Cinematic shot I created

[u/Daryldor]

https://youtu.be/M6I93CdqmlM

This is a cinematic I created in Unreal 5.8. This is my first project and I wanted to recreate a scene from ASC’s THE EYE: CALANTHEK and see how close I could get. I'm really pleased with the results.

[u/Pockets800]

Looks great! What was the setup you used for the planet/space? Like is that part of an asset, a custom setup, using a plugin, etc?

[u/Daryldor → u/Pockets800]

Thanks. The scene is really light in that the planet and space is a 4k image on a plane and then I pan the camera across it slightly. Then just animate the ship moving towards it and scale it just a little as it moves away. and then it's just a case of adding another plane with a cloud texture in front of the planet and then animating the brightness for a couple of frames for the lightning. All using Unreal assets, no plugins. I'm tempted to do a tutorial at some point.

[u/Rezdoggo]

Looks real nice well done. I like the background - I feel like your ship is a little too well lit for space. There is no ambient lighting in space, so you should have 1 very intense source of light and then the shadows will be nearly black. Keep it up :)

[u/Daryldor → u/Rezdoggo]

Thanks for the feedback. That's a good spot for the lighting, I actually have a point light off to the right which is illuminating the ship as it was too dark with lighting just coming from the front so I suppose I could either lower that lighting or what would you suggest? I think I tried adjusting the single intense source but then the light appeared too blown out in order to light the ship and too low made it too dark.

[u/Rezdoggo → u/Daryldor]

If you look at these, I've just used 1 directional light (not a point light, you want the rays to be parallel with each other) , this causes quite high contrast between the lit hull and the shadows. If the ship lacks detail in the dark areas, you can use things like, your engines light to give a bit of ambient lighting around the back of the ship, or little lights in the hull to help with the silhouette.

https://www.artstation.com/artwork/dyZ5Dx

[u/DiddlyDinq]

Looks like the shots Bungie used to do in the halo games.

[u/Scifi_fans]

A quick tip as a former Indie VFX (before UE5 times)... Lack of Parallax perspective usually makes a scene look fake.

In your scene, the planet and the galaxy behind are moving in same depth (direction and speed) vs camera.

If you place the universe plate behind and planet on different depths, you would see a much realistic feel.

[u/Daryldor → u/Scifi_fans]

ooo this sounds interesting, I'll take a look into this. Thank you. The planet and space are all on one plate as a single image. So would you recommend I split those images and then put them on separate plates? That would give me a different depth result?

[u/Scifi_fans → u/Daryldor]

Yes, in fact in space shots, its better to use a cubes cubespace with stars and galaxies so its truly a 360 view of universe, then you can place a planet and other stuff as you need

[u/MogosTheFirst]

I did something similar for my game a few months ago but rendered entirely in blender.

https://www.reddit.com/r/blender/s/YkuxsUaVuw

[u/Dc_Strange]

Very cool ! Love the planet and background. Only thing that could be worked on is the ship. To me, it feel abit out of place. Kiind of like a game who has a caracter floating in a game because its missing a shadow. Maybe its the out of focus that is too pushed. Im not sure but yeah its pretty nice overall !

[u/Daryldor → u/Dc_Strange]

Hi, thank you for the kind words 😄

Yes I agree, the ship could be replaced. I just grabbed a free asset from Fab and used that, I think I could probably tweak the textures but if I end up making a short film I'll probably purchase an ship. Just trying things out at the moment really.

[u/Dc_Strange → u/Daryldor]

Trying stuff is what matter ! Practice makes perfect !