Please find the demoreel here.
Ina Chen 2022 Unreal Engine DemoReel Breakdown & Notes
Cultural Nomad | Creative Technologist | Worldbuilder | Storyteller
1. VESAK
is a real-time game engine film. Set in an alternative history, it portrays the Techno-Buddhism Festival on the day of Vesak: Buddha’s birthday.
I completed the film over the period of 1 year, and it was my first official Unreal project. I developed concept art and pitch deck where I had initially designed all relevant characters, props, costumes, and then worked with a group of artists as well as musician and graphic designers helping me to realize the project. I worked on all the assets, animation, set dressing, lighting, animation, blueprint and post from start to finish myself.
Role: Director Software: UE4, 3dsMax, Maya, Substance Painter, Marvelous Designer, Nuke, Adobe Suite Full film can be found here. Film Trailer here. Full pitch deck for initial concept dev here The film has been screened at various film festivals and exhibitions. I used Unreal 4.21-22 at the time. The way lighting and assets preparation works were very different from now. I am currently in the process of digging out the old files and upgrading it to UE5 and improving the look based on what I have learned through the years of professional experience after I completed this film.
2. Great Escapes with Morgan Freeman I worked on this project for 1 year as part of the Realtime team at Ingenuity Studios, LA. It’s a documentary series where we reconstructed 8 prisons in Unreal. I was in charge of the initial layout and Look Dev for 6 of them. After the blockout I worked on lighting and optimisation for Stage production. And lastly - final pixels where I worked with the Compositing team closely developing sufficient workflow between Unreal and Nuke.
Role: Unreal Engine Artist Software: UE4, 3dsMax, Maya, Shotgrid, Adobe Suite
There was no RTXGI and lumen at the time we were working on the project - set dressing and lighting the scene to be photoreal & keep the performance wasa main task. Rendering usable passes and implementing them with the studio internal compositing pipeline was also a main R&D task. I enjoyed taking references and learning the history and stories of the prison escapes, and realizing them virtually in Unreal to reconstruct the history was absolutely a great experience.
3. Beatsaber Oculus 3 months commercial project I worked on at Ingenuity Studios, LA. I worked on the project from start to finish - Lookdev, environment, lighting, blueprint, FX, greenscreen composure and render pipeline setup.
Role: Unreal Engine Artist Software: UE4, 3dsMax, Houdini, Shotgrid The main R&D for the project was to develop the blueprint for the cubes. We could not afford to hand animate all the cubes which leaves us no flexibility to create iterations. A working blueprint that allows the cube to have speed control/ramping/switch material after splitting/control gravity was difficult but fun to solve. In addition, we used houdini for the waterfall simulation. And post process materials to remove greenscreen; also worked with layout artists to get tracking data for the saber and camera into Unreal.
4. Undisclosed Project This work in progress film is directed by GMUNK (Bradley Munkowitz) and Peter Clark. It’s produced by PHNTM in Los Angeles. I was hired initially on the project to set up Perforce and Unreal overall organization. Currently I am working as an VAD artist leading two junior environment artists on one of the worlds in the short film. I am also supporting PHNTM’s internal Engineering team as a consultant as they develop new virtual production tools.
Role: VAD Lead, Volume Control, Perforce manager Software: UE4, 3dsMax, Maya, Substance Painter, Zbrush, Adobe Suite
On the VAD side: I worked on building the world from scratch - zbrush/maya modeling and asset preparation; procedural blueprint for geometry placement; scene optimization; Lighting; Shots and animatics creation. The film is currently in Previz phase.
5. Martin Garrix Ultra I worked as Content Lead on the UE concert visual of Martin Garrix’s Ultra Festival in Miami. We took the look dev deck from creative directors and built scenes that allows us to quickly iterate and balance between standard UE environments and Motion Graphics.
Role: UE Content Lead Software: UE4, 3dsMax, Maya, Adobe Suite
6. AKU Art Basel Miami We worked with AKU World for their Art Basel NFT Metaverse exhibition. Taking reference of their existing Metaverse style, I managed a team creating three environments that played over the course of 15min and loop during the day in the gallery setting. I also worked on site creating Avatars with audience scans and positioned them in the Unreal Environment, rendered out and minted as customized NFTs.
Role: Content Lead Software: UE4, 3dsMax, Substance Painter, TouchDesigner, Nuke The main difficulty we had was rendering 360 in 8K resolution and over 20K frames. In the end we worked with a compositor to stitch and reproject the renders in Nuke, and used TouchDesigner to do Final pixel - projection mapping. On the content side: I worked on assets vertex animation, cinematics, Niagara, animation, lighting and setdressing.
7. FVCKRENDER NYC NFT We worked with FVCKRENDER to launch his exhibition during NYC NFT 2022. I created two environments that activated the space through projection mapping; as well as creating Entrance LED content and showroom TV animations. For the initial phase of the project, I also worked with PHNTM’s internal team to visualize the event space taking CAD drawings and LiDAR scans.
Role: Content Lead Software: UE4, 3dsMax, Substance Painter, TouchDesigner, Nuke
8. Undisclosed Project Unreleased project collaborated with Team Rolfes where I worked as an Environment and Lighting Artist. Developed key looks and atmosphere based on the provided style and color references.
Role: UE4 Environment Artist Software: UE4, 3dsMax, Zbrush
9. Maroon 5 Beautiful Mistakes Worked within the Realtime team at Ingenuity Studios LA. We built 5 environments and brought it to the XR stage where the music video was shot entirely with the LED screen. I worked on 3 environment blocking, and per director’s request - developed a series of Post Process materials to give the look stylistic touch.
Role: UE4 Environment Artist, Stage Support Software: UE4, 3dsMax, Maya
10. Bring Your Own Teeth
Role: UE4 Environment Lead Software: UE4, 3dsMax, Substance Painter
Director Jonathan Sims created the VR short film with Drag Queen Katya. The film has been exhibited at various festivals and exhibitions. I worked as the Lead Unreal Environment Artist. Created all the environment and troubleshooting VR render pipeline.
The main task for this project was doing iterations and figuring out scales. As the film is set in a magical surreal tone, however textures and lighting were supposed to be photoreal. Thus testing the scene in VR headset and in UE back and forth was crucial.
11. Take me to your Window Take me to your window is my personal on-going research project. Where I researched and wrote about Informational Processing and Attention Mechanism between Human and AI. The goal of the research is to bring conversations on Ethical AI and AI Anthropology on the table. The representation format is a body of work manifesting Creative Technology and real time engine. If interested, more information, roadmap, R&D and testing can be found here.
Role: Director, Researcher Software: UE4, 3dsMax, 3DF Zephyr, Capture, Rhino
Thank you!
www.inachen.com