The Prodigal Daughter

The Q4 2017 Unity ‘Neon Challenge’ introduced many, including myself to the new Unity Cinematic creation tools: Post processing stack, Cinemachine and Timeline. The challenge was essentially to create a short 2 minute film incorporating the use of all the tools to tell a story.

Click to watch the video.

Narrative inspiration and Scene Conceptualization for the challenge.

I’m a sci-fi buff, and loved all of Georgi Simeonov’s conceptual art for the challenge, which seemed (to me) to have an interesting mix of cold and warm futuristic, but seemingly harsh settings. I kept going back to a few of the images here…

The huge ‘walls’ and towers in the conceptual art intrigue me, like immense gates to some bigger location beyond..High altitudes, and snow/cold settings aren’t anything I’ve attempted before in a scene. Tribal symbols seem alien..Lots of Steps, angular flat surfaces throughout seem to contrast against mountainous backdrops. These are all elements I’ll incorporate. One thing I think Unity does a great job with particle based fire and smoke, so will try to take some of the conceptual art concepts and use fire as a lighting element.

Resources used in the project for the challenge.

Core tools: Unity 2017.3.0f3, Post Processing V2 Stack (Free), Cinemachine (Free), Timeline (Free)

Other tools: Unity Particle Pack (Free), Unity Volumetric Fog (Github/Free), Unity Default Playables (Free), Unity Recorder (Free), Blender (Free) and Gimp (Free)

Asset Store and other resources:

• GAIA
• CTS Complete Terrain Shader
• PA Particle Field
• Allsky3 Cubemap backgrounds
• Bird Flock
• Library Data Unit
• Space Suit Girl
• Free Snow Mountain (Free)
• Fantasy Rhino (Free)
• Luminaris Spaceship (Free)
• Low-poly Scifi buildings (Free)
• Yughues Free Metal Materials (Free)
• Sci-fi evolution gift pack (by Epic Stock Media) (Free)
• Audioblocks (background sounds).