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1700 artists entered the biggest 3d challenge of the year

this was gauntlet of the gods the 13th major community challenge

from clint jones welcome back to the channel my friends who hosts these massive 3d competitions on his youtube channel

i've wanted to enter one of these for years

and this time i just couldn't resist the challenge was to

create your own original animated card for this trading card game

and you only have 30 days to do it

so i downloaded the template and gave myself 30 days to see

if i could actually pull it off it's already august 3rd

i feel like i'm already screwing up tonight

i'm gonna just start blocking out um i guess to make a 3d character

but it's pretty crazy the schedule honestly is pretty crazy

and even to make a character in a month

but to do a full -on animated thing i mean

it's insane first thing i did obviously i went on the website

and i got the stuff i got the template i set it up in unreal and i you know

Played the game a little bit

and I tried to figure out what would be a cool thing to do I narrowed

it down to a couple there's a character I've always wanted to do which is essentially a female elf kind of mage

But that's a cool kind of archetype and this is my excuse to just try to make something in that vein

So I kind of know I want to go down that road then after playing and then watching

Clint play I thought

Rage rage is mine I think rage is a cool card

because it's getting damaged and then you do more damage and

that card can get super super powerful

you know with this kind of a character i just think

it needs to be very graphic you know very like iconic

and readable you have a couple seconds

but this is going to be for me a big challenge just in restraint

and i'm going to have to continually remind myself keep

it simple keep it simple i also think it has to be a custom animation to not only get to

that final frame which is the card

and you want to look unique in the deck

and look cool at the end when it's an image

but also clint said multiple times we're looking for renders

that can tell a story tell a story see what you

can do on the story let's see about your story

i don't even know how to tell a story in two seconds other than like i'm strong

you know the fact

that this rage card is wild damage deals double damage

you know immediately popped in my head this idea of like the first frame could be she's far away

and we see her back and it's a battlefield

and there's bodies here and it looks like you know again dawn right

and there's you know arrows and people are dead maybe wearing the same color as her

and she gets some arrows shot at her and they're sticking in her

and she's trying to block them and she turns around

and she gets pissed so she we actually can maybe in the two

or three seconds show the story of that card just getting to

that final frame you know she could look like ah with arrows sticking out of her

and you get the whole idea of the card.

So that's what I'm committed to as of right now on August 3rd.

And we'll see all the sacrifices that we have to make to make something actually finish.

Now I'm going to use Unreal Engine.

As you see, I did the renders already in Unreal Engine because I'm going to use MetaHuman.

I think that's a big time savings.

I've done it enough where, you know, we can make a human, we get a rig, we get good materials.

I can attach some cloth to it, you know, and it's, it's Unreal Engine.

It's real time.

I should be able to iterate a lot more.

But anyways, I've convinced myself enough that I like this plan to move forward.

How do you do arrows and how do I do cloth sim

and how do we break an arrow and how to do magic effects?

I don't know.

It's a lot to do in one month,

but right now I'm just going to listen to music the rest of the night and jam on making the bass.

So after downloading the initial template, I do a quick test render and get a play blast out.

Now I've got my first initial scene set up and ready to go.

To start the modeling process, I download and import the MetaHuman topology that's free it's on fab

and that's the topology that you can use to auto rig your stuff with metahuman

so pretty early on i decided that

if i was going to do this i'd stick with my own workflow

and techniques i'm familiar with

and focus on the things i really care about creating cool characters

that feel alive and have personality

and emotion the first part of this modeling process is really just pushing

and pulling things around on the universal topology into the shape of the character

that i want to create

so once i've got the proportions feeling close enough

i start extracting shapes to explore the costume design

i still don't really know exactly what the costume is going

to be yet i'm just pulling out shapes dressing up the character

and seeing what works

and for the hairstyle i'm sticking pretty close to one of my favorite references from the board

it's this elf girl painting

that has a few loose locks of the hair poking out

now the whole time i'm doing this i know i need to get the model finished in about a week

or two at the max

so i really need to move quickly through this whole high poly phase

there's not a ton of time for trial and error.

Pretty early on, I start gravitating towards this leather, black, and gold.

And I also like this idea of the yellow kind of gold eyes and yellow cloth to match.

And since she's some kind of fire worshiper, I want that idea to influence the design language.

So I'm going to use lots of flowing lyrical shapes, curves, and ornamentation inspired by flames and shapes like that.

That becomes the visual language of her culture, or at least that's the idea, and she's some kind of fire worshiper,

which is good enough, so let's just keep going.

We're multiple days into this now, and honestly, nothing's finished yet really, so I really need to start locking things in.

And that's when I decide to just go all in on this flame -inspired metal ornamentation,

start adding the shapes around the neck, and just embedding them.

And the cloth that's hanging down the front, I just used the cloth transpose brush and just collapsed it.

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That looked good enough too.

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Clutch, let's go doing this as a part of a speed run contest really does help me just lock in

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and go forward and just sometimes your first idea has to be the idea you go with.

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So really need to wrap this model today because today is day 10

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so I have 20 more days

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and I need I think got to get more than five days in the end

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you know to do the rendering and stuff.

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So yeah this is the model I definitely spent way more time on the modeling

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but it is my thing

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so I'm kind of trying to you know put all my points in in this one most of them

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and then using some tricks and using some lighting hopefully can make it cool

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so yeah that's the general state of the model almost done tonight's got to be the last night

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that I finished the high poly and yeah and then

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so in terms of modeling like again

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I did this kind of a motif thing based on one of my references I thought it was cool

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so I'll carry that on the back

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so it's like leather work it's these s curves it's like fire

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and sun maybe like you know heat that's one of the things

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i decided is other than this top pad right here

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which i thought could be like a focal point a little bit everywhere else like along

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this belt uh the stitch detail this part i'm gonna finish in painter

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so i had stitches in painter

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i'll do leather emboss design exploration in there you know maybe put little flames here

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or something you know doesn't need to be perfect same with the metal i might add more detail

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so i'm just kind of doing a basic model the animation uh i'll show the latest idea

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and i i already have an update

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that i think i need to do this is kind of the thought i had

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that i got to right is

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that she would start here

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you know her cloth would come down she's got gonna have

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two swords two like elvish twin blade kind of things

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and she's gonna be the idea she's gonna be like blocking

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some arrows like parrying some arrows out of the sky

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then she gets hit by one she probably will already have one sticking out of her

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and then she turns around to the camera pissed and

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and that's rage that's the idea so i think it's too much stuff

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when you're in trouble you just think what did lord of the rings do

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and that's that's what's really going to save me i thought you know what boromir

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Boromir gets shot with a bunch of arrows

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and he goes rage mode too and I think

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that might be an easier beat

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because right now it's a lot of beats right I feel like

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if the opening frame is like boom I'm a warrior person

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and then she gets hit with an arrow and she goes ah

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and then she falls to her knee

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and then like does the Boromir like I got more energy of it you know and then pops up it's less stuff.

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I feel like that's what needs to happen.

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Again, right now, I just got to focus on finishing the model ASAP so we can get it in Unreal.

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Actually start making something.

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I mean, I haven't even made a scene or anything.

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So yeah, dude, I don't know.

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It's kind of crazy.

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With the high poly model finished now, it's time to turn this into a character I can actually use and animate.

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The first step is going to be creating the custom metahuman in Unreal.

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So I I take my meshes for my head, body, eyes, and teeth and bring everything into Maya.

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Here, I'm just making sure the topology is exact and I'm making a few adjustments.

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I'm also customizing the teeth a little bit to give her some vampire fangs because I think that'd be pretty cool.

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Once everything's ready, I export the meshes and bring them into Unreal as static meshes.

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And from there, I can load them into the MetaHuman creator.

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I can conform the MetaHuman to fit my shape.

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And once I've got the shape looking right, I can start creating the skin and the eye materials,

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choosing eyebrows and setting up the rest for appearance.

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And as you can see right out of the gate, we're getting some really high quality stuff, which is a huge time saver.

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Then I can assemble and export the character with a fully functional rig, both for the body and face.

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And the quality of these rigs is super high.

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So now that I got my character, I'm going to bring her into the level.

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I'm replacing the meshes from the original template.

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So we're finally starting to build the actual scene with my own character.

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Next, I want to get some basic lighting established.

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I know I'm going for that dark and moody thing with a little bit of a gothic horror atmosphere here.

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So I start by adding a few lights, mostly focusing on just some rim lighting and positioning to help the character read from the camera.

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It's still too bright right now.

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I'm trying to just establish kind of the overall look.

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I also bring in ultra dynamic sky.

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That's a little plugin for unreal.

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It's just basically a really nice blueprint

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that gives you a bunch of controls for your sky

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and atmosphere and everything to do your look dev all in one place.

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Again, just trying to save time and make something look good.

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With the lighting roughed in, I start opening up fab and looking for I don't know some environment assets

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and start placing them around the scene to get some depth and start to anchor some positions of some stuff.

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Not really trying to build a complete environment yet.

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I don't even know what it's going to be.

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I'm just looking for interesting shapes and adding layer and depth.

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I also add a little localized fog around the character.

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I'm using Easy Atmos from William Foucher for that.

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Shout out to him.

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Just trying to get overall atmosphere and depth in the scene.

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Now for animation, I decided to try something new.

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MetaHuman Animators Markerless motion capture plugin.

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That's a mouthful.

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It's a pretty new tool.

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And to get the whole thing working, I actually had to upgrade my computer to Windows 11,

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which meant going into the BIOS and messing around with settings.

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So I felt very IT that day.

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But apparently this was the thing that finally motivated me to figure out how to get

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Windows 11 on my machine.

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Anyways, once I got everything installed, I recorded my performance using my phone and I imported the footage into Unreal and then I let it process.

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So here you can witness my incredible acting skills.

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But I was seriously really surprised and impressed with the result

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so now boom i've got some animation on my character

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and here's that first render with the new character and scene setup

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so pushing it further

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i thought some architecture in the background could help with the story give some depth

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you know some visual interest with these vertical lines

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and shapes overall iterating on the scene and the spooky spooky vibes

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so at this point i'm making pretty good progress

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now back to the character model for the low poly meshes i'm going to take a pretty fast

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and dirty approach most of these are just lower subdivision levels

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or auto topology from zbrush i'm not making like a production ready beautiful asset here

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i'm just trying to get something that works

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so i start separating the meshes of my costume into how i'm going to add

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it i'm getting all the different pieces for the armor

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that are ready to attach to my character and then i bring

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that into unreal once it's in i can start getting everything attached

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so for the armor pieces i convert them to skeletal meshes transfer the skin weights

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and add them to the blueprint i run into some issues with the pieces not following the character correctly

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so after a bit of trial and error

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and figuring out the right setup getting everything attached properly eventually i get it working

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and boom now we've got some armor following along with the character

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it's currently the 18th we are past the halfway mark

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and uh still have a ton to do

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and i know it's going to be like way more this morning i got some costume in

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so you can see hey she's got a costume with her tighty whiteys

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but got it into painter and then baked it

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and has pretty much you know like base materials and everything

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so wanted to get in there to see like you know where to spend the time

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and the detail i also think like i've spent all my time

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so far in the model i think that is my thing

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so i've seen some entries that are looking sick and

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so there's a lot of stuff going on the scene my scene's pretty simple

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so I'm really trying to curate

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that final frame where it looks like there's a it's a detailed character

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it looks cinematic it looks like it's expressive and alive

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so I'd like to iterate on the animation too

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but I'm I'm pushing that down the road

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because I feel like I could just like ship what I have had to

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and I have to keep going

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and everything that's where I'm at right

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now textures are there materials set up the scene's a mess

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I think I want her to be a lot more clean behind her.

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So it's like a lot more bright.

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Maybe that means the moon comes down, but I like kind of the creepy werewolfy vibes.

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So this kind of thing, I kind of like this where like there's a winding road.

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So that might be what I ended up doing.

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And we have a little bit of detail in the sky.

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So it might be something like this,

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this kind of thing where there's like more atmosphere and then silhouetted and then the fire is what brightens her up.

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So I think this is the direction to try and go to.

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The one thing that I'm concerned about with just going in this direction is

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that it could be too simple

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that might not be a bad thing I mean once there's fire

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and tattoos this actually might be a good thing

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because like I think the character will have so much going on

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and that'll be its own balance making sure the character is

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readable like a good first impression pretty scary like I have all the scary stuff left

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and and the time it's getting closer to the deadline normally I would put the scary stuff up front

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but just how it works with the character you know it has to be modeled first

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so yeah man we'll see now it's time to tackle some

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of the scariest parts of this project cloth sim hair

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and fire this is probably the most important week of the entire challenge

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so far jumping in we're going to start with the cloth

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I've got these different pieces of fabric hanging off the character

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and I originally modeled them as separate pieces

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so I could bring them in

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and figure it out later I knew I need to create simpler geometry for the simulation because these original meshes are dense.

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So a lot of that geometry was automatically generated.

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I bring everything in in Unreal and I start working in the cloth asset editor.

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Eventually, I get the cloth assets attached to my character blueprint.

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And there we go.

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They're actually simulating.

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And of course, there's still a lot of work to do.

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Learning how to paint masks, do collision layers, tweak things, all that stuff.

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Honestly, I'm continuing to work on this throughout the rest of the project.

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But getting this initial setup working was a pretty big hurdle that I'm glad to get done.

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Next, took a little break to make some new models.

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Somehow I haven't modeled these swords yet, so I take a session and speed run through making them.

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Of course, I turned into some

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Lord of the Rings artwork.

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for inspiration and I like these elvish shapes.

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I borrow from heavily because it looks awesome.

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Quickly create the models and create a new

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Substance Painter project for them.

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And I quickly texture it up and bring everything into Unreal.

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I attach the swords to my character's hands so I can finally see what they look like in the animation.

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And there she goes.

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She got two swords now, two thumbs up.

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Meanwhile, I'm still bouncing around the project and I'm refining materials

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and adding details

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and working on the textures whenever I can the cloth for example looking way too white

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so added a little bit of dirt

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and variation to help it sit better in the scene

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and just continuing to refine things as I move between different parts of the character

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so here's where we're at right now with the cloth

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and the swords next

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I jump on the hair hair is always scary on any character project for this one

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I figured the best approach would be to model the locks directly rather than do a groom

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I've done this kind of a hairstyle before

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and I had a pretty good idea how I wanted to approach

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it I spent a lot of time in ZBrush just carefully modeling

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and positioning each of the locks and just trying to get the overall shape.

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I added some noise to break it up

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and then once I was happy with the placement I brought it into Maya to unwrap them

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so they could be straight up and down.

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Spirit of moving quickly I decided to use Fibershop to make the textures.

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I already have a license and it's a quick convenient way to make hair textures.

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I can quickly create the different maps I need and export all the channels I need for the hair material.

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In Unreal I bring everything in.

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I do my first pass on the hair.

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Once I have the material and the textures hooked up,

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I fit the hair onto the character and I started adjusting the shaders to make it look white.

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And there we go.

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First draft of the hair.

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It doesn't look amazing yet, but honestly, these little milestones are really motivating.

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Just getting something working for the first time feels like a huge accomplishment.

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And once you've got that initial setup behind you, you can start focusing on tweaking and making things better.

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So now that the hair is in, I'm adjusting some of those rim lights to help it work better with the hair

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and rendering out a few tests to see how it's looking.

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So here you can see everything together.

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Now, there's still one obvious problem.

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She's basically running around in underwear and boots, which is an insane look and not what I'm going for.

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So I finally get around to making her pants.

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Originally, I thought I might just texture her legs directly,

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but I thought actually in the end would be simpler to just make a new model in UV.

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So I ended up making a new mesh, unwrapping them, and I just created a new substance paint a project just to make things easier

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so I could keep moving and I experimented with some different leather looks.

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Once the textures are ready and the mesh, I bring the Unreal.

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I attach it to the character just like I did the armor.

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I apply the new material and now she's finally fully clothed.

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I'm also making a few adjustments to the eyes.

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I open up the MetaHuman eye shader

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and I customize it to add some emissive elements

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so I can make her eyes glow because I thought they'd be more cool and magical looking.

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Now it's time to tackle one of the biggest challenges of the entire project, the flaming swords.

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My plan is to use Embergen to create the fire simulations

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i have made a flaming sword in there before i export everything into maya

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and i prepare the sword meshes i paint some vertex colors where i want the fire to be

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and i bring everything into embergen embergen is this specialized software for doing vfx

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and volumetric simulations so i know i can export that

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and bring it into unreal i started out with some template

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and i started experimenting i got some cool things pretty quickly

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but it just this whole thing turns into a much bigger undertaking than I ever expected.

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I just wasn't happy with the results so I'm just gonna have to work with what I can get.

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Now that I'm doing all this

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and looking at some more test renders the pose feels flat

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and I think the whole thing could just be a lot more dynamic

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so I decide to redo the animation and I know

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that means redoing the sims and the fire and everything but I want to give the pose more depth.

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This time I also decide to handle the face separately rather than just relying on that initial body capture.

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There's portions where my face aren't there and it's smaller, but I record a dedicated facial performance at a higher quality that I can process separately.

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This gives me a cleaner facial animation and a little bit more high quality that's independent.

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So in sequencer, I can layer both of them together.

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So now I've got a little bit more control over the final performance and hopefully something that feels more expressive and dynamic.

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So with the updated body and facial animation in place, I render out another test

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and here's where we're at it's august 26th now i think there's 31 days in august

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so this is the last week

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but i updated the animations we have like a new direction

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that i'm trying in general i like it more still don't like it the best also

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you can't see a lot of the costume now

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so i am toying with like can i do something that's more dynamic

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but also contrived in a way

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that shows the torso more i don't know right now the dynamic essentially is like the faces closest to camera

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but yeah so we got to set up with a new animation figured out slow motion that's huge

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that took a long time shout out to josh tuning thank you josh fucking dope the thing

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that i'm kind of like thinking is maybe i spend some time on the whole animation first

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because if i could lock that then i could do the fire work once sounds.

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That would be better.

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So since I have till Friday, that's going to be my plan.

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So I'm going to try to polish this animation, planning to get everything in pretty good shape to send

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and make sure also I get the frame count and all that stuff.

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So that anyways, hopefully he can react on stream Friday.

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If not, still good to have a deadline like that.

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And then it gives me two days to polish, but it needs to be seen complete by Friday, which is in three days,

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two days, two and a half days.

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Now I'm trying to get this thing looking as good as possible before submitting it for review.

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There's still a ton to do one of the biggest things that's missing is the actual story.

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Tell a story.

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See what you can do on the story.

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Let's see about your story.

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I need to show the arrow hitting her so the whole rage transformation makes sense.

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So I quickly model an arrow in Maya and ZBrush.

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I make some UVs and I throw together some textures in Substance Painter.

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I add some blood around the tip since it's supposed to have gone through her body

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when we see it up close and some dirty feathers to give it a more sinister look.

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Then I bring that all into Unreal and position it so it reads clearly in her silhouette.

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The environment is also still feeling pretty empty, so I'm adding more trees, I'm adjusting the lighting, and trying to give the scene an overall atmosphere.

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I also found this free pack of dead body poses by Nikoff.

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Thank you for that, which gives me an idea.

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What if she's lost one of her sister in arms?

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So I create a duplicate fallen elf and stick a few arrows in her and place her in the foreground.

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Now it starts to feel like it's an actual battlefield, but I still need some enemies.

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I thought it'd be fun to resurrect an old character of mine, this orc I made years ago,

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which some of you might recognize from the channel.

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So I dug up the old model and I created a simple proxy mesh.

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I used Mixamo to automatically rig it and I could transfer the skin weights in Unreal.

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It's pretty quick and dirty, but for a background character, it's going to work fine.

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So now we've got a little bit more story happening in the scene.

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I'm adjusting the lights, adding some moonlight from behind and just trying to make the whole composition feel more intentional.

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At this point, I'm bouncing around the scene, polishing the animation, trying to get everything ready for review.

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But there's still one pretty big problem the swords aren't on fire, which is kind of the whole point of this rage transformation thing.

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So I make another attempt.

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I export the updated animation.

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I bring everything back into Emmergen and I regenerate the fire simulations, but getting everything aligned with the animation,

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especially with the slow motion is proving to be really difficult.

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I've already spent so much time on this.

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I'm starting to realize I might not get the fire working in time for review.

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Yo, Jay Hill, shout outs to Jay Hill for working on this challenge, man.

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Freaking awesome.

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Having the swords in the final card frame, you know, I think it would help.

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Biggest thing with this is just the first few frames.

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It just feels like she's standing there and waiting.

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Excited to see the final.

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Thanks for entering.

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It's cool, man.

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Very cool.

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All right.

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Got some feedback from Clint and chat.

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I think it's good notes.

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Want to get her pose better.

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I spent all the last day adding final touches like the tattoo.

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One last fire sim.

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Even a little nose piercing

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and then with an hour left my unreal sequence broke shit shit shit shit shit shit shit shit

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i am uh legitimately freaking out now please don't be broken please don't be broken

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oh thank god dude saved a backup holy shit okay

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i think i'm just gonna render this i mean it's 11 40 dude it's 11 40

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so with 20 minutes left i finally hit render

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while my project's rendering I head over to the Gauntlet of Gods website to get my submission ready.

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First, I have to upload my artwork to create my trading card.

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So I load up my image, fill out the details, and get everything looking good.

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Then there's one final step.

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I head over to the official submission form.

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I fill out the questionnaire and upload all my files.

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And finally, my submission is ready.

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ah guys mine's disqualified i just double checked so yeah

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so this is what happened

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while i was working i would have punisher's streams on playing in the background

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and at one point i heard him say

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when i wake up i'm gonna close submissions okay

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so the submission link will only be open for another eight hours

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or so um after the deadline and i thought oh cool

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so it's kind of a soft deadline okay cool

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because i'm an idiot because what he said literally five seconds before

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that was every time we do these challenges you know there's always people who submit late

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and those people get uh dq'd from top 100 dq'd from top 100

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and i ended up submitting almost 50 minutes late

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so that's an l no chance of making that top 100

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or being a part of the competition

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but after having some time to process

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i started thinking about why i wanted to do this challenge in the first place Please to take on new challenges,

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learn new techniques, and hopefully go a little bit further than I normally would, and to be a part of something with other artists.

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And in that sense, the challenge was actually a success, because I did get all those things.

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But ultimately, I did fail the challenge.

453

So I started thinking about how I could turn that into a win.

454

And I thought I've come this far,

455

why not go a little bit further and make something I can really be proud of and add to my portfolio.

456

So I took a little break and I came back to the project

457

and I started tackling all those little things

458

that I didn't have time to do or that I learned from the first time.

459

I went back and improved the animation, trying to make the action feel more dynamic, get those swords in frame.

460

I also redid the facial performance to get something more expressive.

461

I revisited the hair and I added the X -Gen Groom to give it even more detail and blend in.

462

I spent more time on the textures including completely redrawing the tattoos adding some polish here and there

463

i reworked parts of the costume

464

and i even used marvelous designer to rebuild the waistband to make

465

it look nicer i went back to the cloth simulation to improve all the layering

466

and the physics and collisions with each other and the biggest challenge of all the fire

467

i was never really happy with the results so i tried something different and i went with Niagara Fluids inside of Unreal.

468

It's something I'd never done before and it's relatively new.

469

But after some experimenting and lots of playing around and following some tutorials, I got something I think looked pretty decent.

470

A really big shout out to Redefine Effects.

471

If you're at all interested in learning this kind of stuff, I super recommend checking out his free series that put together

472

so now finally i've got my flaming swords

473

and i started working on the final presentation

474

and i refined the lighting based on the new pose

475

this time i wanted to render everything at the highest quality i could

476

so instead of just rendering out the final video from unreal

477

i rendered it as an exr sequence with multiple passes

478

and i brought everything into nuke to composite

479

which added a lot more time both for the rendering and the compositing and the exporting,

480

but it gave me even more control so I could adjust everything and pretty much do whatever I wanted.

481

I even added the depth of field in post, which helped me pick and choose and add other elements.

482

I also updated the card frame.

483

Now that this is a portfolio piece too, I spent even more time polishing the character in some bits that you didn't see before,

484

and I created some presentation shots and a turntable video showing off the model.

485

You can check those out at their the full quality in my portfolio in the link below.

486

Looking back, even though I didn't get to compete in the challenge, I'm really glad I took this on and entered initially.

487

It pushed me to try so many new things.

488

I learned a ton and ultimately created something that I wouldn't have otherwise.

489

So after a whole nother month of working on this thing and making all those little improvements, here is my final card animation.

490

Thank you for watching link down below to my full resolution work that I did for this project

491

Thank you to ponisher for hosting these 3d our challenges is super epic

492

and special shout out to the top five winners of this competition I'm linking their work down below two of

493

which were also done in unreal shout out to everyone who participated

494

Thank you for watching.

495

I'll see you in the next one.

496

Peace out

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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson

This speaking lesson is built on the video “I Entered the Biggest 3D Art Challenge…”. This video has 496 sentences and 5982 words to shadow. The speech runs for 28:41. The speaker talks fast, about 208 words per minute, so expect linked and reduced sounds. Only 79% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English, so the vocabulary is demanding.

Key vocabulary in this video

15 words from the video worth learning, with pronunciation and meaning:

Word	Pronunciation	Meaning
unreal adjective	/ʌnˈɹi.əl/	Not real or substantial; having no actual presence in reality; lacking the characteristics of reality.
animation noun	/ˌæn.ɪˈmeɪ.ʃən/	The act of animating, or giving life or spirit.
render verb	/ˈɹɛn.dɚ/	To cause to become.
cloth noun	/klɒθ/	A fabric, usually made of woven, knitted, or felted fibres or filaments, such as used in dressing, decorating, cleaning or other practical use. Sometimes…
sword noun	/soɹd/	A long bladed weapon with a grip and typically a pommel and crossguard (together forming a hilt), which is designed to cut, stab, slash and/or hack.
arrow noun	/ˈæɹəʊ/	A projectile consisting of a shaft, a point and a tail with stabilizing fins that is shot from a bow.
mesh noun	/mɛʃ/	A structure made of connected strands of metal, fiber, or other flexible/ductile material, with evenly spaced openings between them.
texture noun	/ˈtɛkst͡ʃə(ɹ)/	The feel or shape of a surface or substance; the smoothness, roughness, softness, etc. of something.
rage noun	/ɹeɪd͡ʒ/	Violent uncontrolled anger.
costume noun	/ˈkɑsˌt(j)um/	A style of dress, including garments, accessories and hairstyle, especially as characteristic of a particular country, period or people.
dynamic adjective	/daɪˈnæm.ɪk/	Changing; active; in motion.
export noun	/ˈɛks.pɔɹt/	Something that is exported.
shout verb	/ʃaʊt/	To utter a sudden and loud cry, as in joy, triumph, exultation or anger, or to attract attention, to animate others, etc.
atmosphere noun	/ˈætməsˌfɪɹ/	The gases surrounding the Earth or any astronomical body.
polish verb	/ˈpɑ.lɪʃ/	To shine; to make a surface very smooth or shiny by rubbing, cleaning, or grinding.

Phrasal verbs you will hear

Word	Pronunciation	Meaning
figure out verb		To come to understand; to discover or find a solution; to deduce.
end up verb		To bring to a conclusion.
set up verb	/ˌsɛt ˈʌp/	To make ready for use.
bounce around verb		To discuss or brainstorm (ideas) on a topic.
come down verb		To descend, fall down, collapse.
fill out verb	/fɪl ˈaʊt/	To complete a form or questionnaire with requested information.
open up verb		To open.
check out verb		To record the departure or withdrawal of someone or something (such as guests, employees, books, etc.).

Sentences worth repeating

Short, complete lines from the video that you can reuse in everyday conversation:

I think that's a big time savings.
I feel like that's what needs to happen.
I'm replacing the meshes from the original template.
I don't even know what it's going to be.
I'm also making a few adjustments to the eyes.

Grammar in this video

The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:

Structure	In the video
Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now	i've wanted · I've always wanted · I've done
Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing	friends who hosts · frame which is · stuff, which is
Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it	be modeled · was automatically generated · be seen

Pronunciation to watch

The speaker uses 136 contractions and reduced forms, such as I'm, I've, don't. Say them the short way, as you hear them.

The “th” sounds: cloth /klɒθ/, leather /ˈlɛðɚ/
The “sh” and “zh” sounds: animation /ˌæn.ɪˈmeɪ.ʃən/, mesh /mɛʃ/, shout /ʃaʊt/, polish /ˈpɑ.lɪʃ/, simulation /ˌsɪm.jəˈleɪ.ʃn̩/
Long words — get the stress right: animation /ˌæn.ɪˈmeɪ.ʃən/, portfolio /pɔːtˈfəʊ.liˌəʊ/, essentially /ɪˈsɛnʃəli/, experiment /ɪkˈspɛɹ.ə.mənt/, transformation /ˌtɹæns.fɔɹˈmeɪ.ʃən/

How to practise with this video

Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
Start at 0.75× speed, shadow it sentence by sentence, then go back to normal speed once it feels easy.
Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like unreal, animation, render.

What is the Shadowing Technique?

Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.

Shadowing technique: read the full step-by-step guide →

Shadowing Practice: I Entered the Biggest 3D Art Challenge… - Learn English Speaking with Video

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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson

Key vocabulary in this video

Phrasal verbs you will hear

Sentences worth repeating

Grammar in this video

Pronunciation to watch

How to practise with this video

What is the Shadowing Technique?