Category: Unreal Engine

Once the cat model was fully finished, including the joint setup and animations, it was time to bring everything into Unreal Engine. Importing the character into the engine was only the first step. After that, I spent time adjusting and refining the setup to make sure the animations worked smoothly and the character behaved as expected within the scene.

Project Summary

For this project, I created a short cinematic scene in Unreal Engine, set in a dark urban alley with a moody, nighttime atmosphere. The main goal was to explore cinematic storytelling through lighting, camera work, and character animation.

The environment consists of a narrow alley with brick walls, street lights, dumpsters, and supporting props to create a believable urban setting. Assets were sourced from Fab and arranged inside Unreal Engine. The lighting was intentionally kept low-key to enhance contrast and atmosphere, drawing inspiration from film-noir and cinematic night scenes.

The scene is built using multiple shots inside the Level Sequencer.
Each shot uses a CineCameraActor with customized lens settings such as focal length, aperture, and focus distance to achieve a cinematic look. The shots are connected using Camera Cuts, allowing them to play back as a continuous sequence.

A cat character was imported with pre-made animations created in Maya.
These animations, including tail movement and a walk cycle, were triggered and timed within the Sequencer.

The final sequence was rendered using Movie Render Queue as a PNG image sequence to preserve high image quality. The image sequence was then assembled into a video in Adobe Premiere Pro, where editing, cuts, and sound were added.

The final result is a short cinematic piece that conveys mood and narrative through visual composition, lighting, and animation rather than dialogue. The project demonstrates the use of Unreal Engine as a real-time cinematic tool and highlights skills in environment setup, camera sequencing, and animation integration.

I started researching how to model a cat in Maya with the goal of bringing it into Unreal Engine later on. I looked into different workflows and tutorials to understand what would work best for game engines. This step felt important, since the cat will play a central role in my project, and I wanted to make sure the model would be usable and efficient inside Unreal.

Problems Encountered in Maya

• Joint issues: Problems with joint placement and orientation, especially in the tail, causing incorrect movement.
• Skinning problems: The mesh deformed incorrectly after binding the skeleton.
• Weight painting issues: Painting the skin weights was difficult and caused stretching and deformation of the mesh.
• Mesh influence problems: Some parts of the mesh were influenced by the wrong joints.
• Iteration problems: Fixing joints often required redoing skinning and repainting weights multiple times.

This week, we were given the time to start working on our own projects. I began building my scene, focusing on creating my alley environment. It felt good to finally move from exercises to something more personal, and to start shaping the space where my final idea will take place.

Alongside this, I also started browsing FAB to look for assets that could support my scene. Exploring different props and environmental elements helped me think more about the overall mood and how everything could come together visually.

This week, we focused on color grading and how LUTs can be used to enhance the overall look of a scene in Unreal Engine. Starting from a base template provided by Serra, we took the LUT into Adobe Photoshop and experimented with different adjustments to shape the visual style. By playing with contrast, color balance, and tone, we were able to create a look that felt more intentional and atmospheric.

Once the LUT was ready, we brought it back into Unreal Engine and applied it through a Post Process Volume. Seeing the changes appear instantly in the scene made it clear how powerful color grading can be in setting the mood and strengthening the visual identity.

We focused on lighting and got our first look at post-processing tools. By experimenting with different light sources, we saw how lighting choices can completely change the tone of an environment. Adjusting things like brightness, color, and shadow settings helped make scenes feel more atmospheric and visually convincing.

We also tried out something new by using a material to modify a spotlight, adding extra texture and detail to the light itself. To finish the week, we explored a few post-processing effects, which showed how final visual tweaks can really bring a scene together and add more depth.

This week’s Unreal Engine class introduced us to Control Rigs and procedural animation. Compared to previous lessons, this topic felt a lot more complex and technical. We learned how animations can be created directly inside Unreal Engine by setting up logic that drives movement, instead of relying on pre-made animations.

As an exercise, we worked on a snake-like rig. By linking joints together and using different nodes, we managed to create a flowing, wave-style motion where the movement of the head influenced the rest of the body. Understanding how everything connected took some time, but once it started working, it was satisfying to see the motion come together.

This week was focused on understanding how physical behavior is handled inside Unreal Engine. We experimented with the engine’s physics system by testing how objects respond to forces and gravity. Using basic shapes, we adjusted properties like weight and movement settings to observe how these changes affected their behavior once physics were activated.

Later on, we worked with Blueprints to build a more complex setup. We assembled multiple meshes into a single structure and connected them using physics constraints to create a flexible, chain-like motion. By adjusting the constraint settings, we could directly control how freely the structure moved, which made the results easy to understand and experiment with.

This week, I had a one-on-one conversation with Serra, where we took a closer look at my project ideas and discussed what is realistically achievable and what might be too ambitious. It helped me better understand the scope of the project and where I should focus my time and energy.

Alongside that, I spent time working on a storyboard. Breaking the idea down into separate shots made the concept feel more concrete and manageable, and it gave me a clearer direction for how the final result could come together.

This week was all about materials and how they affect the look of our scenes in Unreal Engine. We learned how to assign materials to objects and experimented with building them up inside the material editor by connecting different nodes together. It was interesting to see how adjusting small values or links could completely change the surface of an object. Working with materials felt more technical, but also very creative.