FINAL MAJOR PROJECT
“SAILS OF DESTINY”
BEHIND THE SCENE/BREAKDOWN
POSTERS
Prelude:
In the year 1717, a violent storm off Cape Cod swallowed the Whydah Gally, a ship laden with unimaginable treasure and captained by Samuel Bellamy, the man the world came to know as Black Sam—the Prince of Pirates. Rising from a poor English village, Bellamy was more than a pirate; he was a visionary, a lover, and a leader who defied the brutality of his age with charm and fairness, carving his legend on the high seas. Only two survived the storm that claimed him, and this story belongs to one of them—his closest mate, determined to reveal the man behind the myth and the untold truth of Black Sam’s pursuit of love, freedom, and eternal glory.
This story is a blend of fiction and reality aimed at providing an exceptional cinematic visual experience.
Pre-Production:
– July 12 – Initial Idea Generation:
So almost a week after the submission of the Exploratory Practice projects, I finally decided to work on my FMP, just because I wanted to create something to the full of my potential. So, the whole week I’ve been searching for themes and topics and thinking about about what I could do for the project. The only constant thing in my mind was that the whole project was going to be full CGI because I didn’t want to waste my time and effort shooting stuff. The initial ideas for the FMP included short CGI film with a duration of 1-2 minutes on something related to Hindu mythology, because I was a bit too fascinated by it after watching the movie KALKI AD 2898. So, I spent a lot of time researching about topics related to it, and how I could portray something in my method of storytelling in a full CGI version. An interesting topic related to “Bhagiratha and the Sacred River“, set in an ancient Indian kingdom nestled among lush forests and majestic mountains, a noble king, Sagara, seeks redemption for his cursed ancestors. His young and courageous descendant, Bhagiratha, vows to liberate the souls of Sagara’s 60,000 sons, who were turned to ashes by a curse. To achieve this, Bhagiratha embarks on a perilous journey to bring the divine river Ganga from the heavens, as only her sacred waters can cleanse the souls of his ancestors. With unwavering faith and perseverance, Bhagiratha traverses treacherous paths and meditates atop a sacred mountain. His devotion moves Lord Brahma, who grants his plea and sends Ganga to Earth. As the celestial river descends, Bhagiratha guides her waters towards the ashes of Sagara’s sons, ensuring their souls find peace. The kingdom rejoices as Ganga’s arrival brings prosperity and renewal, with Bhagiratha standing as a hero who fulfilled his quest for redemption. His story is a testament to the power of devotion and determination in overcoming great challenges.
Although this was an idea that I thought would be something great to work on to expand my skill set, I wanted something a bit more exciting and something that has to do with my passion and ambition which is to become a 3D environment artist. So, I was at a standstill. And then I happened to rewatch Pirates of the Caribbean one day and thought why not do something related to pirates because I totally love the idea of pirates and POTC is my favorite movie franchise of all time as well. So, I knew I was going to be working on something related to pirates, but did not know where to begin or what to focus on.
– July 17 – Initial Idea Generation and Research:
So after confirming my vague and really broad idea for the FMP which was a pirate-themed, full CGI short film under 5 minutes, I began researching online about pirates, piracy, their golden age, what they did, how they became notorious, and stuff. After reading quite a lot of articles, and stories and watching a whole bunch of videos on them, and I DO MEAN A WHOLE BUNCH because I spent the entire week searching for stuff to come up with a story that was exciting yet unnoticed by the people, I found out about a pirate called “Black Sam Bellamy“, who was one of the most richest pirates to have ever lived. So, I thought I would find more information about him and probably make something out of it. So his story is as follows:
“Black Sam Bellamy was an English pirate who became one of the most famous and wealthy pirates of the Golden Age of Piracy. Born in 1689, he started his seafaring life in the British Navy but later turned to piracy. Bellamy earned the nickname “Black Sam” because he wore his hair loose and dressed in simple black clothes instead of the fancy wigs and outfits common at the time. His pirate career was short, lasting just over a year, but during that time, he captured many ships and became known for treating his prisoners fairly. Unfortunately, his luck ran out when his ship, the Whydah, sank in a storm off the coast of Cape Cod in 1717, taking Bellamy and most of his crew with it.”
I thought the whole story had a really good idea for a cinematic style to it but I did not want to add the story as it is as my motive is not really to produce a CGI Documentary on the life of Black Sam, but to produce something exciting and had a really good visual experience to it. So I’m planning to add some amount of fiction into it as well to create something which, hopefully, would be good! Fingers Crossed!!!
Video and Literary Research Archive: Black Sam Bellamy, the Whydah Gally and the Golden Age of Piracy (17th Century)
– July 20 – Vague Script:
So after researching online a couple more about the life, history and other information about Black Sam, I had a pretty good idea about a story that could be incorporated with his real life and adding a good amount of fiction to it as well and this is what I came up with:
“An old, battered man in his 60s or 70s(metahuman) narrator, resembling a seasoned pirate, tells a tale of legendary pirate Black Sam Bellamy. Set in a twilight-lit pirate cove, the narrator guides viewers through the thrilling life of Bellamy, from his humble beginnings to his infamous career as a pirate. With the cove’s haunting beauty as a backdrop, the tale unfolds around ancient maps, glittering treasures, and the formidable Whydah Gally. As the narrator shares Bellamy’s code of equality and fairness, he hints at hidden treasures yet to be found, leaving the legend of Black Sam alive in the hearts of those who dare to dream.”
I think this is a really good story where I can portray and in the process, enhance my skill sets in environment creation and become really proficient in Unreal Engine 5, which is what my main objective is, and receive an output that could convey the story and life of Black Sam rather well. The story I came up with was, in my opinion, really interactive, in a way that the audience could themselves join the ride with the story, if that makes any sense. Anyways, I have also started working on how the narrator should look by searching for some references online. I created the metahuman using Metahuman Creator online and I’m pretty happy with how he looks, to be honest.
– July 20 – Metahuman Creator Trial:
After creating a sort of vague script for the project, I decided to create a metahuman using the metahuman creator online tool. I had an idea or a reference as to how the pirate should look like. The first metahuman I wanted to create was that of the metahuman narrator, who is an integral part of the story and can be considered the protagonist. I wanted his appearance to resemble an old, battered pirate with long, grey hair and beard and yellow-ish teeth with gaps in it. The whole process was really an easy one to be honest, because the metahuman creator tool is a really simple, easy-to-use tool for almost anyone.
Reference:
Output:
Although I finished the creation of the character quickly, I wasn’t really happy or pleased with the looks of the pirate. It somehow lacked the depth and depicted an artificial animated model. It lacked any sense of reality whatsoever, especially the hair and beard, which I reckon might be because of over grey-ish color. So maybe I will try again to create another one with more realistic facial features that resembles a real human and also matches my needs and looks of the character.
– July 21 – Drafting and completing a proper script:
Since I already had a really vague idea and a script readied, I thought the most important and basic necessity is to create and complete the scripting of the story. So, I started preparing a proper script taking into account that the dialogues can’t be of normal English language and needed to have an inclusion of pirate language since the whole theme is pirate related. I referred and researched common pirate terms and stuff and their usage in sentences by taking into account references from pirate movie and series. Although the conversations needed to have pirate accent and pirate words, I did not want to over expose them and make it feel artificial or fake or a sense of unnecessarily and forcefully inserting a load of pirate words which would confuse the viewer and may have problems of misinterpretations to the story. So I wanted it to be simple and understandable yet have a sense of piracy involved in it. Although this is something I’m not really good at, I did not want to use AI because, personally using it removes my creativity and loses that human touch which is very essential in story telling and film making. After spending hours of researching pirate words and phrases, I came up with dialogues and story for the film! Although this may have a lot of changes going forward, I think the heart of the story is already set and there won’t be much changes to that. I have initially named it “The Prince of Pirates” but I’m really not sure if I’ll stick to it because I think it lacks a punch. I do have a couple of other names in my mind right now like:
- Rogue of the Tempest
- Shadow of the Black Flag
- Ballad of the lost Buccaneer
- Against the Tide
- Rebel of the Seas
- The Pirate of Cape Cod
- Robin hood of the seas
- The Legend of Black Sam Bellamy
- Sails of Fortune (Which might be the one)
- Sails of Destiny (FIXED)
Storyboard
– July 22 – Finding Reference for Environments:
The primary motive of this project is to improve and hone my skills in Environment design and especially Unreal Engine 5. The script demands 3 main environments to be made, namely the Tavern environment which is a dimly candle-lit interior location which sort of resembles a pub, set in 1970s England in a night sky where majority of the story is set and shot. The second environment is the ocean, particularly in a sunset sort of time with the ship sailing through it. The third environment is a cave environment, dimly lit with god rays and fog and dust particles filled with gold and treasures and maybe a golden throne and trident for exaggerating treasures of the seas. These three environments are crucial in the story, with the tavern playing a pivotal role in where the story is set. I’ll be spending a whole lot of time in perfecting the tavern, then the ocean and then the cave. Since, I had clear ideas on how all three of these should look like, but owing to my poor and horrific drawing skills, I surfed the net for the closest references for my environments.
Media Inspirations: Games and Films That Shaped My Work
Reference for Cave Environment
*from Pirates of the Caribbean
Reference for Lighting, Throne, Trident
*from Aquaman
Reference to Ocean Environment, Lighting and Sky
*from Pirates of the Caribbean
Reference for Whydah Gally, the ship of Black Sam
Reference for 1970s English Pirate Tavern and Lighting
– July 23 – Gathering References from Movies and Series:
After a really tiring week of researching articles, stories, blogs and stuffs, I wanted visual references and inspirations. So I watched a whole lot of pirate movies and series. The idea and inspiration for pirate themed short film was from Pirates of the Caribbean movies and obviously when the words pirate and movie come together, people often consider Pirates of the Caribbean franchise as the benchmark for both pirate story and its visual effects standard. Although creating something like that requires huge budget and crew, I wanted to replicate something of that nature, with the limited budget and resources that I have in a limited time frame but completely CGI in Unreal Engine 5. Besides binge watching the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, I also binge watched One Piece live action web series along with a really good documentary called The Lost Pirate kingdom and a couple episodes of a series called The Black Sails. Although I would’ve loved to keep on watching more films and series, I needed to get a move on and start the production phase of my project and hopefully reach almost half way before the beginning of classes.
– July 24 – Creating the Screenplay:
The next phase of pre-production was creating the screenplay. Since I’m horrible at drawing, I don’t have much hope in preparing a good storyboard so my main focus was to prepare a good screenplay so that it would be easy for me in the production phase to identify scenes and shots and what camera angles need to be used where and when. I visualized each scene and dialogue and made changes to the script and dialogue wherever necessary to ensure the story and conversations had emotions and felt grounded rather than being exaggerated.
Production:
– July 26 – Creating the first environment in UE5:
The most important and integral environment in the story is the pub where most of the story is set. So, obviously, that had to be the first environment I had to create, and guess what, That’s exactly what I did!! After gathering basic references as to how the pub interior should look, I searched online for 3D models and assets. Unfortunately, I could not find one that matched my idea. So, I surfed through various models online, downloaded a couple of them, and used kit bashing to combine every 3D asset I downloaded into a single 3D environment scene of the Pub. To be honest, kit bashing is really fun because it solves the problem of modeling everything from scratch, which I’m terrible at, yet in the process, saves you time as well. So, in fairness, it really is a great way to create a 3D model of your choice using several different models available. So, in this environment, most of the mainframe 3D models like the bar counter, the shelves, the door, the windows, etc were downloaded from Sketchfab, and other assets like fireplace, table, chair, barrels, etc were downloaded from Quixel Bridge or Marketplace. Although some of the assets did have textures, some of the textures that came with the model were really unsuitable for the scene. So I re-textured them in Substance Painter. I added some basic lights like point light and rect lights to the scene as it needed to be visible for me in Lit mode to work on the scene and figure out how the textures and models look when they come together.
Work-in-Progress (WIP) Preview – Tavern
*Areas for Improvement from WIP Preview :
- Lighting (add a more yellowish light or warm hues to mimic candle light)
- Reduce the glossiness of the floor
- Add more tables and chairs to fill the room
- Add HDRI Backdrop of night sky
- Add Niagara fire particles
- Add Niagara dust particles
- Add Fog or Smog in the tavern
- Add more decor items to portray the pirate theme
– July 27 – Creating the second environment in UE5:
More than halfway done with the first environment, I skipped to the next one, the ocean environment. My first thought was to do them in Houdini. So I downloaded Houdini and watched a couple of tutorials online. However, after watching the tutorials and working in Houdini, I found out that the tutorials weren’t exactly made for beginners and weren’t as detailed or thoroughly explained. They were meant for intermediates or amateur users of Houdini who had experience using it, and as for me, who has no basic experience in Houdini, I found it very difficult to make things in it. So, I searched for online courses for beginners in Houdini to learn the basics but most of them were very poorly rated or really expensive. So, without wasting much time or money, I thought it would be best to do the environment in Unreal Engine 5. I had already bookmarked some tutorials for creating ocean environments in UE5. Modeling the ship was fun as I used kit bashing by downloading assets from Sketchfab and then combining them in Maya. Texturing was done in Substance Painter but I’m quite dissatisfied with the textures as I feel they are really smooth and flat and have no extrusions which makes it feel really weird and unrealistic. Also, they are very clean and neat, which was highly unlikely for a merchant ship turned to a pirate ship. So, I have to re-texture them sometime soon.
Work-in-Progress (WIP) Preview – Ocean and Whydah Gally
*Areas for Improvement from WIP Preview :
- The texture of the ship seems too flat and unrealistic. Also too much glossiness from the hull of the ship and very clean looking which is unrealistic considering a merchant turned pirate ship.
- The sails need to be better colored like weathered beige fabric
- Add Jolly Roger or Pirate Flag to the ship
- Convert static mesh of the sails to cloth materials to mimic wind simulation
- Adding wash and foam when ship moves
- The ship moves really fast. Slow it down.
- Adding white foam particles sporadically throughout the ocean
- Maybe play a little with the environment lighting to ensure the perfect position of the sun that ensures the perfect view of the textures of the boat
– August 7 – Creating the third environment in UE5:
The third environment for the project is the cave environment where Samuel Bellamy stands in a cave full of treasures. Although the scene is completely fiction, I thought it would be a good addition to the film and make it look really good. So, I wanted the cave to have a blueish tint and hues mimicking the night sky through a few god rays, which is something similar that I used for my first project here at LCC. I also had references as to how the cave scene should look inspired by Pirates of the Caribbean and Aquaman.
*Areas for Improvement from WIP Preview :
- Redo the textures of the throne
- Add a lighting source like a small point light or rect light or spotlight with a cool tint (Blue hue) on top of the god coin pile and treasure so that they have luster and shining and gleams brightly
- Add more treasures
- Add Niagara dust particles
– August to September -Perfecting Environments in UE5:
The whole month was dedicated for perfecting the environments adding minute details and furthermore working on improving the environments from the above said problems and observations. This was extremely a tough task, especially because some of the models needed texturing and others needed re-texturing, but my Substance Painter subscription ended and VMHorizonWare, the software for remote desktop to access LCC Desktop was down as well. i was completely helpless at this time, so instead of wasting time sitting idle waiting for texturing, I decided to work on the minute elements like adding tavern assets, like barrels, food, mugs, etc. I also worked on Niagara systems for candle fire, fireplace fire, dust particles, cloth simulations for the ship sails, and more.
*Areas for Improvement from WIP Preview :
- The Tavern lighting is really reddish and needs a more subtle yellow tone. The red light is too sharp.
- Rearrange the props in he tavern to make it feel more packed and clumsy.
- Add candle lights on the chandelier.
– September 24 – Class Re-open and working on Move One and Livelink:
Classes resumed on September 24, and I was quite nervous about my progress as I had no idea if what I’ve done was too little or on the mark. I was hoping to show my work to Emily and Manos and get their inputs in person, although I had maintained regular contact with Emily and Manos during summer break, sharing my WIP with them and asking for their feedbacks and remarks along the way. yet, I was quite eager to get their opinions in person. I was really happy with their feedbacks saying I’ve been quite ambitious and also my story really has a catch to it because it’s a blend of fiction and reality and they were happy I did some research as well. So overall, i guess I’m on the right track. Emily and Manos had some suggestions as to how to improve the lighting of the tavern and said it was too hard and rough at the moment and I needed to calm it down a bit and add a more yellowish tint to it to mimic candle light. They also said to try and narrow the script down a bit as it maybe a bit hard to achieve everything on time.
The rest of the week, I worked on both their suggestions along with texturing the assets. I also tried putting the metahumans into the scene. That’s where I realized the problem that my assets had been scaled wrongly. The assets were too big for the metahumans. I did not put any mannequin at the beginning as reference for size. The solution was to group them assets together and decrease their size all-together but that wasn’t working no matter how. The next solution was to add an actor and then put every assets into it and make the actor a parent and then decrease the size, but that wasn’t working too!!! The only other solution was to increase the scale size of the metahumans. But the problem was that after scaling the metahumans, the hair was becoming invisible or translucent. I need to find a way to fix that asap or I could be in big trouble!!
Another thing i tried this week was path-tracing render. I was absolutely amazed!! Although the quality had a noticeable difference, the render time was off the roof!! Also, the render was taking quite a huge toll on my laptop, so I don’t think this could be a viable option for final render. Furthermore, I found out by testing that Niagara systems don’t work in path-tracing render, so rendering the final output in path-tracer is out of question anyways. However, I feel that I’ll probably use path-tracer for my future projects!
Also, this week I tried an app called Move One which is basically for motion capture without suit only available on iPhone at the moment, I guess. It was the first time I used it, after researching online for it. The app was really good but the problem was that i had to pay for subscription to access and use Move One for recording footages after using up it’s free trial of 30 seconds. Although I wasn’t going to take a subscription, I wanted to test it out as down the road I may probably use the Mo-cap at LCC. I further tested out the Live Link facial animation app available only on iPhone, because I’ve seen how good it is and how easily I can import and export facial animation data to UE5.
– October 1 – Rendering Basic Views of Environments:
This week, I tried rendering out how I want the shots to look like, also I have a presentation coming up next week to show my progress. So, I thought it would be best if I can render out some shots as well as some basic shots to show the environments. I added a wind source so that the cloth simulation works well and the sails fly. I also changed the direction of the sun and lighting in the ship scene.
– October 7 – Rendering the looks of Metahuman characters with clothing:
The main job this week was to match the clothes to the meta human bodies. It was really tricky and time consuming since each body was different from one another. I had to export the body from UE5 and then import it into MetaTailor where I had to match the clothes with the body of the metahuman. Some of the models of the clothes are from Sketchfab, some from MetaTailor and others from ArtStation. I did the texturing for all of them. Need to texture the costume of Black Sam.
– October 11 – Motion Capture Recording with Livelink facial Animation Capture:
Today I had booked the green screen room for the whole day to do the motion capture and record the facial animation simultaneously so that I have better control in both body and facial animations while doing the animation in UE5. the reason I wanted to do motion capture was that I wasn’t really interested in the stock animations we get from Mixamo and wanted to utilize the motion capture facility available in the university to maximize the facility while I can and learn something new, because I’ve always been fascinated by it. Also because mo-cap makes the animations more realistic and smooth which is what I wanted. So, the whole room was booked just for me. Although the technician helped me with the basics of mo-cap and readied my suit and sensors, the technician had a busy schedule and couldn’t actually be there with me for most of the time, so I had to work it out myself. I had to start and stop the animations, carry out the props, learn the scenes and dialogues, act and capture facial animations all together!! Although it may seem such a huge task, it was really really fun to do maybe because I loved working with it!! There was a way I synced the start and end of mo-cap animations and facial animation because it would be a lot easier if I knew where the start and end of animations were. The way I made up was that I would snap my fingers and at the same time I would close and open my mouth and make a sound so that I knew the start of the animations and I did the same thing for ending it as well!! This process was hugely helpful to figure out the start, stop of the animations!!The problem or confusion I had was where to look while recording the facial animations, as in, should I look towards the camera or to where the characters are actually present in the scene (which might have been an obvious one, I was just stupid maybe). Anyways, I got to finish off the animations, both mo-cap and facial, within the day which was a huge sigh of relief! Now I’m waiting for the technician to forward the mo-cap data so I can start working on testing out how it works (which, fingers crossed, works well!)
– October 21 – Render Testing and Texturing:
The last week was a really busy one in terms of my part time job. Had to work overtime, had to go on training and stuff! nevertheless, I worked on the facial animations by importing the livelink facial animation footage into UE5 and then retargeting them onto the metahuman face. I’m pretty happy with it, but there are obviously some problems to it. I’ll need to work on fixing them. I also worked on re-texturing the ship and make it look more realistic.
– November 1 – Render Testing Mo-cap and Facial Animations:
I would really consider this week an absolute game-changer in this project. I got to try out mo-cap animation and live link facial animation together and render them out. Although it did take me quite a while to fix some issues(Posted on GitHub link below), I was absolutely ecstatic that it turned out well. The links below are tests of the render I did, one with single shot camera panning forward, with some simple camera shake to mimic handheld camera, and the other one with multi-cuts to convey a more fast-paced scene. I also added some basic color corrections. changed the voice using AI, and also some cinematic black bars above and below. I also added some soundtracks like fire cracklng to mimic fireplace and candles, also a bgm track as well. The process is really heavy and it does take a toll on my laptop but somehow it gets its work done!
I wouldn’t say the facial animation is 100% accurate but it does it’s job really well! And besides, I’m really amazed with the way the Live Link app and UE5 works because facial animation is a lot easy to do because of it!! the one thing I learned with facial animation and LiveLink is that you’ve got to be fully expressive and bring out every emotion and be really flamboyant, only then can the retargeted expressions be about 50% similar and noticeable!!
– November 7 to 20 – Cleaning up animations:
These two weeks have been a real pain because the mo-cap animations were really troublesome and had a lot of unusual jittering and movements. Figuring out how to clean up the animations was really really difficult as this was my first time working with rigs, body movements, or even animations of ANY SORT!!!! However, I believed in my abilities as I’ve taken a lot of time and effort in this project and I don’t want that to go to waste! So I had already decided, come what may, I’ll go to any measure to do absolute best of my abilities within the constraints I have. So I had referred to a couple of videos online as to how to properly cleanup animations. The main problem was I think the mo-cap sensor on the neck was faulty and all the animations had bent neck. Cleaning that took a lot of time. Also, even though I used sensors on my fingers, they weren’t really accurate and they needed cleanup too. The first and foremost issue I had was that the metahuman after re-targeting the animations, was that the metahuman’s body was bent especially the knees. The solution for that was to disable the IK Rig option on the re-targeting menu. he other problem was the hands going into the body of the metahumans so I had to manually animate the arms and its movements.
The next major issue was a bright orange coloron the hair of the metahumans. I figured it had something to do with the lightings or the materials of the hair, but wasn’t quite sure how to resolve this. Later, I resolved this by reducing the intensity of the lights and moving them far from the metahumans. Although that issue was solved, another issue was that the metahuman hair was sort of like flowing and behaving very unnaturally. I had turned off the physics simulation for the mustache but still the hair was sort of flowing. The solution for this was to disable the RBF Interpolation in the groom asset editor of the metahuman hair blueprint. The next job was to fit the textures in place as the tiling of texture was not accurate. The Jolly Roger texture was getting repeated throughout so I created a couple of nodes to fix the UV and tiling and rotations and stuff to fix them.
The next task was to smooth out the animation curves and keyframes using a filter in UE called FFT and then setting it to butterworth for really butter smooth animations. Although this did have some issues because the movements were getting really stiff and hard which is absolutely the opposite of the name of the filter!! So I had to remove some keyframes in between and manually add the, later on but it was really helpful.
Issues of hair and body
Texture nodes and Material graphs
Smoothing out animation curves
– November 21 to 30 – Rendering:
This week, my focus was on rendering out the level sequences. I tried rendering a couple scenes on my own laptop but somehow, UE was crashing by saying GPU wasn’t powerful enough. I think the main problem was that I wanted to render in Path Tracer for the maximum quality and that took quite a load on my laptop as well as a huge amount of time. Also, the renders using Path Tracer didn’t show my Niagara fire systems and they were invisible in the final render. So I decided to discard the Path Tracer render and go ahead with the Lumen render. I still wanted maximum quality, so I rendered a couple scenes in 4K quality but that was taking a lot of time too! The anti-aliasing settings in render were heavy too. So I decided to go back to 1080p HD Resolution and deferred rendering for renders.
Finally, I found a render setting that was quick as well as had the maximum render quality. I didn’t use EXR for renders mainly because I didn’t have any compositing to do, and also because of time restraints, I wanted to export sequences as fast as I could with the best quality and PNG was the best choice for that.
Render that I used first
Post-Production
The post-production stage wasn’t too much of a hassle because I didn’t have any compositing to do. The only things I had to do were adding the soundtracks, color grade, sound mixing, and changing the voice of dialogues by different characters. For the voice changer, I used a website called Eleven Labs, which I took a monthly subscription. For the soundtracks, my initial plans were to download something from Pixabay or Envato, but later found a website called Udio AI which basically creates songs, soundtracks, or lyrical music from a prompt. To be really honest, I was deeply surprised by the work it did because it was just simply outstanding!! The music blended with my project so damn well!! I was really happy with the output. Really happy is an understatement, to be honest, I’m blown off by the work!! Not to brag but I’m just so proud of myself and seeing the time and effort I’ve taken to bring this to life come to fruition is simply an absolute joy! It was a sleepless day for me on the 1st of December as I worked all night until the submission to perfect it as much as I could!
Critical Reflection:
I am extremely grateful to have studied at LCC under the guidance of the most wonderful staff, especially Manos and Emily, who, to be honest, are two of the best teachers I’ve ever had in my educational life. They have provided me with absolute guidance in everything I needed and were always available to address my questions and concerns, no matter how frequent or complex. Their unwavering support has been instrumental in helping me navigate this challenging yet rewarding project. I also want to extend my heartfelt thanks to my peers, whose encouragement and collaboration have been invaluable throughout this journey. Without my incredible tutors and peers, I would not have been able to reach this point or accomplish this project.
As I reflect on this moment, I realize how bittersweet it is to say that with this project, the educational phase of my life comes to an end. It’s a frightening and sad feeling to close this chapter, but it’s also something I’m incredibly proud of and excited to look forward to. This journey has not only been about learning technical and creative skills but also about personal growth and discovering the extent of what I’m capable of achieving. I hope everything is upward from here, and I am optimistic about landing a really good job soon after graduation to kickstart the next chapter of my career.
Working on this project has been an incredibly transformative experience, and while it has demanded an immense amount of time, effort, and perseverance, it has been worth every single second. Beginning in July and culminating in December, this journey has been nothing short of monumental for me. Saying that I am happy would be an understatement; I am completely over the moon to see my hard work materialize into something I will be proud of for the rest of my life.
When I first conceptualized this project, I was determined to incorporate motion capture and facial recognition technology. My goal was to fully utilize the facilities available to us at LCC to their maximum potential, not only to create something exceptional for this project but also to gain skills that would be incredibly valuable for my future. This decision added complexity to the project, but I knew it was an opportunity I could not let slip by, especially considering the potential these tools hold for future career endeavors.
At one point, I had severe doubts about whether taking on such a large-scale project alone was realistic. The challenges seemed daunting: Could I complete it on time? Would the final outcome be worth it? Many of the techniques I employed—motion capture, facial recognition capture, animation, and rigging—were entirely new to me. This project represented my first attempt at each of these skills, making the learning curve steep. Throughout the journey, I faced countless problems and difficulties. From technical challenges to creative roadblocks, there were moments when progress seemed nearly impossible. However, I’ve always believed in my potential and abilities and maintained the mindset that any problem could be solved with the right amount of effort and determination. That belief became my anchor, and I tackled each obstacle head-on, finding solutions and learning from every setback. However, overcoming these hurdles to create something of this scope entirely on my own has been one of the most rewarding accomplishments of my life.
Of course, like any project, this one has had its share of pros and cons. Given the limited time, resources, and personnel available, I feel that I have pushed myself to the absolute maximum. In fact, I could have wrapped up this project weeks ago, but I made the conscious decision to perfect each and every shot to the best of my abilities. The difference between the first animation sequences I rendered and the final versions speaks volumes about the time and effort I dedicated to refining even the smallest details.
That said, there are still minor imperfections that I could not fully resolve. For instance, some of the motion capture animations exhibit slight jittering despite my best efforts to clean them up. Additionally, in a few close-up scenes involving Metahumans, there are occasional instances where the hair disappears for a frame or two. I tried every solution I could think of to address this issue, but unfortunately, it proved insurmountable within the constraints of this project. Nonetheless, I am proud of the overall quality and feel that these minor flaws do not detract from the impact of the final piece.
Reflecting on my journey, I recall how uncertain I felt when I first joined the course last year. I often questioned whether I had the talent to justify the investment I made in this program. Seeing the exceptional work of my classmates only added to my self-doubt, leaving me to wonder if I belonged in the same space. However, looking back now, I can confidently say that this project has been a pivotal moment in both my career and personal development—a true turning point.
If someone had told me at the beginning of the course that I would create a motion-capture animated short film for my Final Major Project, I would have laughed in disbelief. The idea seemed far beyond my capabilities. But now, witnessing how far I’ve come and the skills I’ve developed, I feel an immense sense of pride. This experience has not only validated my abilities but has also shown me the extent of what I can achieve through determination and hard work. It is a moment I will cherish forever—a testament to my growth and a beacon of what I can accomplish moving forward.
SAILS of DESTINY
Figured you might wanna see them again, so there you go!!
BEHIND THE SCENE/BREAKDOWN
Screen – Grabs from Sails of Destiny :
Git Hub Link For Noting Problems and Solutions
The link to GitHub where I’ve detailed all the problems I encountered and how I’ve solved them has been provided below:
Tutorials I Found Helpful