Independent Projects
Over the course of 10 days, I immersed myself in Unreal Engine 5 to understand real-time worldbuilding and cinematic rendering. Starting with pre-built assets, I focused on mastering the workflow, technical foundation, and storytelling potential of UE5, gradually building toward my first short film, Call of Sanctum—a visual narrative about a banished wingbearer returning to a ruined sanctum.Here’s a breakdown of the skills I gained during this phase:
-
Lighting & Visual Depth: Learned to use rect lights with light channels for precise rim lighting, and implemented blueprint fog to create layered atmospheric depth.
-
Material & Texture Work: Gained foundational knowledge of PBR workflows and masked blend techniques (similar to vertex painting in Blender) to blend landscape materials like water, grass, and rock seamlessly.
- Scene Detailing: Practiced environmental storytelling by assembling assets (from FAB and custom-made in C4D), managing surface details like branches, dead trees, villagers, and natural formations.
- Camera & Animation: Created cinematic camera movement with ease-in/ease-out keyframes and handheld camera effects. Used Level Sequence for animated asset integration.
- FX & Surface Simulation: Explored Niagara particle systems and Marvelous Designer’s fabric simulation pipeline. Smoothed out cloth surfaces using Alembic export to C4D before importing into UE5.
-
Render Optimization: Adjusted settings like 4×4 Anti-Aliasing for smoother visual output and used
ForceLODto balance quality vs performance. Learned how to control engine warm-up for particle stability. - Pipeline Awareness: Encountered real-world challenges like OBJ compatibility issues between Blender and Marvelous Designer—learning firsthand why C4D is preferred in many professional pipelines.
Progress:
Replacing blocks with assets:
Current Scene: