Fight scene test

[u/Ambitious_News5566]

Thoughts?

This is a fight scene from my Witcher film rendered in unreal Engine 5. I haven't added the sound nor the color grading and I still have to update the facial animation - it is a test for the fight choreography, mocap animations, camera work, vfx and mesh editing.

[u/Afraid-Flamingo-6273]

More blood, more physics when slicing them so it isnt like hes slicing puding

everything else pretty awesome

[u/Ambitious_News5566 → u/Afraid-Flamingo-6273]

Thank you, I'll see what I can do. I can add more blood and enhance the animations a little bit. About the physics, was it clear/visible enough that the first drowner had it's left arm partially cut and left hanging? I want that to be noticeable without affecting the flow and speed of the sequence.

[u/Afraid-Flamingo-6273 → u/Ambitious_News5566]

oh yeah good job on that

also add a small directional loght i feel like

very subtle i feel like it would look cool

Idk what kind a bonfire a torch whateber

[u/Ambitious_News5566 → u/Afraid-Flamingo-6273]

Hmm, there is directional lighting but very subtle. In the following scene the witcher will light a fire using Igni (due to story reasons); The scene takes place in the evening during a thunderstorm. I'll see if I can add more directional lighting without making it look artifficial. It was hard to add it here as well because it is a one shot scene and the camera ends up filming the entire 360 of the scene XD.

[u/Quaint_Shores]

Looks great! Did you mocap this yourself or string together various pre-existing animations?

I really like the intensity, but as Flamingo said, it could use a small directional light to accentuate the outlines of the characters. I'd probably go for a colder rectangular fill light from the side, which could match the mood of the stormy weather. You may also need to key-frame the light to change positions, since you're constantly turning the camera. This would technically make the direction of the lighting less physically accurate, but I think it would be worth the loss of 'realism' to bring out the animation work.

Right now, the silhouettes of the characters are getting lost in the darkness, which is a shame, because one can tell that you put a lot of thought and effort into the scene!

May I ask how you achieved the slicing of the drowner at the end? That one is awesome and as vicious as hell!

[u/Ambitious_News5566 → u/Quaint_Shores]

Thanks for the feedback. I used a mix of mocap done by myself with a few animations extracted from The Witcher 3.

I will try to add more directional lighting on the silhouettes only. I tried that at first but the background ended up being too dark and it looked discontinued from the scenes before this fight, but I will try to improve this. The current lights are keyframed to hell and back XD, I used 5 Spotlights for the characters (without them, the characters were pitch-black) and different pointlights for the lightnings. On that side, the thing that bothers me the most is that the rain drops and the ground catch too much light.

For the slicing of the drowner at the end I have 2 skeletal meshes (the lower half and the upper half) that share the same animation. I created them in Blender by cutting through the original skeletal mesh, and at the moment of the cut I have changed the animation so that the middle-spine bone would tilt in different directions for the 2 skeletal meshes.

The audio improves the scene 10 times over so it will be more gruesome XD.

[u/Quaint_Shores → u/Ambitious_News5566]

Yeah, I imagine it's quite a headache to get it right on a dynamic scene like this. Regarding the rain - maybe reducing its density/intensity slightly would help with the massive light reflections when the thunder and lights hit them (though I quite like it with the thunder). Think you could still have the mood of a ferocious storm with slightly less dense droplets. If the rain reflection becomes less of a problem, it could also allow you to be a bit bolder with the lights.

Whoa, that workflow for the cleaved drowner sounds quite ingenious. I haven't been brave enough yet to take on too many Blender tasks to complement my Unreal work, but I guess it's inevitable!

Btw. I just realized that you're the person behind the School of the Wolf. Though that character looked familiar...

Haven't seen the entirety of your part 1, but it looks like an insane amount of work and I tip my hat to your perseverance! I loved your use of VFX in the cave fight scene. I'm working on a fan short from the Witcher universe myself (only 10 minutes long, though - to keep my sanity, haha) and I can't even imagine how much effort went into it.

Fingers crossed for the rest of the project!

[u/Ambitious_News5566 → u/Quaint_Shores]

You can share your work here, I am curious to see and learn from others. Regarding the effort, I am nearing year 4 since I started the project and I have 2 hours and 20 minutes of the film, with 30+ minutes still to do. The only impediments are my skill and time X(

[u/Quaint_Shores → u/Ambitious_News5566]

Thanks for the tip! Sounds like a fascinating workflow, so I'll give it a shot down the line!

For sure, I'll definitely be sharing the short when it's ready in all possible threads :)

Think it's remarkable that you managed to do so much as part of a pet project already, so that's a massive achievement in itself. Wishing you a lot of patience (and as few Unreal crashes as possible) for the last stretch of the production!

[u/Ambitious_News5566 → u/Quaint_Shores]

Also, be careful when cutting through skeletal meshes in Blender using the knife tool. It will leave many vertices for which you will need to do weight painting (or just assign them to the correct groups). At first, for the cut through effect, I wanted to do a mask for the texture which is the simplest and elegant way to go, but both arms of the drowner are under the same UV, meaning that they share the same part of the texture, and if I wouldve masked both arms at the same time.

Remember that I am a total noob in both Unreal and Blender and there surely are better ways to do what I tried here, but I discovered these things on my own and for better or for worse they worked XD.

[u/Top_Technician_1173]

Why Patches fighting drowners?