Robots Blossom – Project Update 024
Project Retro
And so it begins, the final render pass for my animated short. Fingers crossed, so on and so forth.
I took my time before I hit the Render (Local) button in Unreal Engine 5. I really wanted to make sure this would be a clean pass. That would be a good omen for my animated short, Robots Blossom. Right?
Checklisting…watch/re-watch relevant UE5 rendering tutorials (see below), check. Triple-check Movie Render Queue settings and max them out, check. Anti-aliasing settings maxed, check. Console commands in place, check. Export as EXR files at 4k resolution (3840 x 2160), check. Color Output set for ACES Color Management, check.
One more check of my lighting…I may have gone overkill in some of my UE5 ray traced lighting and post process volumes settings like Samples Per Pixel and Max Bounces but I’m going with what I know for now. Going. All. In!
A last check of my Debug Focus Plane to make sure focus is correct for my Cine Camera Actors, check.
I even cleared my render output folder so there are no EXR file overwrites going on. Nice and clean.
And…go.
The screenshot below shows the render engine warming up. After the initial calculation I was looking at 12 hours to completion. The number quickly came down. Now it looks like I will end up completing the render pass in about 6.5 hrs for just over 1 minute of 4k footage (3840 x 2160). If I get clean shadows, reflections, no grain in the footage then it’s totally worth it.
As I am writing, UE5 rendering is in progress. Hoping tomorrow morning is filled with DaVinci Resolve Color Grading and final MOV file output.
Character Art
Iron Robots Pack – created by leshiy3d
Environment Art
Cherry Tree – Sakura – created by Naked Singularity. This artist also has environments and assets available on ArtStation. Check out Medieval Gothic Cathedral – Modular Pack.
Environment Materials and Props – created by Quixel Megascans
Props
Chinese Umbrella Paper 3D Model – created by YLYL
Animation Packs
Strike a Pose – Animation Pack – created by Infectedfury
MCO Mocap Basics – created by MoCap Online
Introduction and Overview to Ray Traced Cinematic Lighting For Exteriors
This is a fantastic tutorial for learning the ins and outs of exterior lighting in UE5. It provides a good amount of technical knowledge regarding lighting and how light behaves in the real world. Lastly, the focus here in on lighting exteriors using ray tracing and the instructor does a great job of digging deep into lighting settings, environment settings and the relationships between these settings in UE5. The instructor, William Faucher, also has a top notch YouTube channel. He puts together extremely informative tutorials and does a great job of posting fresh content that keeps pace with the changes that come with new UE5 updates.
Unreal to DaVinci Resolve Workflow – ACES & sRGB
Speaking of William Faucher, this tutorial is from his YouTube channel. The tutorial does a great job of covering ACES setup in UE5 as well as tips for Movie Render Queue settings. This tutorial is also great for learning a basic color correction workflow in DaVinci Resolve.
Improve Your Renders With Unreal Movie Render Queue PART 1 – Goodbye Sequencer?! (4.26)
While this tutorial is from the end of 2020, it is still holds up for Movie Render Queue Render Settings and is a good place to get started.
Project Retro
Layout, Lighting
Animating, Rendering