WORK PROGRESS

Artwork 1 & 2: Finishing Mintie's video 1 & Starting 2

Losing Hair Issue

New Hair Model in Blender

New Black Hair Combined in Unreal

The first hair I created had some issues with losing hair strands when imported into Unreal. I decided to create a new one, making sure there are enough strands to prevent it from looking like someone losing too much hair. Also, I was thinking of having pink hair, but I think I will proceed with black hair. With pink hair, it attracts more attention to the hair rather than the character or the clothing. This might be updated later on with other environments.

Various Attempts of Importing the Dress

With the change of hair, I also encountered some issues with properly importing clothing simulation to Unreal. I had to try many different methods to figure out how to make it work. It was either the texture not importing properly or the geometry cache was out of position. After some research, I imported and exported in Blender, and it worked. It was strange how the same FBX would not work if it’s directly from Marvelous Designer, but it worked.

Three-point lighting setup for rendering

For the renders, I've experimented with various settings and parameters, trying different rendering options. After many attempts, I now understand that lighting is the key to the quality of the render! I've been studying the actual camera settings in the real world, as unreal lighting systems mimic real-world behaviour.
I learned about the industry-standard "Three-point lighting setup" used in films, photography, and other visual media. This setup includes the key light, backlight, and fill light. By setting up three cameras in front, side, and back of the actor, cinematographers can illuminate the actor in any desired way.
This link was helpful in understanding the setup: https://nofilmschool.com/3-point-lighting


Rendering is one of the biggest challenges in terms of balancing quality and rendering time. To achieve cinematic quality renders, I had to implement heavy settings, and Unreal crashed frequently. With some settings, rendering took up over 10 hours, so I had to let it render overnight. Generally, it takes about 5-6 hours to render approximately 300 frames. I'm rendering a few different angles and camera settings to produce final output.

Screenshots of the renders for the first video

After having several renders for the first video/artwork, I also started working on the second video/artwork. While the first one focuses more on introducing Mintie, the second one is themed after rose petals and pink colour, capturing the beautiful side of the rose/emotions/life. The clothing and the environment are designed to embody the aesthetics of beautiful petals with the main colour being pink.

The Rose Dress is the second garment I've worked on. Instead of Marvelous Designer, I started exploring Clo3D. The two software are almost identical except for a few extra features exclusive to Clo3D. The difference stems from the primary purpose of each software: Marvelous Designer is more for 3D artists creating virtual clothes for characters, while Clo3D is primarily used by the fashion industry. Thus, it makes sense that Clo3D has a few more features tailored for creating clothes in detail.

Inspirational research has been done to finalise the design of the rose dress.

Screenshots of the rose dress production

The bottom part of the dress was designed with petal-like drapes to convey the desired aesthetics, but not too straightforwardly. Additionally, to enhance the representation of the concept, fabric roses were created in Clo3D and sewn onto the shoulders and waist of the dress. Crafting the fabric roses was a big challenge. Even after successfully sewing one rose after many attempts, duplicating it and placing it on the dress led to simulation issues. Eventually, I exported the rose as an FBX model and imported it as hardware onto the dress to effectively sew them on. However, this method had the downside of being unable to edit the pattern once imported as hardware, requiring re-exporting and importing the model for any desired changes.
The accessory on the chest is actually the 3D model I created for the last project, "Quantum Faces." It's one of the four facial sculptures. I thought it would be nice to attach it to the dress as an accessory to add more detail and enhance the quality of the dress. Additionally, it creates a bridge between my projects and helps strengthen the artistic style.

INDUSTRY ENGAGEMENT

Here is the list of industry engagements for this week:

1. Attended Musician Workshop at the Arts Centre

2. Meetup with a fellow musician/artist

3. First volunteering shift at Seventh Gallery

Music Industry Masterclasses in March - Crafting Your Music

5:30pm, Mon 18 March, The Channel

https://www.thepush.com.au/events/music-industry-masterclass-crafting-your-music
The workshop was centred around guest speakers sharing their experiences in becoming established musicians. They shared some tips on producing music using Ableton, with the most useful tip emphasising the importance of musicians developing a habit of consistent production, regardless of the quality or their satisfaction with the outcome. This habit helps them sustain their careers.

While listening to the guest speakers, I was inspired to create a community for musicians or anyone who loves music within RMIT. Thus, I organised a weekly session called "Thursday Ableton," scheduled for every Thursday during lunch break. Thursday Ableton serves as a safe space for anyone interested in sound and music production to share, learn, and discuss their work and tips, primarily utilising Ableton as the main DAW but also exploring others like Logic, Cubase, and FL Studio. We had our first session this Thursday, and about 7-8 people attended. Our goal is to produce at least one track individually and one track collaboratively, with the possibility of performing at the end-of-term party this semester. I’m so excited to see what everyone would produce as the outcome of our sessions! I feel grateful for the opportunity to be involved in this community of musicians in Digital Media. It serves as great inspiration and motivation for everyone and myself to maintain the habit of constant music production.

A fellow musician/artist, currently working on her theatrical play/performance

Thurs 21 March

https://chambermade.org/programs/hi-viz/

I've first met her in the Hi-viz Satellites workshops last year. It is one of the programs in partnership with Chamber Made, aiming to build networks and dialogue among artists.

I was looking into their description page again and found out about the video they've put together after the session, and I found myself in there!

We were in the same group sessions in the workshop and worked on producing a short sound performance together. So we wanted to catch up after the session, and we finally did! We are now planning on possible collaborative work, whether on producing a track together or organising a short live performance. We discussed perhaps we could think about posting the work collaboratively on both of our Instagram accounts. I can’t wait to start working on this collaboration!

Sausage Sizzle Fundraiser at Seventh Gallery

1-6pm, Sat 23 March

https://www.seventhgallery.org/content/event---seventh-sausage-sizzle---seventh-gallery

This was my first volunteering shift at Seventh Gallery. The sausage sizzle was organised as a fundraiser to support Seventh after they were unsuccessful in receiving Creative Ventures funding. It was so great to finally meet other volunteers, artists from various practices, and to visit the gallery in person for the first time. With the event, I helped create the poster/menu for the sausage sizzle(one in the photo), assisted with the bar, and sold raffle tickets. It was truly a great experience being involved in an artist community outside RMIT! I had the opportunity to meet many cool artists, and of course, I started inviting them to my exhibition at the end of the semester. I'm already excited to see everyone there!

SOCIAL MEDIA

For this week's social media updates, I've started sharing my work progress on the Meta Rose project. I began with showcasing the 3D rose, which was one of the early visuals created for the project. It communicates the visual aesthetics of the project, incorporating rose, pink, and chrome colours and materials.
Additionally, I created a short reel featuring a close-up look at the Metahuman avatar, highlighting its realistic appearance. In the last post, I shared about the process of applying animation to a Metahuman in the caption. In the insights section, particularly in the engagement analysis, there were a higher number of likes, saves, and shares. This indicates that the audience enjoyed these types of posts, which share how-to guides or tutorials. I'm keen to create more posts like these in the future.

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