Above is an updated version with some clean up of animation as well as changing what is in focus with this one camera shot. Environment was taken out to have less distractions from animation.

Fight Scene

Animated in Maya
Rendered with Arnold (Previz) & UE5 (Final)

Models & Rigs:
Gun - Model and Rig by David McMullen
NC-11 - Created by ARTHURNAL (Chalermphol Wat), Rig by Nantiphat Phae-ngam, Model by Piyapong Yusi
Henchman - Rig by Kiel Figgins, Model by Mohaimn Fikry Draz
Environment: by Anim_Matt

Breakdown Process

Being an athlete, and spending years studying Kinesiology, I have had a deep love and passion for understanding human movement. I found myself constantly watching “Stuntmen React” on Corridor Crew and I was fascinated not only on the action choreography but the camera movements as well.

I start the breakdown by watching the reference. The camera and staging was my main concern since it was my first time doing a sequence that is high energy, where a lot of the energy is delivered by the third actor (the camera).

Once the camera was close enough I began the blocking stages with the characters in the scene (Stepped).

After iterations on the blocked pass, readjusting camera as needed, I move onto the Spline pass and making sure that everything is flowing, hits are landing and feel impactful, and energy is maintained. After spline we move to the polish and render pass that is on the top of this page.

HighresScreenshotOutside_Layout.png
HighresScreenshotOutside_Layout_OV.png
HighresScreenshotInside_Layout.png

Breakdown Getting Into Unreal Engine

There was definitely a bit of going back and forth figuring out the best way to get these characters into Unreal. For this piece I ended up caching out the Geometry Meshes as an Alembic Cache. After that I had to import the texture maps and create materials that I can assign to the characters in engine.

Right after successfully importing and getting all the textures sorted out, I sought out inspiration for an environment to place them in. I was looking at a lot of cyber punk game environment concepts at first, then I came across an asset within my Epic Games Library that redirected my focus. The Environment Modular Kit, by Kyrylo Sibiriakov, contained a Tokyo City pack which I used to layout the scene. My goal was to just have an interesting background placed for the camera itself.