Yu's Animation blog

Enriching Scene Details

During the early stage of scene building, my main focus was on whether the spatial structure worked, such as clear paths and reasonable scale. As the project developed, I realised that a strong scene design also needs to hold up when viewed slowly. At this stage, I began systematically adding more environmental details.

Adding Effects and Atmospheric Elements

Once the main structure of the scene was stable, I started introducing visual effects to strengthen the overall atmosphere. These effects were not meant to be visually aggressive, but to support the mood of the environment. Examples include water mist, subtle floating particles, light dust, and local fog effects.

Lighting System Adjustment

Within the context of a Chinese-style cave, the lighting is not designed to be evenly distributed. Instead, light and shadow are used to guide the character’s movement. Some areas are intentionally kept darker to increase a sense of the unknown, while key points are highlighted with focused light sources to create visual pauses. This lighting approach adds rhythm to the exploration process and makes the scene feel closer to lighting design in real game levels.

Character Model and Animation

For character animation, I used basic walking, running, and turning animations to make the character’s movement feel more natural within the environment. The animations themselves are simple, but with proper timing and transitions, they are sufficient to support the needs of a demo-style presentation.

Third-Person Camera and Interaction

Once the character movement was stable, I further adjusted the behaviour of the third-person camera. By fine-tuning the follow distance, rotation response, and camera height, I ensured that the player can clearly see the character’s actions while still being able to read the surrounding environment during exploration.

Rendering and Editing: Creating a Game Demo Feel

After the main content was completed, the project moved into the final presentation stage. I used Sequencer to arrange basic camera shots, combined with render settings and simple editing to improve the overall polish of the work.

At this stage, I intentionally referenced game trailers and gameplay demos rather than traditional animated short films. The camera maintains a strong player-perspective feeling, reinforcing the sense that the project is a playable game demo rather than a purely cinematic animation.

Cave Structure and Water Details

The overall structure of the cave was mostly completed, and I began adding details, such as waterfalls.

As the personal project progressed, I started experimenting with water effects in the UE scene. This part of the learning process felt very different from working with Levels, materials, or lighting. The water system is more complex and has a higher learning cost. It requires a deeper understanding of the engine’s overall structure, including system setup, parameter control, and visual behaviour.

Water does not automatically look good by default. Elements such as transparency, reflection strength, wave scale, and how the water interacts with lighting all need careful adjustment based on the scene.

For my Chinese-style cave environment, the water is not meant to look like a bright, open natural lake. Instead, it is designed to feel darker, with limited reflections and a stronger sense of depth. This means reducing strong reflections and focusing on subtle light responses, so the water supports the overall atmosphere rather than becoming the main visual focus.。

add plant

I built the walkable paths for the character while refining the terrain sculpting at the same time.

I spent a significant amount of time building the cave walls.

Terrain Creation

After deciding on the overall theme, I started by planning the basic terrain layout.
I then used Landscape sculpting tools to begin shaping the terrain.

Overall Terrain Layout

The scene is designed as a terrain surrounded by water, with a small island in the centre.

Rock and Mountain Setup

I started by using rock assets to block out the island and define the direction of the cave and mountain paths. This step helped confirm the character’s movement path through the environment.

Personal Project Design and Overall Scene Concept

In Week 8, the course moved into the personal project design phase. Instead of focusing on a single technical topic, this week required combining what we learned in previous weeks, including Levels, materials, animation, physics, and lighting, into one complete project plan. My goal is to create a short animation that focuses on UE5 scene design with a game demo feeling. The project uses a character moving through the map to present the environment, rather than focusing on character performance as the main narrative element.

Project Concept and Motivation

I want to create a short animation that feels like a gameplay preview. The character continuously moves through the environment, with the camera following either a first-person or third-person perspective. The main focus is on spatial depth, lighting changes, and path guidance within the scene. This format is close to a real game demo and allows me to fully use UE5’s strengths in real-time rendering and environment creation.

Step 1: Reference Collection

For the scene theme, I chose a Chinese-style cave environment. This choice is not only based on visual preference, but also on spatial and atmospheric considerations. Cave spaces naturally have depth and rhythm, which makes them suitable for exploration-based movement. At the same time, Chinese-style elements give the scene a clear cultural identity and strong visual recognition.

In terms of atmosphere, the cave is not designed as a fully realistic natural space. Instead, it includes a degree of fantasy, such as exaggerated rock formations, decorative stone carvings, Chinese symbols, and lighting used to enhance a sense of mystery. This balance between realism and stylisation is more suitable for short animations and demo-style presentations.

Step 1: Sketch

Week 7 focused on the dynamic lighting system in Unreal Engine 5. The main goal was to understand how real-time lighting works in the engine, and how it is used in animation, cutscenes, and scene atmosphere. Unlike traditional offline rendering, lighting in UE5 is not something that is decided only at the final stage. Instead, it can be adjusted throughout the production process and provides instant visual feedback as a core part of the workflow.

Week 7 focused on the dynamic lighting system in Unreal Engine 5. The main goal was to understand how real-time lighting works in the engine, and how it is used in animation, cutscenes, and scene atmosphere. Unlike traditional offline rendering, lighting in UE5 is not something that is decided only at the final stage. Instead, it can be adjusted throughout the production process and provides instant visual feedback as a core part of the workflow.

Enabling Lumen

Enabling Lumen is easy, once your project is started up or converted, just go to the project settings and activate it. No problem.

The different lights

First of all, one needs to understand Skeleton

A Skeleton is a hierarchy that is used to define Bones (sometimes called joints) in a Skeletal Mesh. In some ways, these Bones mimic a real biological skeleton due to their position and control over how characters deform.

FBX files imported into Unreal Engine as Skeletal Mesh assets will contain the character’s model, and skeleton. The character’s skeleton will be imported as an additional asset called a Skeleton asset, which you can view and edit in the Skeleton Editor.

Sharing Skeletons

An important feature of Skeleton Assets is that a single Skeleton Asset can be used by multiple Skeletal Meshes, so long as the Skeletal Meshes use the same general rig hierarchy. This means that the names and hierarchical order of your Bones must be consistent in order for sharing to work correctly.

Skeletons in Unreal Engine | Unreal Engine 5.7 Documentation | Epic Developer Community

In UE5, the physics system is mainly responsible for gravity, collision, and movement feedback. Object falling, rolling, and character contact with the environment are all calculated by the physics system. This shows that physics is not a separate visual effect, but a core system that works closely with Levels, animation, and interaction.

The class first explained the difference between static objects and simulated objects. Static objects are usually part of the environment, such as floors, walls, or buildings. They do not use physics simulation, but they still affect how other objects collide with them. Simulated objects have physics enabled, so they are affected by gravity and forces, and can interact dynamically with the environment.

The physics system does not calculate based on the visible mesh, but on collision shapes instead. These collision shapes are usually simple geometry used to approximate an object’s volume and boundaries. Proper collision setup helps maintain believable behaviour while keeping performance costs under control.

Rigid Body Dynamics

Chaos Physics provides many features for rigid-body dynamics. This includes collision responses, physics constraints, and damping and friction. In addition, it provides asynchronous physics simulation and networked physics.

The link to the official UE profile is attached below. For more information, please refer to it：

Physics in Unreal Engine | Unreal Engine 5.7 Documentation | Epic Developer Community

Collision in Unreal Engine | Unreal Engine 5.7 Documentation | Epic Developer Community

How：

The Basics of Collisions in UE5

• Enabled Generate Missing Collisions: automatically generates basic collisions if none are provided with the mesh
• Disabled Generate Missing Collisions: does not generates collisions

Link:
https://www.worldofleveldesign.com/categories/ue5/collisions-guide.php