MadWerkz completes animated virtual production in Unreal Engine for Thumbs Up.

Feeling sick to your stomach is a universal ailment, common to everyone who has ever graced this beautiful blue marble. While Founder Lori A. Peterson doesn’t claim to have a solution; However, she has definitely created a device to provide comfort, regardless of who you are or in what position you might find yourself.

Looking for a high-impact presentation tool, Thumbs Up Inventions engaged MadWerkz, looking for an animated video introduction of their newest product. “Lori had a very descriptive storyboard with a ton of detail”, quipped Producer Christopher Kennedy. The storyboards allowed the MadWerkz team to believe they could utilize a real-time solution in their workflow. “We wanted to build a more realistic environment, but not impact cost in a negative way. The fact that we could use some modular sets in Unreal was a plus,” stated Jason Mitchwell, who served as the Virtual Cinematographer and Production Designer.

Everyone gets sick, right?

“The goal of the intro is to show how necessary and universal Blah is. It literally doesn’t have a specific audience. Everybody gets sick, right?” Remarked Peterson.

When we got Joddy Eric involved as the Director, he agreed that Unreal was at a point in its maturity that we could present it as a substitute for something completed in Maya and rendered in Arnold. “Skipping the Render Farm cost was definitely a plus,” remarked Kennedy.

Cavemen to Knights

Using the real-time tool also allowed them to plus up a crucial set of shots in the presentation. “The script called for a description of sickness since the beginning of early humans. The Peterson team really wanted to sell the fact that feeling sick has plagued humankind since our earliest history with a Caveman. But modeling, rigging, and texturing a custom character was a potential budget breaker,” added Mitchwell. “Joddy, the Director, was working on a Medieval battle scene in Unreal for something else and showed us a fantastic medieval town square. We were hooked. All that was left was to get the Peterson team on board.”

“Joddy Eric is so passionate about visuals. He is such a great director because he cares about every shot. Frames tell stories is how he puts it. He built an environment, rendered a few shots, and showed Lori,” stated Jason. “She still wanted the Cavemen, but the scene, complete with a beautiful German Shepherd, was too hard to resist.”

Frames tell stories.

Joddy eric Matthews

Working in a real-time environment also gave the MadWerkz Team time to develop some internal tools. “We’ve wanted for some time to leverage Unreal as a way to tell some of our cinematic efforts. But the technology was always just a few years away from being something more than a game engine tool,” stated Matthews. He added, “5.5 and now with 5.6, I think we’re there. Ben’s work on Amazon’s Secret Level showed the range of a project done in Unreal and the audience’s willingness to accept it as art.” The team also considered Houdini’s new APEX and Karma rendering solution, but decided to go with Unreal because of the project’s timeframe.

New Tools

To enhance the look of the video, Matthews and Mitchwell developed custom cameras based on the Arri Alexa 35 and 65 platforms. They also created a set of digital lenses, using a technique long employed in industry visual effects boutiques such as MadWerkz. “We wanted to get a look similar to what we would see if we shot the spot on an Arri,” remarked MitchWell, adding, “We also created a 3×3 Matrix of the Unreal ACES EXR output and developed a DCTL to convert it to LogC4 in Davinci Resolve.”

To the finish. Blah, Blah, Blah

Once rendered, the EXR shots were combined with the host video, which was shot on greenscreen in Detroit, Michigan, by Matthews and graded in LogC4. Mitchwell oversaw the color grade with Houston’s Bill Z providing audio editing and music. The finished video was rendered to ProRes and H265 10bit using Juan Pablo Zambrano’s amazing JP2499 DRT.

For more information on Blah, contact Lori Peterson at Thumbs Up Inventions, LLC. (586) 604.2715 or thumbsupinventions@gmail.com.

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