HAOQUAN
WANG
Leviethos
----An Experimentation of Virtual Production&Unreal Engine for Fashion Campaign
Tools
Unreal Engine5, Led Wall, Black Magic Camera, Adobe Premiere
Project Genres
Virtual Production, Unreal Engine Cinematics, Fashion Photography
Roles
Creative Director, Environment Artist, Video Editing
Abstract
"PASSAGE BEYOND | LEVITATION" is a first-person perspective walk-through experience. Influenced by Buddhist and folk cultures, the author has transformed their understanding and interpretation of the afterlife and spiritual journey into a virtual narrative space. This project immerses players and participants in a virtual alternative reality space, providing them with an experience that transitions from death to life.
World Building
We get inspiration from a set of stone jewlery from Huiben Shop.
Based on the Jewlery, we imagine a fantasy world centered around super-gravity stones. In this world, the stones are not only a resource but also hold some sort of mysterious religious symbolism.
Some people earn their living by mining and transporting these stones, while others play the role of priests in the stone-based religion. With the help of AI-generated concept art, we have built a virtual environment featuring a stone reservoir and a towering stone religion temple. The concepts and designs will unfold in these two main settings
Virtual Environment Design
Based on AI concept designs and the team's imagination, Shiqing Chen, Yuxuan Qi, and I recreated this fictional world and scene in Unreal Engine. I was mainly responsible for the Tower of Babel section, as well as the integration and optimization of all the scenes. The Unreal technologies I primarily used include Unreal's modeling tool, Niagara's dust particles, and custom vertically stretchable materials. These virtual environments will be displayed on an LED wall.
Styling
The project is primarily divided into two stages. The first stage is "PASSAGE BEYOND," which offers an alternative interpretation of the Naihe Bridge. It portrays the long and cold void of the afterlife with its harsh, coldness, and symbolic architectural design using reinforced concrete.
The second stage is "LEVITATION." Players will need to climb a tower-like structure inspired by the concept of the afterlife in Buddhism. As they ascend, symbols of light and trees representing life gradually appear, and the player's footsteps become lighter, leading them towards rebirth.
Production
Before we started the official shooting, we conducted a pre-shoot to test the accuracy of the camera tracking and sync in Unreal, and to determine which angles are suitable for virtual production shooting (this was our first virtual shoot, with no prior experience).
Our official shoot took place at WLab (a virtual production studio) located in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. We synchronized the film camera, BlackMagic, with the camera in Unreal Engine using a tracking system, allowing the movement of the camera to synchronously affect the camera within the game engine. The visual content captured by the virtual camera was also displayed in real-time on the LED Wall. The model was photographed in front of the LED Wall.
Post-production
Me and Kaiwen Chen were responsible for the post-production rendering and editing. Due to unforeseen scheduling conflicts and technical issues of the LED, we were unable to complete all of the shooting (only 1/3 was completed). In order to have sufficient output, we decided to combine the visual content rendered with Unreal Engine with the footage that was shot.
I was in charge of the rendering in Unreal, and worked with Kaiwen Chen to edit the final video. The trailers on the right are rendered in UE by me and edit by Kaiwen Chen
The unfinished parts will be shot and edited in February 2024.
Reflection&Takeaways
This is our first attempt at applying virtual production in the potential applications in the fashion industry, but we found that the LED Wall might not be as straightforward and convenient as green screens and traditional studio shooting. The cost of LED screens is relatively high, and because of their bounded screens, the camera cannot move freely, and the shooting angles are quite limited. In this shoot, we were unable to take good full-body photos, which obviously does not meet the needs of the fashion industry.
Additionally, lighting is a very important factor. We don't have anyone in our team who is experienced in studio lighting, which made our shooting very unrealistic and the brightness insufficient to capture the model and the outfit combinations.
Last but not least, the scale of the virtual environment is very important. In the current version, the scale of the virtual environment is much larger than the scale of real people, which was something we did not anticipate.