Project Description

Purpose of the project

The theme of my work is about the Qing Dynasty in China. As we all know, the Qing Dynasty of China fell into disrepute during the late Qing Dynasty for various reasons, but the truth is that if the Qing Dynasty had not been a monarchy, China would have been a superpower in the world that was more developed than the European countries. In my artwork, I want to show the scene that the Qing Dynasty did not fall.

On the technical side, I’m hoping to use a variety of software that I’ve been taught on the course to make them, but of course as it stands, I’ve used all sorts of 3D software now except for NUKE, which is so difficult that I really don’t think of how to use it.

How I have planned my project?

In the beginning, I would make a detailed plan for each week, including learning new content as well as making projects, but of course, I’m not someone who can always keep on learning hahahaha, so I would have a few weeks off or travelling, I really love travelling around, it allows me to get more energy as well as inspiration, I think for most people travelling can drain you a lot of energy, but I’ll always travel and have fun all the time.

When it comes to my work, the most I do is plan a week or two in advance, for example, I’ll be travelling for 20 days during my winter holiday month, so I’ll get the final finishing touches done in advance, and then when I’m back in the UK I’ll finish off the effects breakdown video and uploading the process to the BLOG.

What research I have done?

I’ve mainly done research into the armour of the Qing Dynasty and the history as well as the design of weapons during this period. The research will be shown in my video.

Most of the research comes from my life, because I am a very interested in history, so I might make a production on a certain period of history, a lot of the research comes from what I learnt in my daily life, and this project is also.

In terms of the history of the characters, I chose Lyu Bu from the Three Kingdoms period as the protagonist, and he is also the figure of the Qing dynasty emperor in my work.

Lyu Bu was born during the Three Kingdoms period of China, a time of warlordism and armed forces from all over the world striving for the centre of the country. He was married to Diao chan, the daughter of Wang Yun, the chancellor of the Han Dynasty. Diao chan was the first of the Four Great Beauties of ancient China, which is also very much in line with how I imagine the Qing Dynasty to have been in its heyday.

Lyu Bu, was one of the most forceful people in the Three Kingdoms period, and many of China’s current words or ancient phrases are related to him. Lyu Bu could have set up a local armament at that time just by force, and if he had more chancellors to assist him, he could have even set up a state in the pre-Three Kingdoms period (which is true, after the Yellow Turbans Uprising, Lyu Bu did capture Xu zhou(a state in China), which was owned by Liu Bei, and was then fame reached its peak) In the end, Lyu Bu’s death was due to his failure because he was too arrogant and never listened to his own chancellor. If Lyu Bu had listened to his subordinates, he could have taken over the Central Plains of China and unified the country in the early Three Kingdoms period.

Therefore, I used Lyu Bu, a representative of force, as the main character because if the Qing Dynasty could be strong, it would definitely need a general who is good at fighting to be the emperor.

What I have learned so far?

Everything taught in class！ (but don’t ask, asking means I might forget lol)

Video Presentation

Click on the link above to see a video of my project.

Special Effects Breakdown Video

Hardest Part

Part I: When using ZBrush to make weapons, I couldn’t use it at all because I hadn’t used it for so long, and I watched a lot of tutorials to learn how to do it.

Part II: Just started using UE, originally felt that this software is very simple, and then found that I want to do what, what can not be done, and then only one by one to see the tutorials to learn, but I now find that the blueprints are really difficult, especially the blueprints of the characters, simply and other software is not a difficulty!

This post is about to present the final progress report for this project, which will focus on the model conversion of the weapons as well as the colouring process, the creation of more footage, and the process of creating the project title. Of course, the overall performance of the project can be seen in the thread at the top of this BLOG, which details all aspects.

First of all, I modified the model of the weapon, which was too complicated to paint or import, so I reduced the number of surfaces of each part of the weapon to 300,000 or less. (300,000 is an estimate, depending on computer）

The handle will have a little fewer facets because it’s so small.

I then imported the model into SUBSTANCE PAINTER and prepared to make the dragon part first

In the second step, I made a fine sculpture of the dragon’s head, dealing with the eyes as well as the teeth, and I also did some dust effects on the scales (the picture is not very clear)

Then I started making the rest of the different materials (not including the blade)

The final step was the colouring of the knife, my first idea was to create a more monolithic knife, but I realised that I had too little detail on the blade during the carving process, there was no layering so I couldn’t make the knife and the dragon feel like they were in the same series, I’ll look out for this in the future, so I went with my second idea from earlier, a gold blade

Next I modified the flaw that my teacher said in the critique that the female dancer in the scene was moving too fast, so I modified the speed in UE’s character editor

I had some problems exporting the model to UE5, I found that UE5 doesn’t recognise the obj file format and if you import the original fbx weapon model it doesn’t accurately import the texture into it as it will be expanded once when it’s coloured.
So I exported the weapon model in OBJ format directly from SP, imported this file (with the correct textures) into C4D, and exported it as FBX, so that all the features of the weapon are displayed correctly in UE5.

Finally I used the lens guide in UE5 with film footage to create a close-up of the weapon

Finally, in the title section, I designed a title, and the Chinese font was designed by a designer I worked with at university

On Week11

Purpose of the project

The theme of my work is about the Qing Dynasty in China. As we all know, the Qing Dynasty of China fell into disrepute during the late Qing Dynasty for various reasons, but the truth is that if the Qing Dynasty had not been a monarchy, China would have been a superpower in the world that was more developed than the European countries. In my artwork, I want to show the scene that the Qing Dynasty did not fall.

On the technical side, I’m hoping to use a variety of software that I’ve been taught on the course to make them, but of course as it stands, I’ve used all sorts of 3D software now except for NUKE, which is so difficult that I really don’t think of how to use it.

How I have planned my project?

At the beginning of the course, I have a weekly task plan for the big project, my plan is basically based on the content of the weekly class.

But of course, there are also a week or two I’m lazy, I will be rushed to the content of the class a day or two before the class to do it, for example, today in a while I’m going to play this video, I am all in yesterday’s day finished.

Of course, I will be the future of the project before Deadline to do the project, the specific process of the weekly process is on my Blog, if you are interested in it you can also see!

What research I have done?

I’ve mainly done research into the armour of the Qing Dynasty and the history as well as the design of weapons during this period. The research will be shown in my final product, including video and possibly typography.

Most of the research comes from my life, because I am a very interested in history, so I might make a production on a certain period of history, a lot of the research comes from what I learnt in my daily life, and this project is also

What I have learned so far?

Everything taught in class！ (but don’t ask, asking means I might forget)

Video Presentation

This video is the progress I’ve made so far, the next major task is to create a close-up shot of the weapon in the Emperor’s hand as well as a close-up shot of the Emperor, other than that I need to create a title sequence, and I plan to create a stereoscopic title in the opening sky using NUKE.

Hardest Part

Part I: When using ZBrush to make weapons, I couldn’t use it at all because I hadn’t used it for so long, and I watched a lot of tutorials to learn how to do it.

Part II: Just started using UE, originally felt that this software is very simple, and then found that I want to do what, what can not be done, and then only one by one to see the tutorials to learn, but I now find that the blueprints are really difficult, especially the blueprints of the characters, simply and other software is not a difficulty!

In the last week, I finished creating 80 per cent of the content, including characters, models, footage, and video. The last thing I still need is a close-up shot of the main character and a close-up shot of the weapons

At the beginning, I designed a stage with the king’s seat and some decorations, these steps were done in C4d and ZBrush, I didn’t do too much with the texture because the lights in the scene wouldn’t focus on it.

Next, I designed the flags in the scene, I used a variety of UE plug-ins to make the flags produce wind effects and some broken effects, and broken effects can be manipulated through the material editor, very conducive to the later changes.

The next step, is the hardest one, I need to place multiple characters within the scene to make the shot look storytelling, so I found some character material on some 3D resources online (to save time) then I created the movement of these models on Mixamo by myself and imported the FBX files into UE, and then I did the texture connection, and finally I designed the position of the characters in the scene.

Finally in the rendering section, I reviewed the MRQ renderer that was taught in last week’s UE class, as I found that UE’s default renderer was rendering moving shots incorrectly (I initially thought that it was due to the global antialiasing settings, but I was still getting tearing when I replaced the FXAA with TAA, which is still not resolved at the moment) After using the MRQ renderer, this problem was resolved, great!

In the next steps I will continue to finish the rest of the video, the main unfinished parts are the design of the weapons, and a close-up shot of the Emperor, and I will use NUKE to make a special effect with the name of the project in the first shot of the video.

In the past two weeks, I’ve modelled and coloured the main characters as well as the larger scenes, and I’ve now progressed to the stage of making the secondary characters, but of course, some of the other elements will need to be changed next!

In the process of making the character, I encountered a lot of difficulties, such as how to create a three-dimensional sense of the armour, I used multiple software to solve this problem, I first created a nude model of the character, and then go to create the upper body of the character’s armour, and then I use the upper body of the armour imported into the Marvelous Designer for the armour to set a layer of cloth, as a cape, and then exported the cape as an OBJ model into ZBrush, so that I can directly import the whole character into Mixamo for the animation process, but also can be layered for the Substance Painter PBR process. Here is the exact process.

Then later on it was the process of integrating into the UE engine, all the small objects I had in this scene were integrated from some of Bridge’s existing public models, and I carried out the integration as well as the design of the scene. I also taught myself some flame and smoke techniques in the Nigara system, you can see the details of these scenes in the images below.

These are some of my recent developments in that work, recently I’ve been lying at home not wanting to move because I’ve had a cold, a fever for 4 or 5 days, and really not feeling too well, probably because the weather in London has been so awful, cold and rainy all the time. I’m completely fine now though! The next step I’m working on in this scene is to make some simple figures to place in front of (or around) the main character, and to make a super tall stone chair behind the main character with a Qing Dynasty flag hanging from it.

Before we begin, there’s a song over here that I mentioned in an earlier week’s paper that contains the song of the Qiang flute from ancient China as well as the sounds of various instruments. I used this song for the first part of the final assignment

In the unrendered parts, I also worked on more detailed sculpting of the main character’s weapon, this time I worked on the blade as well as the hilt part of the weapon

The next step was the modelling of the scene, I used a variety of 3D software for the model collection assignments of the scene and finally chose to use UE for rendering as I wanted to learn the workflow of UE.

This is the kind of artistry I wanted to show, full of money and status, and with a sense of majesty, and of course, this kind of clothing can only be made with ZBrush.

The two above are Qing Dynasty court imperial outfitting for combat, I personally like this style very much, it’s very handsome, and at a later stage I’d like to have the figure seated in the centre wearing this type of clothing as well.

The full body colth is like that.

More references to weapons

City references(If possible)

This week I’ve created the weapons section, I’ve mainly used ZBrush to model and sculpt the various parts of the weapon, I’ve completed the dragon head section so far, and plan to complete the full weapon next week as well as the textures, and will produce my sketches the following week.

I spent a lot of eforts on learning how to make a realistic dragon model for my weapon because the last time I use ZBrush was on 2021 maybe, so I take few days learning the skill on Youtube or other media platform.

Although this is a homework, but I still found that the process on the modeling part is very interesting, especially when I learn a new trick.

This is the begining when I start this model, I forgot the most of the skills of ZBrush at that moment, but now I can model something cooool!