The Amarantos Ritual is a means to “transport” a being to another realm, whether it’s a physical location or merely a state of mind…
The ‘The Amarantos Ritual’ cinematic is a collaboration between myself and environment artist - Pete Dimitrov, to create a short cinematic in Unreal Engine. We also teamed up with Oliver Harbour who provided the beautiful designs for the alien’s headpiece, which were then modeled by Pete.
You can find Petes environment breakdown here:
I’m responsible for the cinematic. So the Blocking, Animation Retargeting, Camera, Cinematic Lighting, Rendering, Editing and Audio Mixing.
Story
The goal of this cinematic was straightforward: to craft a narrative that breathes life into the environment. We decided upon the concept of an extraterrestrial ritual unfolding around the central orb in the room. Below are the frames from the initial blockout, which I largely adhered to throughout the entire process.
Animation
I used a combination of techniques for animating the characters in this cinematic. To begin, I utilized motion capture data obtained from various free online libraries, including Mixamo and Rokoko Studio, to handle a significant portion of the cinematic. Once retargeted onto my skeleton I then took advantage of Unreal Engines Control Rig which I set up to work with my Alien character. This then meant I could keyframe additive animation to further customise the movements.
For a couple of shots that I couldn’t find motion capture data for I fully hand-keyed using the control rig that I had set up. For example when the alien first floats.
One particular movement I struggled to animate was the praying movement of the surrounding aliens. Consequently, I enlisted the assistance of a fellow animator, Carson Reed, who recorded a custom animation with his Rokoko motion capture suit.
Cinematic Lighting
To make the lighting for this cinematic really stand out I did some per-shot lighting. Luckily, I had an amazing base to start with Pete’s environment lighting. I really wanted the lighting to be ‘otherworldly’ thus leaning into a more stylised look.
Conclusion
To conclude I was super happy with how this turned out and it was a great experience collaborating with such talented artists like Pete! I’m also happy to say that the majority of the cinematic was created purely in Unreal Engine - including the editing, with small tweaks added out of the engine. Here is an in-engine preview running at 2x speed!
Thanks for reading, any feedback is appreciated!