In the first shot, I need a scene where a dog and its owner are walking down the street, with the dog looking back happily at its owner. I created the dog’s animation in Maya and exported it in ABC format. I chose not to use FBX because the dog’s skeleton is non-standard. Instead, I exported the materials using FBX and combined them with the ABC format to restore the dog’s materials in Unreal Engine.

In this scene, the character’s home is a mess, with company documents and moving boxes piled up on the floor, suggesting his turbulent life. A close-up photo of a dog on the ground echoes the dog shown in the first shot, hinting that the dog has passed away. This detail underscores the protagonist’s lonely and unsettled life, with no one to rely on.

In my shot design, for the final scene, the protagonist needs to stand on a tall building overlooking the city at night. To achieve this, I started building my city using available assets. I noticed the ground was quite empty and needed many details. Simply changing the color of direct light wasn’t effective in creating a nighttime lighting atmosphere.

Therefore, I considered changing the window materials to create a glowing effect for the buildings. However, I realized that using this method caused all windows to emit the same color, which wasn’t the effect I desired.

Therefore, I might need to find a different city nightscape. I will look for some pre-built city assets that can better fulfill my requirements.

This week, we learned how to use Unreal Engine to synchronize a mobile phone’s sensors and camera for real-time control of the virtual camera. This allows me to walk through my created scene with a handheld camera, moving around to capture the content I want to shoot. Using a physically mobile camera provides a more immersive and interactive experience.

The teacher first played a music video by Jackson Wang to show us the potential effects of this technology. This piqued my interest, and I decided to test it with a project I created last semester.

This picture contains my notes, including steps on managing plugins and connecting Live Link. Ultimately, I successfully synchronized the camera, allowing me to walk freely through my scene. I found this to be extremely interesting.

Today, there was a workshop where I tried using Unity to create a scene for the first time. Unity is a powerful DCC software commonly used for game design. As a beginner in Unity, I was excited about creating today’s scene.

First, we learned the basic interface operations and layout. Using assets, we built a simple city street scene and added details like trash cans and utility poles. Next, we inserted an animation sequence into the scene and configured it to loop using certain settings.

Finally, and most excitingly, we used a camera to capture images as a basis, placing our created scene onto a prepared photo. First, we needed a real-world image, which we then set as the dynamic capture object in the scene. After linking the camera, we captured the real-world image. It was important to take clear shots, as being too far from the subject could make capturing the image difficult.

Dang Dang! He’s on the page！

In China, many workers are under a lot of pressure. They don’t have a two-day weekend. Even national holidays are changed into working days. The fact that they are deprived of rest makes them feel miserable. I want to use this as a starting point to create a short film that reflects the pressure of people’s lives.

I find it very interesting to play in the first person way, through which the audience can feel the inner world. At the same time, I also hope to use a one-point perspective, which is more expressive visual effect.
Man keeps moving, but when does he really stop? He explores this question, but the pressures of life force him to keep moving forward.

This is my version of the story. He keeps going. The first shot is warm, walking the dog. Then he went to school as a student and began to stress, I know this is not the case for all students, but it is really a Chinese characteristic. Worked, crowded the peak subway every day, was scolded by the boss, in debt, very poor.
He’s wandering the streets, probably homeless.
Finally, the protagonist realizes that there is no hope and that it is impossible to really stop, so he commits suicide

It’s a sad story

Today, I learned about a fascinating new software called TD. It is a node-based program with many different node panels, primarily divided into 2D and 3D sections. It can be used to create interactive dynamic works and special effects animation videos.

Since we were beginners, the teacher started with some very basic nodes, teaching us how to build the overall node structure. It’s similar to other nodes I’ve learned before. For example, achieving real-time rotation requires adding a line of code like “absTime.seconds” to the rotation parameter channel. This allows it to continuously rotate over time, which is quite fascinating.

Finally, there are some settings involved in the exporting part.

In the end, I followed the teacher’s guidance and successfully created an overlay of geometric patterns, featuring a vibrant and colorful motion animation.