HERE

This project was both exciting and deceptively complex, presenting numerous new challenges. I worked on the virtual production content for the exterior street visible through the window, which would be prominently featured in the center of the frame for nearly the entire film. The movie's unique approach involved entirely filming it from a single, static position, resulting in a continuous shot that spanned over hundreds of years. As a result, the street needed to constantly evolve, showcasing changes in different times of day, seasons, and weather conditions. It along with practical set dressing inside the room, was used as a tool to visually represent the place in time for each scene.

MPC Controls

We aimed to provide the on-set operators, DOP, and director with as much live control over the scene as possible. My role was to create intuitive yet in-depth material controllers for nearly every visual element, ensuring they could be easily adjusted during  look dev sessions and live on-set during the shoot. To achieve this, I used material parameter collections and blueprints with a large but intuitive set of variables to control material parameters. This approach was applied to various scene elements, including all of the foliage (divided into lawns, weeds, bushes, and trees), ground surfaces, building materials, vehicle materials, and the background DMP cards.  The controllers needed to be non-destructive but also still use correct values rather than multipliers or additive values. For this, I made a system inside the controller blueprint that would find and back up all of the values that had already been set in the material instances, allowing them to serve as the new default values.

Weather System

Given the constant changes in weather and seasons from scene to scene, we needed a weather system that could be quickly applied and adjusted in real-time. While systems like Ultra Dynamic Weather exist, we chose not to use it because it requires Ultra Dynamic Sky to be in use, which conflicted with our chosen sky and lighting setup. Instead, I developed a completely new weather system tailored to our needs.

The system allowed for seamless switching between weather presets (clear, rain, snow, etc.) and offered in-depth controls to fine-tune every aspect. It was built using multiple Niagara systems and functions within the scene materials, all controlled by a central blueprint. For instance, when set to rain, all of the exposed surfaces would appear wet, puddles would form which would splash and ripple from the impact of raindrops, and running water or droplets would appear on more vertical surfaces.

There was a wind system built in that would affect everything you would expect it to from swaying foliage and blowing leaves and debris on the ground to the movement of the rain or snow as it falls. This all came together to form a powerful and dynamic weather controller.

Vehicles

Throughout the movie, a variety of vehicles pass by the window, serving as both a time period indicator and as story points. I helped build the vehicle system which enabled us to set the vehicle's paths, simulate most of the animations, and control elements like headlights, braking, and particle effects. These animations were then able to be dynamically triggered by DMX on set.

A significant amount of effort went into developing the car paint shaders used across all vehicles. I was responsible for integrating dirt layers and setting up the in-depth look dev controls.  I’m pleased with how the vehicles turned out especially given the constraints of real-time.

I also set up several Niagara effects for the vehicles, including exhaust smoke, dust kicked up by the tires, and water spray during wet conditions. These effects were controlled both manually in the sequencer and dynamically based on factors such as vehicle speed and weather conditions.