Edwin Teoh
Operation Sandstorm was a cinematic project that touched on certain aspects of virtual production. It was created by a 3 man team over the course of about 5 weeks.
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During this Technical Design Methods module, we were given an introduction to the Rokoko motion capture suit and were curious about the capability and limitations of the suit. We wanted to create something that could demonstrate our understanding of the technology as well as practice other topics taught during the module.
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The other topics taught revolved around introducing new technologies in the market at that time. This included Digital Humans, Photogrammetry, Quixel Megascans ecosystem and VR/AR Technology.
Project Objectives
As we were given full creative freedom of what we wanted to do and how far we wanted to take this project, it was important that we set goals for ourselves to align expectations and understand our objectives.
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We had the following goals:
Create a cinematic video, explore Rokoko Motion Capture and Learn about tools in Unreal Engine to make cinematics.
Our experience can be broken down into 3 main components. Namely, Environment and Lighting, Character animations with Rokoko, and Cinematic Camera Sequences.
Environment and Lighting
The tools we used are the Landscape and Foliage tool in Unreal Engine. Assets are obtained either from Quixel Megascans or CGTrader.
Character Animations with Rokoko Mocap
From Rokoko Studio
Connect suit to laptop and setup
Calibration and Recording
Export the Rokoko animation as fbx
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Into Unreal Engine
Import Rokoko fbx file
Setup target model skeleton
Keyframe to fix animation issues
Putting Everything together with Unreal's Sequencer
The sequencer is where all the efforts from myself and the other 2 members combined together. It was also where we could play around with the cinematic capability of the engine.
The sequencer used timelines and keyframing to manipulate different aspects of the components within it. Given my previous experience with digital cameras in Photography and Videography, I played around a lot with the focal lengths and aperture of the CineCameraActor within Unreal Engine.
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Some examples of this knowledge applied would be when you want to capture a wide Field of View (FOV), you should pair it with a higher aperture to ensure everything within the frame stays focused. But it's always subjective to the look the cinematographer is trying to achieve.
For this shot, we wanted the camera to focus on the robot and not let the background be too distracting. The focal length of 85 constrained the FOV a little too much especially when the camera moved closer to the robot. Eventually, we went with 50 and kept the aperture at 5.6 so that the bokeh is not too overwhelming.