Category: Cowboy Duel

Color Grading

In terms of color grading, I used the Kodak Gold 200 film simulation preset from VSCO Film and baked it into a LUT. Due to time constraints on this project, I opted for a unified color grade across the timeline rather than grading each individual clip. Among the four nodes I used, the first was responsible for adjusting overall exposure, contrast, and white balance. Since I had already fine-tuned the lighting and exposure in UE5, I only made slight contrast adjustments at this stage.

Among the four nodes I used, the first node was dedicated to adjusting the overall exposure, contrast, and white balance of the footage. Since I had already fine-tuned the lighting and exposure in Unreal Engine 5, this step only involved a subtle shift toward warmer tones.

SFX

For sound effects (SFX), I primarily sourced materials from Aigei.com, incorporating background music (BGM), ambient sounds, mechanical noises, footsteps, and necessary transitional effects to enrich the film’s narrative. Notably, the BGM was a combination of three different pieces of music. By utilizing crossfades and applying music theory, I created a seamless and perfectly tailored soundtrack that complements the film.

Since I needed to create particle effects but had limited knowledge of Nuke in this area, I ultimately chose After Effects as my compositing software. Although I didn’t create a particle trail effect due to time constraints, I enhanced the visual impact of the fireworks by emphasizing the glow effect.

In terms of lighting, I drew inspiration from various real-world cases used by professional film crews. I noticed that modern cinematography often excels at concealing light sources, creating the illusion of natural lighting. This means that many lights appear to come from logical sources within the scene, but are actually produced by artificial lights placed off-camera. I believe this is a key technique that gives modern film lighting its natural and textured quality.

For this project, I used spotlights to enhance the sunlight coming from the direction of the sun. This ensured that the characters’ faces wouldn’t be completely obscured by shadows cast by their hats, while still maintaining the realism of the lighting. This approach allowed the facial illumination to appear natural and justified within the scene.

I dedicated a significant amount of time to creating keyframe animations and experimented with Cascadeur, an emerging software. Its Auto Posing system was incredibly helpful, making the process much more efficient. However, I chose not to use the Auto Physics feature to assist with keyframe interpolation, as I realized that animation often needs to deviate from strict physical laws to achieve more visually pleasing results.

Despite having extensive experience in motion graphics, this was my first attempt at creating character animations. During the process, I discovered that driving motion through specific key body parts is essential for achieving natural character movement. For instance, when a character turns, having the feet lead the movement, followed by the waist, then the chest, and finally the head and arms, creates a more rhythmic and dynamic twisting motion.

Landscape build (with World Creator)

Far-range terrain

Blocking

Add Rocks

Add groceries

I believe the key to achieving visual consistency is a scene lies in the seamless integration between elements. For instance, when placing a house on the terrain, it’s important to avoid jarring intersections as much as possible. During the terrain creation process, I intentionally placed miscellaneous items near the base of the building walls to mask the neat and monotonous boundary lines, ensuring a more natural and cohesive appearance.

Add Foliage

Add wheel tracks and horse footprints

Decorate with weeds

I realized that the previous version didn’t fully capture the tension of an impending battle. In this version, I refined the progression of micro-narratives, including skirmishes, confrontations, and gunfire. By employing increasingly compressed scenes and dynamic changes in camera movement, I gradually heightened the tension, driving the film towards its climax.

Rigging Test

After trimming the UVs of Bot1, I discovered that despite using an advanced relaxation algorithm, the texture still exhibited significant stretching, leading to a serious waste of texture pixel utilization. Therefore, when unwrapping the UVs for Bot2, I explored new methods. However, tools like ZenUV, UniV, and Packmaster3 in Blender failed to meet my expectations. Eventually, I learned about industry-standard UV mapping practices through tutorials and turned to specialized software, RizomUV. During the process, I straightened all UV islands wherever possible and leveraged RizomUV’s multi-quadrant auto-packing feature. This improved the UV map utilization from 75% to 81% while avoiding potential UV seams during the baking process.

Before

After