This is Fine

Wow, finally finish this first version of a short movie, using a written script I made last year.

This short film relates the behavior changes in those we work in IT, to finally tell us that is a long road, but a fun one, and it is a personal project in my Career turn to this industry using Unreal Engine.

Took me 15 days in 2021 to write a base written script(this version has a lot of changes now) and look for some assets at the moment for a static scene(the look for assets is the most complicated task, some desktop, some computers, props).

After a year of pause, I started to do the film 30 days ago( to complete the sequence (not just put things on sequencers, also lot of blueprint programing) to deliver this version.

I use Unreal Engine 5.1 in this case(the original scene was in 4.27).

Obviously, it needs lot of work and fixes, but for this first version is enough to release it.

Development stages(summary):

- Write the film script

- if you have the chance, make some Concept Art(I dindt in this case).

- look for assets for the scenes (some assets will not import correctly to Unreal so you had to tweak them).

- Prototyped the most common scene(in this case the principal office-living).

- Created the Main Character using blender, add it to the scene

- Create every functional actor (sky manager, Main character(should be an Skeletal mesh and not a Character mesh), Lights(its not necesary), clock, furniture, screens. 

- Create the materiasl

- Planed the animations: no matter if they don't look good, but some doable.

- look for more assets.

- Started a test scene

- Started the master scene, divided in shots, you will use this along with the written script, start putting all together.

- I created the shots with the length in my mind, imagining what I wanted and how much time. Which behavior wanted and put them in the scene timeline.

- Added FXs

- Added Sounds FX

- Added voices (at first I imagined)

- Added Music: this one is the one, because at some shot will be needed to extend, cut of do changes to match the music. I choose specific times for playing the music, but most of them where good at the start.

Tech Stuff:

- Core: I use a B_SkyManager actor that controls the hours, sunlight, weather, and sun position while playing the sequence. I used the GodSky Asset from Epic Store for Weather and Sun position, but the Sky Manager is the one that controls the flow in the Sequencer.

This allowed me to have a better control of the flow in the sequencer and only had marks with the time and the Wheater.

- Carpincho : there are lot of Carpincho programing, based on the Mood, Action, and other parameters that allows me to change the Material, States, and other stuff(At first also was integrated with animations, but then I separate them).

The materials are cached so I wont generate too much processing while rendering the sequence.

The Model was done in blender, I don't know how to model so that's what I got there, and is a good prototype to begin with. It has fur too, but has a lot of triangles(like 170k), the original one had like 1Millon triangles. Yes, I know, I will be better at these jajaja.

The animations where all made using Unreal Engine Only, that was an issue because the amount of triangles in the model was easy to crash the UE at some points. But finally worked. There are lot of animations: Programing, ProgramgSlow, Fast, GodMode, Laughting.

The mouth was an Skeletal mesh animation, using a tutorial from YouTube to do a "cartoon" like mouth, independent of the model. You will find that some positions are awful, but that's me and my skill in blender and armaturing heheh.

The Eyes originally were going to be animated too, but finally there were a prototype with different static meshes synchronized with the behavior.

- Clock: the clock also runs at different speeds regarding the hour of the day. You will see Carpincho programming too fast, but the hours are faster, implying that time pass by different when we do programming stuff.

- Other actors: other actors where created to have some functionallity to allow me to have a clean sequence timeline, for example the notebook and screen had a widget that changes the Visual Studio Code and Border render that changes in different screens. The food is moved to other locations and rotations, the Pizza first has some food in it and then is empty, etc.

- Audio:  I put every audio into Metasound, some of them have tweaks, others are in cascade in one Metasound. This is my first approach to this.

- Assets: lot of assets where uses from different free platforms, Twinmotion and Epic store(as I remember , I didn't bought anything), Megascan textures.

- Music/Soundtrack: I have them from https://pixabay.com/music was a lot of time listening a lot and this where the ones that matched what I thought.

this are the nice themes in order:

Above All matters: https://pixabay.com/music/drama-scene-above-all-matters-123915/ (vincent-santamaria-30829674).

Eternal energy: https://pixabay.com/music/beats-eternal-energy-126356/ (oystudio-24430395)

Sad piano atmosphere: https://pixabay.com/music/main-title-sad-piano-atmosphere-no-pad-22213/   (Jason Garner, musictown-25873992)

Epicaly Short: https://pixabay.com/music/main-title-epicaly-short-113909/ (litesaturation-17654080)

Honor and sword: https://pixabay.com/music/main-title-honor-and-sword-main-11222/ (daddy_s_music-22836301)

Bouncing Joy: https://pixabay.com/music/introoutro-bouncing-joy-126495/ (blendertimer-9538909)

Positive Cartoon Loop: https://pixabay.com/music/upbeat-positive-cartoon-loop-109009/ (sergequadrado-24990007)

Cartoons prank: https://pixabay.com/music/cartoons-prank-122485/ (music_for_videos-26992513)

Cinematic Metal: https://pixabay.com/music/metal-cinematic-metal-121376/ (muzaproduction-24990238)

- Voices: all voices where asset packs of Epic Store Human voices pack. Some of them where generated by AI (example "I have the power"). You will hear that the voices are different and that's is a feature on the video, because I wanted to use the voices of everyone, no matter the gender. Some voices also were tuned to be more genderless.

- Localization: Its not localized and is in some Spanglish. This is a feature too, I didn't intend to do it in one language.

Next time, I may call for voice actors and localizers.

- Materials: Al carpincho materials were worked by me, some of them I had them before but others were tweaked to find the best approach without changing the UV Map(because was a paaaaain).

- Easter eggs: There are lot of intended stuff, but its more for 

- Engine: Use Unreal 5.1 Rendering Movie Queue for the final release, and Davinci Resolve as a video editor. I rendered several options (legacy) until I got the desired product, and then use the new Rendering option from UE, this took me like 3 hs of rendering at 30fps. 1980 x 1080. The film is 5 minutes 46 seconds and had like 10k frames, and each frame was Antialiased with 12 samples.

- Audio: only tweaked some volumes, not a master on that area, so you may heard some picks.

- Code: Used GitHub with LFS and there were like 227 commits and total size is 5GB

Enjoy!