Making Of
Building Insomniacs Waltz
Building Insomniacs Waltz is a small documentary/featurette about the creation of our last short film before Enter the Rabbithole. A quick production by Beauty And The Bit involving Unreal Engine, Blender and Substance. Hope this small video satisfies your curiosity. No beautiful houses, high grasses or shinny happy people this time, just a cinematic experience.
#thisisbtb #beautyandthebit #animation #CGImovie #artdirection #epicgames #unrealengine #blender #substancepainter #madewithsubstance#quixel #megascans
#thisisbtb #beautyandthebit #animation #CGImovie #artdirection #epicgames #unrealengine #blender #substancepainter #madewithsubstance#quixel #megascans
My name is Victor Bonafonte, art director of Beauty and The Bit.
I have had the privilege to work in films such as Landmark by Beauty and The Bit, lead the art direction of Quixel´s Rebirth, and currently working in Beauty and the Bit next feature film: Enter The Rabbithole.
While we were working on Enter the Rabbithole during this lockdown situation, we wanted to do a quick experimental project. A swift project meant to instill a breath of fresh air in our current production. Something really spontaneous and visceral and done in little time. I wanted to tell a cinematographic story through a cool cinematic environment. The icing on the cake was experimenting with Raytracing capabilities inside Unreal Engine.
That was how Insomniacs Waltz was born…
I have had the privilege to work in films such as Landmark by Beauty and The Bit, lead the art direction of Quixel´s Rebirth, and currently working in Beauty and the Bit next feature film: Enter The Rabbithole.
While we were working on Enter the Rabbithole during this lockdown situation, we wanted to do a quick experimental project. A swift project meant to instill a breath of fresh air in our current production. Something really spontaneous and visceral and done in little time. I wanted to tell a cinematographic story through a cool cinematic environment. The icing on the cake was experimenting with Raytracing capabilities inside Unreal Engine.
That was how Insomniacs Waltz was born…
MODELING
The main architectonic space was meant to be a small apartment and it was completely modeled in Blender. We wanted to tell the story of a house and some strange, bizarre events happening on it. We didn´t want to define too much, but suggest and leave a personal interpretation up to the viewer.
For modeling architecture we used really simple techniques and relied heavily on loop modeling main structural elements. Blender is a really powerful software and it was really fun and fast to pull things out.
Another feature I love from blender are the UV unwrapping tools since apart from really specific and complex assets, all the auto UV tools it includes they simply do the job before exporting geo to Unreal. It is important to have clean and properly unwrapped geo before going into Unreal and Blender was a great tool of choice.
The main architectonic space was meant to be a small apartment and it was completely modeled in Blender. We wanted to tell the story of a house and some strange, bizarre events happening on it. We didn´t want to define too much, but suggest and leave a personal interpretation up to the viewer.
For modeling architecture we used really simple techniques and relied heavily on loop modeling main structural elements. Blender is a really powerful software and it was really fun and fast to pull things out.
Another feature I love from blender are the UV unwrapping tools since apart from really specific and complex assets, all the auto UV tools it includes they simply do the job before exporting geo to Unreal. It is important to have clean and properly unwrapped geo before going into Unreal and Blender was a great tool of choice.
SUBSTANCE
It is always fun to play around with substance painter since you can dramatically change the aspect of you texturing work in a really fast intuitive and also joyful way. It is great checking out how you can improve and give depth to your assets with just a pair of brush strokes. Also the custom masks baked automatically from your actual geo are super useful since they save you a lot of time of manual painting, and a combination of those masks and several generators are definitely a lifesaver . This project speaks about imperfection so the architectural space and all the set dressing needed a weathered old and unpolished vibe and Substance is a unique tool on those regards. The non destructive workflow that Substance offers aligned pretty much with the production back and forths and allowed us to add that extra spice to the assets.
It is always fun to play around with substance painter since you can dramatically change the aspect of you texturing work in a really fast intuitive and also joyful way. It is great checking out how you can improve and give depth to your assets with just a pair of brush strokes. Also the custom masks baked automatically from your actual geo are super useful since they save you a lot of time of manual painting, and a combination of those masks and several generators are definitely a lifesaver . This project speaks about imperfection so the architectural space and all the set dressing needed a weathered old and unpolished vibe and Substance is a unique tool on those regards. The non destructive workflow that Substance offers aligned pretty much with the production back and forths and allowed us to add that extra spice to the assets.
UNREAL
Then it was about time to jump into Unreal Engine.
Unreal Engine is an extremely powerful tool from a cinematographer point of view. It is unvaluable having the power to change composition, framing, camera movements, lighting, texturing on the fly and being able to check all those changes in real time, not having to spend hours to see the result .
Having all that versatility is what makes this tool so easy to use and so powerful. You don´t feel paralyzed by the fact of taking a bad decision in any shot, instead of that you just try anything and experiment.
Then it was about time to jump into Unreal Engine.
Unreal Engine is an extremely powerful tool from a cinematographer point of view. It is unvaluable having the power to change composition, framing, camera movements, lighting, texturing on the fly and being able to check all those changes in real time, not having to spend hours to see the result .
Having all that versatility is what makes this tool so easy to use and so powerful. You don´t feel paralyzed by the fact of taking a bad decision in any shot, instead of that you just try anything and experiment.
We recreated the whole set for this film, but we were not obsessed about generating a VR environment since we were thinking about a cinematic. The good thing of having an entire set is that after that modeling work, you are free to place the camera wherever you want and roam freely around it to find the right happy accidents.
It is always great how you can play with movable ray traced lights. Lighting is a very important part in what we do, and this project uses lighting to its advantage, so again having the ability to tweak all that in just a matter of seconds and change dramatically the tone and mood in a shot, helps you out in staying in the artistic side of things instead of the technical one.
Experimenting with tone, composition and volumetric lighting effects is really fun to do.
It is always great how you can play with movable ray traced lights. Lighting is a very important part in what we do, and this project uses lighting to its advantage, so again having the ability to tweak all that in just a matter of seconds and change dramatically the tone and mood in a shot, helps you out in staying in the artistic side of things instead of the technical one.
Experimenting with tone, composition and volumetric lighting effects is really fun to do.
DECALS
In addition to all the previous weathered look painted in Substance, we played extensively with decals in unreal engine.
Decals are extremely easy to use in Unreal and they dramatically change the appearance of the shot adding depth and interest. They are also really economic since with only 3-4 different decals you can cover a whole shot and give it a varied and non repetitive look with some scaling and rotation tricks here and there.
All the blood spatters and several dirt layering over the walls ceilings and floors were done applying those fantastic Megascans decals while other ones such as the paintings of the walls, the leakings on window glasses etc. were hand made by us. The process is exactly the same and it is extremely simple.
In addition to all the previous weathered look painted in Substance, we played extensively with decals in unreal engine.
Decals are extremely easy to use in Unreal and they dramatically change the appearance of the shot adding depth and interest. They are also really economic since with only 3-4 different decals you can cover a whole shot and give it a varied and non repetitive look with some scaling and rotation tricks here and there.
All the blood spatters and several dirt layering over the walls ceilings and floors were done applying those fantastic Megascans decals while other ones such as the paintings of the walls, the leakings on window glasses etc. were hand made by us. The process is exactly the same and it is extremely simple.
RAYTRACING
Working with Raytracing was also a joy. We used Raytracing for GI and reflections and in fact nothing was baked in this production and made with a single RTX2080 TI.
As I mentioned it was a quick project for Beauty and the Bit and we dind´t want to spend time in calculating light so going Raytracing was a nice move. Again the combination of movable lights and Raytracing made the workflow extremely easy and helped us out in taking artistic decisions in a really comfortable way.
The result was specially satisfying when coming to Raytraced reflections. We were not obsessed about a specific frame rate since this was a cinematic and not a videogame or VR experience. The leap between Screen Space Reflections and Real reflections is noticeable and contributes with more realism to the final pixels.
Obviously all these tools helped out notably in the process of working with this quick project and made possible to do in record time. It was extremely rewarding for us to achieve a cinematic feel in this production as we always aim for.
Working with Raytracing was also a joy. We used Raytracing for GI and reflections and in fact nothing was baked in this production and made with a single RTX2080 TI.
As I mentioned it was a quick project for Beauty and the Bit and we dind´t want to spend time in calculating light so going Raytracing was a nice move. Again the combination of movable lights and Raytracing made the workflow extremely easy and helped us out in taking artistic decisions in a really comfortable way.
The result was specially satisfying when coming to Raytraced reflections. We were not obsessed about a specific frame rate since this was a cinematic and not a videogame or VR experience. The leap between Screen Space Reflections and Real reflections is noticeable and contributes with more realism to the final pixels.
Obviously all these tools helped out notably in the process of working with this quick project and made possible to do in record time. It was extremely rewarding for us to achieve a cinematic feel in this production as we always aim for.
The versatility that Unreal offered us made possible to do lots of discarded or alternative takes fruit of experimentation.
It has been a pleasure sharing with you some insights about this exciting project! See you in Enter the Rabbit Hole
Victor
Victor
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About this article
Building Insomniacs Waltz is a small documentary/featurette about the creation of our last short film before Enter the Rabbithole. A quick production by Beauty And The Bit involving Unreal Engine, Blender and Substance. Hope this small video satisfies your curiosity. No beautiful houses, high grasses or shinny happy people this time, just a cinematic experience.
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