particle effect. I subsequently modified the particle system to alter the size and duration of the particles. I did this in order to give the ball a lingering effect.
I created that particle system and then added it to the sequencer so I could animate it. I started it in the desired location and was able to have the orb float around the area and settle next to the cupcake by adjusting the arrows and the timeframe appropriately. I was able to get the orb to float more instead of snapping from position to position by modifying the movement in the graph editor.
references:
Carles, D. (n.d.). Alice in Wonderland (1951). [online] Watchrs.Club. Available at: http://watchrs.club/Movies/12092/alice-in-wonderland [Accessed 16/3/2023].