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Original Force
Science and Technology Co., Ltd.

1 Job Overview

Porject Brief
As the first domestic animated series that uses the real-time engine in its entire process, the film breaks through the traditional animation production mode and uses the whole animation production process of "dynamic capture + real-time engine" developed by the original Force, Ltd. itself, as well as a large number of self-developed technologies. All the motion capture in the drama is completed in the Force capture base, which is praised by the media as "the shot animation drama". It not only brings a new viewing experience for the audience but also creates a new type of Chinese animation.

Worked as Technical Artist in the large scale CG animation ”A Record of a Mortal’s Journey to Immortality” at Original Force, Ltd. in Nanjing, Jiangsu.

Position

Technical Artist (TA)

Intern

Timeline

Feb 2022

May 2022

Project

CG animation

"A record of a Mortal's Journey to Immortality"

Tools Used

UE 4/5

Houdini, 3D Maya, Embergen, ...

2 My Impact

Provided technical support for the development of the CG animation ”A Record of a Mortal’s Journey to Immortality” (1 billion + views).
Shader and Rendering: Coded pipeline tools for the highlight of eyeball material; waterline effect with displaced waves, FFT ocean and shallow
Water simulation; physically‑based simulation of mechanical effects in Niagara particle system and Blueprint.
Visual Effects: Designed and implemented visual effects of smoke, and volumetric clouds in 3D Maya, houdini and EmberGen

3 Learnings

Waterline rendering
During the internship, I was responsible for the waterline rendering. The effect in the animation is shown in the gif.
3D modelling software Houdini was used to simulating spindrift. Then I used a blueprint in UE to program the generation trace of the waterline.

Snow Trials
During the internship, I was responsible for the creating snow trials. The effect in the animation is shown in the gif.

Create trails by using a scene capture to mask out objects close to the ground
Use the mask in the landscape material to create deformable snow
Only show trails around the player for optimization

I was also responsible for codig pipeline tools for the highlight of eyeball material, using 3D modelimg softaware (Embergen, Houdini, 3D Maya, etc.) to simulate the visual effects.

What I learned

01 Writing a document to record technical problems is quite important. When I was completing the visual effects using certain software, recording the procedure is vital. Therefore, other programmers, artists and developers can modify it conveniently.

02 Technical Artist requires both aesthetic judgement and programming skills. I used to mainly focus on the technical details, but during the internship, I realized that to be a good TA, I need to cultivate aesthetic taste. Only in that way can I make better work pieces.

03 Being creative, blod and never stop learning. I found out that there are lots of skills for a qualified TA to learn. Therefore I signed up for tutorial sessions and spent 2 hours a day learning the character facial skeleton animation binding after work

4 Overall experience

Experience
I am generally addicted to art expression using cutting-edge technology for games and animation. With a deep involvement on technical art practice, I identified the power of Shader - we can render different visual effects through different shaders, which is advantageous to work on, whether for games or film, to create authentic or imaginary scenes. This undoubtedly motivated my goal of further research & practive of shader such as develop shader for some non-traditional or animated materials in the future.

Original Force Science and Technology Co., Ltd.