Author: Jingwen Zhang

This week was One-One Tutorials. I introduced our project concept, story content, and current production progress to Sara in detail. Through this one-to-one tutorial, we were able to clarify the theme, visual style, and next steps of our project more clearly.

Our story takes place in a ruined theatre. A girl dances on the stage, while rows of numb soldiers sit around her. As her movements gradually become unstable, reality begins to fracture. The scene repeatedly flashes into another world: a white rabbit appears in front of her and leads her through trenches, forests, and destroyed city streets. These scenes cut into her dance like fragments of consciousness, making it difficult for the audience to tell whether they are memories, hallucinations, or present reality.

In terms of production, we showed Sara our current progress, including the UE5 stylized test, model and rig, and animation. We are testing a black, white, and grey visual style with woodcut printmaking and sketch-like textures. At the same time, we are continuing to work on character modelling, rigging, and animation. We hope to create a slightly unsettling, oppressive, and uneasy atmosphere through rough lines, strong contrast, and unstable visual rhythm.

Sara suggested that we create a simple storyboard next, so that we can organise the main shots, scene transitions, and narrative rhythm more clearly. She also recommended some AI websites to help us quickly generate visual references and storyboard sketches. This suggestion was very helpful because although our concept and atmosphere are already quite clear, we still need to visualise the story structure further. Next, we will complete an initial storyboard and then use it to adjust our animation shots and scene design.

This week’s session was Splatter in UE. We mainly learned how to create splatter, spray, and spreading spot effects in Unreal Engine. Splatter can be used to represent visual elements such as blood, ink, paint, or stains.

In class, I learned that these effects can be created through materials, textures, masks, or particle systems. By adjusting the colour, opacity, spreading range, and texture shape, splatter effects can appear on the ground, walls, or around characters.

I found this function very interesting because it is not only a technical effect, but can also enhance the emotion and atmosphere of an image. Its randomness and spreading quality can create a feeling of chaos, unease, or destruction. In future visual tests or artistic projects, I would like to try using similar effects.

This week’s session introduced 360 Video. I learned that 360-degree video does not present only one fixed camera view. Instead, it allows the audience to enter a space and look around freely. Therefore, when creating 360 video, we need to think not only about composition, but also about where the audience may choose to look. Creators can use sound, movement, lighting, or character placement to guide the viewer’s attention and avoid important information being missed. This class helped me understand that 360 Video is more like a form of spatial storytelling, creating a stronger sense of immersion than traditional video.

This week, we continued learning about Reality Capture. Compared with last week’s basic introduction, this session focused more on how to process and use scanned models in practice.

I learned that scanned models usually cannot be used directly after they are generated. They often need to be cleaned and optimised first. For example, we may need to remove unnecessary parts, fix incomplete areas, reduce the polygon count, and organise the textures. This helps the model run more smoothly in Unreal Engine and reduces performance issues.

After the model is processed, it can be imported into Unreal Engine and placed into a virtual scene. One of the biggest advantages of Reality Capture is that it can preserve real-world details and textures, making digital environments look more realistic.

Through these two weeks of learning, I think Reality Capture is a very useful creative tool. It can help us quickly collect real-world materials and connect reality with digital art. In the future, if my work involves cities, buildings, objects, or natural environments, I would like to continue experimenting with this technique.

This week’s session was about Reality Capture, also known as real-world scanning or photogrammetry. Sara introduced how we can turn real objects or spaces into digital models by taking photographs from different angles. In simple terms, Reality Capture is a method of bringing real-world materials into digital creation.

During the class, I tried scanning my own face. This helped me understand the process more directly. First, photos need to be taken from multiple angles to cover the shape and details of the subject as completely as possible. Then, these photos are imported into the software, where it identifies matching points between the images and generates a 3D model. After that, the model can be cleaned, textured, and optimised before being imported into Unreal Engine or other 3D software.

I found this process very interesting because it makes the boundary between reality and the virtual world less clear. In the past, I thought 3D models were mainly created through manual modelling, but Reality Capture offers another approach. Real faces, objects, buildings, or natural environments can all become part of a digital artwork. Scanning my own face especially made me feel that the real body can also be transformed into digital material.

This session made me realise that Reality Capture is not only a technical tool, but also a creative method. It allows artists to collect materials from the real world and reorganise them in a digital environment. In the future, if my work requires real objects, facial forms, or spatial textures, I would like to continue experimenting with Reality Capture as part of my visual research and production process.