Creating Realistic Alien for Short Film Inspired by Love, Death & Robots

Introduction

I am Marcelo Vaz, and I work as a CG Director and Lookdev/Lighting Supervisor at Lightfarm Studios.

I started in 3D 24 years ago as a self-taught artist, initially using LightWave 3D and later transitioning to Maya. I initially worked as a generalist, but for the past 10 years, I have specialized in lookdev and lighting, primarily due to my previous experience as an advertising art director. For me, the key to acquiring technical and artistic skills has always been applying knowledge to a project, whether it's stills or animation.

Although I am currently involved in large commercial projects, I have never stopped investing in personal projects. There, we can apply our vision and present our choices without external interference from clients or supervisors.

CARGO

CARGO is a short film currently in production, conceived and directed by André Antunes. He invited me to be the art director for the project due to our partnership over three years on other projects.

This film is a bold exploration of narrative, weaving intense storytelling with profound emotional depth.

CARGO vividly brings to life the journey of Lyra, a character who confronts the haunting ghosts of her past while navigating the formidable challenges that lie ahead.

In this work, we are aiming for an advanced level of realism, following several works we find fantastic, such as some episodes of Love, Death & Robots and Star Wars movies, while also expanding our knowledge in Unreal Engine, where the film is being produced.

Lyra

The character modeling was developed by André, and after this stage, I worked on the shaders and the customization of the MetaHuman maps within Substance 3D Painter.

Overall, it’s a complete customization of the MetaHuman, which facilitates our rigging and animation process. We plan to use a lot of motion capture in this project.

In the lookdev process for Lyra, we used some skin scans to bring more realism to the albedo and normal maps. The tentacles were worked on separately, but there was a color and SSS study to better integrate them into the overall look of the character. We used several mixed skin maps to achieve an interesting yet not grotesque look for the tentacles.

The clothing is being developed in Marvelous Designer by Sandorah O'Rhane and is based on a sci-fi tribal aesthetic, mixing earthy tones with vibrant colors. Once the clothing pieces are modeled, they will be simulated in Houdini and then imported back into Unreal Engine.

Rendeing & Lighting

For this project, we chose to use Unreal’s path tracer as the rendering engine, which not only provides more accurate light bouncing but also features a more realistic skin shader (random walk), similar to conventional renderers.

In the lighting phase, we are exploring the use of dramatic lighting according to the environment of each scene. The use of volumetrics and VDBs helps to create the desired ambiance. We are employing real photography techniques within Unreal, including anamorphic lenses, realistic flares, chromatic aberration, film grain, and motion blur. Our goal is to achieve a unified and consistent render within the same image, using composition and layering as minimally as possible.

Conclusion

The modeling, rigging, and lookdev work took no more than two months, but the project has been in pre-production for six months. As it is a personal project, we are using our free time to produce it, without a hurry but with great enthusiasm.

I have learned a lot during this process; I had little experience with Unreal, but I’m increasingly enjoying the results I can achieve with the path tracer, constructing more complex shaders, and exploring all the customization possibilities of the MetaHuman.

We are excited about the project’s reception, considering how little has been produced in relation to the entire project.

Stay tuned for more updates!

Marcelo Vaz, Digital Artist

Interview conducted by Gloria Levine