I’m just sharing a recent cinematic for a project I completed. While far from perfect I indeed keep learning every time I use UE for my projects so Im happy to bring this to a close and move onto something new!
Feedback/comments/improvements all welcome. I hope you enjoy!
Thanks
(PS sorry for reposting, I messed up my original post and now cannot delete it.)
The quality of the environment in “The Old Lighthouse” and the cinematography is fantastic! How long did it take you to complete this project in its entirety?
I’m not sure why the tower is called “old lighthouse”. “Lighthouse” is supposed to cast light, and “old” means it shouldn’t look so modern. IMHO the object should be called “VIP tower-restaurant by the sea”.
1:23 – problem with antialiasing on shelf – right in the center. If impossible to solve (TAA? SMAA?) I’d recommend removing the light source from the spot.
1:36 – where is this moving light coming from?
Absolutely stunning ! I love the mood, the lighting, the big concrete tower on the shore… Very good work. The youtube compression is frustrating, I want to see this in 4K and take a closer look at the details.
However there are some weird “movement artifacts” if that makes sense in some shots, looks like a denoising issue. I had some wobbling too at some point when I applied another round of denoising in Davinci Resolve.
Don’t think the title fits since it’s a concrete building, it look to modern and there is no big light on top of the tower, just a little blinking one.
YT compression is sadly extremely high which make most of the scene washed out even if your materials look really good.
Beautiful work! Thanks for sharing.
2 questions
Is this all Exponential Height Fog?
Rendering, is this all Deferred rendering via MRQ, or was path Tracing used?
I spent a long time trying to understand the story of what I was doing and lots of research on the environment. Big inspiration was the photographer Jan Erik Waider who has some amazing environment studies and his coastal studies was the inspiration for the setting and story.
All in all I think it was a period of about 3 months (working around my free hours) including all the design work, prototyping, lighting figuring out what MRQ settings work etc…
@UnrealQW Thanks for the feedback, really appreciated. In the future I will look into maybe re-rendering this out for 4K with some new MRQ settings but I struggled in places to optimise the final output so thanks for pointing out some of the issues, I will definitely look into them.
I think with regards to the old/modern look, during my research I found lots of coastal architecture and observation towers leftover from WW2 which you could argue are technically old (mid 40s) but still look quite modern. Alot of Brutalism tends to have this dichotomy between being technically older but still feeling modern (in my eyes).
The lighting was mainly built using Ultra Dynamic Sky, which I thoroughly recommend.
The Exponential Height Fog within UDS was modified in conjunction with the volumetric cloud coverage and height settings within UDS to contribute to the overcast feel. I was also using some heavily modified large fog cards from William Faucher’s pack to blend out the rocks and mountains into the fog.
Impressive; it’s safe to say your three months of hard work definitely paid off! Also, thank you for name-dropping Jan Erik Waider as a means of inspiration, I was unfamiliar with his works, and now I’m a new fan! I definitely see the likeness of his spirit shine through in your creation. Kudos again on the brilliant job done with this cinematic, and thank you for taking the time to share it with us in the forums!
I love it! The atmosphere is super coherent with the music/sound. What is the music in the background?
About 1:36 light, we call that cinematic light. Even if a nonsense in real world, in film it has all his place because of the cinematic cool effect. I dont see that as a problem at all, it is the oposit, without this light it would be emptier.
Ill check out Ray Bradbury. I think post apoaclyptic is definiately the type of feeling I wanted to convey. Not literally in the sense of after a world disaster but very much a sense of something that was once something else and now has been changed, so getting the sense of the exterior at least having age was something I was trying to hit.
Congrats. I really enjoyed it, the mood and music were spot on.
Minor point is that I had an issue with the location of the lighthouse. It seemed to be in a sheltered position within a cove, so it did’nt strike me as a real lighthouse (plus with no spot light).