Working for NFT production company Orange Comet, I was recently tasked with directing the look and feel of racing legend Tony Stewart's first foray into the "Metaverse". I was also in charge of creating a series of cinematic animations to commemorate the various milestones of Stewart's racing career.
The various assets for the project were produced in Blender and later ported to Unreal Engine 5 for final animation, sequencing, and render.
Final Videos
Look Development & Asset Production
The first phase of production was a discovery period to find the right tone for the images and animations. We wanted to create a gritty, but sleek and cinematic look for the project. My role at this time was art direction as well as helping to model and texture the various vehicles in Stewart's collection according to client-provided references. These images are a mix of Cycles renders from Blender and Unreal's realtime and path tracing renderers.
Animation
I chose to animate and edit the five videos in Unreal because the built in sequencer allowed me to iterate the animation as well as the sequencing of shots in real time Using Unreal's media textures feature, I was able to control what was on the projection screen in the videos alongside the cuts of the actual video itself. The workflow proved to be a very flexible and enjoyable process, because it made revision rounds painless and re-renders quick and easy.
Animation Stills
Generative Series
The next part of the project involved producing the assets required for 500 procedurally generated vehicles, each with its own custom livery built off of one of Stewart's original liveries. My role in this part of the project specifically was to produce 15 "Premium" versions, that would serve as the most rare, and thus valuable items.
