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Escape From Planet X (Game Teaser)

[audio on]​​​​

About the Project

OVERVIEW:

The Escape project originated as a lecture series within my Intro to Game Design & Dev course. Its primary goal was to develop a third-person action game where players control a character tasked with locating essential energy capsules hidden across the planet's vast and diverse environment. The energy capsules are needed to power the downed craft off of the planet. Players must secure these energy sources and return them to the ship before being intercepted by the planet's native inhabitants.

Initially built in Unity, the project served as a demonstration of fundamental game mechanics, UI design, asset creation, level design, character animation using a game engine, and optimization techniques. Inspired to elevate the project, I've wanted to migrate it to Unreal Engine to create an enhanced and refined version of what I teach in class. The video above is a cinematic preview/teaser.

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MODELING/TEXTURING (Main Assets):​

Concepting: RunwayML (capsule)

Modeling: Autodesk Maya

Texturing: Substance Painter & Photoshop

FX (energy centers and character eye): Unreal Engine 5

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Note: The tri count for the energy capsule is a little higher than I'd like for the game itself. I'll be lowering that for use outside of the cinematic.

RIGGING:​

Done in Maya. Currently in-progress.

I have the bone system and skinning complete. I'm currently working on getting the controls connected and setup the way that I want. Ordinarily I'd connect the controllers before binding and weight painting the bones, but the weights were fairly easy as there's really no blending from body part to body part. I did leave just a little gradient movement in the abdomen so that he has a bit of flex in his twist. It's not intensely noticeable and prevents the mesh from intersecting in places I don't want it to. By jumping ahead, I was able to quickly use an animated version for the cinematic.

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Left to do:

  • Connect the controllers

  • Adjust the skin weights in the abdomen a bit more (there's a little too much bend right now)

  • Import and setup rig in UE5

ANIMATION:​

I used Mixamo to create the Idle animation for the cinematic and I'll likely use it to generate his actions for the game. I built my own rig in Maya rather than relying on Mixamo's auto-rigger. Once the animation was mapped onto my custom rig, I made some very minor adjustments to the skin weights and then got it into UE5.

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VFX (Capsules/Robot Eye):

​The "energy" driving the character, the character ship and contained in the capsules was generated using UE5's material graph system. It's a procedurally animated texture. The main graph system is instanced with an array of exposed variables that allows for a wide range of visual adjustments.

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VFX (Light Flicker):

Fire Light Flicker Material

Funneled through the light function material of the point lights

​​Lighting:

A combination of point lights, spot lights, a direction light, a skylight and a skybox​​​​​

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Rendering (Unreal Engine)-

  • I used a PostProcessVolume and a Cinematic Camera to provide the lens settings and Depth of Field. Renders were created using a Sequencer. ​​​

  • The scene is fully "playable". I currently have it setup for a 3rd-person experience

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Marketplace Assets:

Environment textures, scene fractals, spacecraft and parts

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Final Renders & VFX:

For the final 30 second teaser, I used After Effects to color correct the renders out of UE5, create the end fx text sequence and add audio. Final renders were generated using Media Encoder (4K and down). Audio source - Motion Array.​​​

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  • Text FX 

    • I started with the text and font that I wanted. From there I created a Noise comp out of a Fractal Noise. I upped the contrast of that fractal noise and animated the brightness from black to white. I then used that Noise comp as track matte to the text, creating a crackling effect in the shape of the text:

​​​Next, I created a text reveal with a texture using the same Noise track matte. I combined that comp with the outline comp from above and added glow and color fx to the outline comp. In addition, I included an underlying particle graphic with the same color and glow effects as the outline comp:

​​​Next, I created a comp with the nested text reveal above. I added a grunge background as well as the smoke, both with color correction. I created a 3D camera and animated the Z channel to give the appearance that the text was zooming onto the scene.

I repeated the process for the date reveal and then added both to the main comp with the renders out of UE5. I finished up by adding a light sweep to the date text, and timed my cut points to the audio.

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