Unreal 5.4 Motion Design "Nanotech" and "Hologram" VFX Breakdown

[@Aptidude]

Whoa, next level stuff here 🤯 thanks for sharing

[@PixelProf]

Glad you enjoyed it!

[@MIKELENZTIPS]

Loved this!

[@tomisenveter]

Wow, thank you very much for this breakdown! Masterclass level stuff. There is so much to unpack here, it’s hard to focus on one specific thing to ask 😊 Also, as someone who would like to jump to Unreal for my future motion design work, this is exactly the content I’d like to learn/practice. I also love the 5.4 series you are doing and I am looking forward to your future videos.

[@metafuel]

Superb stuff. Thank you.

[@PixelProf]

Glad it was useful!

[@metafuel]

@@PixelProf Very clever work. So many great ideas.

[@ashoakenfold]

I like that it wasn't step-by-step. Nice overview, thanks!~~

[@violentpixelation5486]

That's really impressive work. Thanks alot for the breakdown.

[@PixelProf]

Thanks!

[@BLOG_BAR]

It would be great to see your detailed tutorial on different types of holograms

[@user-pq8gv9zd8k]

Can you please make in depth tutorial for this.. it will be a really helpful for us 🙏🙏🙏

[@PixelProf]

Would be happy to, but this video is pretty detailed in showing how this was setup already. Any particular aspects of the effects that you would like covered with more demos?

[@epheros9660]

Hello! This is super helpful as an overview for Motion Design! Noob question though, how did you parent the hologram cylinder to the arm in such a way that they move together?

[@PixelProf]

In sequencer, you can add an "Attach" track to the parent "Hologram" actor. Doing so, lets you pick which actor (in my case the Paragon character) to attach to. When you select a skeletal mesh actor, you then get a list of bones/joints in the actor to pick from. In my case, I selected the joint for the right forearm. As long as the attach track is active, the hologram will follow the selected bone/joint through the scene.

[@epheros9660]

@@PixelProf Awesome! Thank you for the detailed reply!

[@user-ev4ud5xs2j]

Wow, thank you very much for this breakdown! Masterclass level stuff. There is so much to unpack here, it’s hard to focus on one specific thing to ask；Can the boss provide a detailed tutorial? People who are not very familiar with this hype can't even play with it...

[@PixelProf]

Will be working on more in the coming weeks. Feel free to post a question about what parts of this you’re most curious about or interested in learning more detailed explanations for and I’ll try to prioritize future topics based on the questions. :-)

[@user-ev4ud5xs2j]

The most interesting part is also the hologram section.. More practical...

[@tomisenveter]

@@PixelProf The part with materials and animating its properties is very interesting. If you could do a video explaining that, I would appreciate it a lot 👍

[@HussinKhan]

What is your thought process behind figuring out the motion design properties? Do you have experience from a different software that works in the same manner, perhaps C4D. There isn’t any documentation just yet. I’m amazed how you can quickly come up with these videos. Any tips?

[@PixelProf]

Thanks.... not aware of any docs yet. I was fortunate to be in the beta group so sharing what I've learned over the past 6 months or so of playing around with it. Let me know if there are any particular areas you're interested in more info on, and I'll try to post more videos to cover them. 🙂

[@HussinKhan]

@@PixelProf Thanks Nick!

[@red4666]

is it possible for the Cloned instances to inherit the vertex color of the mesh they're being spawned on? for example, your gold chevron nanotech. it would be cool if they took on the color of the vert/triangle that they're being spawned on, but i cannot figure out a way for the vertex color of instances cloner meshes to sample the target meshes vertex colors.

[@PixelProf]

Not currently in 5.4 :-( Given that this is the first “experimental” release, I would imagine this will be coming in a future version.

[@michaelounsa5056]

Hello. How will be possible to assemble a metahuman's head into a real body? Example: I would like to film an actor playing cards on a green screen and I detach his head and replace it with a metahuman. Is it possible ? A few tips ?

[@PixelProf]

Yup, It's doable. You've basically described the first hour or so of Benjamin Button. It's not easy, but it can be done. For Benjamin Button, the on-set actor wore a cobalt blue wet-suit hood, with yellow tracking markers on it. Every shot was captured with multiple, genlocked cameras. The resulting plates were used to plot the actor's head movement through the shot in 3D space. A CG head & neck was rendered to match the movement and lighting (lighting was a mix of HDRI & placed lights). Back on the main camera plate for any given shot, the actor's head was masked out (roto) and the CG rendered head was composited (layered, roto'ed, color adjusted, etc. as needed) in its place. Rinse and repeat for a bit over 1000 shots. For an MH scenario, you would need to track the movements of the original performer's head (live link face is not accurate enough. better to use SynthEyes,, Nuke or Blender) as well as the camera position to match the two to each other. This data can be exported/transferred into UE via FBX. Make the MH head a child of the moving tracked head actor imported from FBX, render multipace, and composit in Nuke, Fusion, After Effects to taste with careful attention to roto and color.

[@michaelounsa5056]

@@PixelProf Thank you for the detailed explanations on how the special effects were achieved for Benjamin Button. It's fascinating to see all the work and technology required to create such realistic effects. The coordination between tracking the actor's head movements and digital composition seems to be a complex but essential process for achieving a convincing result. Your expertise in this field is truly impressive! It has helped me understand a bit more about the applied strategy.

[@kickheavy8982]

Did you have an issue getting the clones to distribute evenly aross your helmet? When I add a cloner to my mesh, I'll get a ton of clones on certain parts of the mesh but the rest of the mesh will only have a few clones so the mesh never gets entirely covered. Very uneven distribution and i'm not sure what's causing it.

[@PixelProf]

The distribution seemed fairly even for me, but I did have to crank up the number of instances being generated to get good coverage over the whole mesh. Keep in mind that if you have a low-poly mesh, I think the cloner is only generating a single clone per face, so this will work best on geometry that has higher polygon density.

[@kickheavy8982]

@@PixelProf ahh that makes sense. I just checked my mesh wireframe and sure enough, the parts with the most triangles are exactly where the high distribution was happening. I m gonna try to remesh the model in c4d thanks man

[@kickheavy8982]

@@PixelProf Oh by the way! Have you seen this animation this guy did with motion design? kzbin.info/www/bejne/sJyoqod_l9-eaNU I'm trying to do this myself. It looks like he's using a texture to control where the clones appear on his mesh. Can't figure it out though.