4-5 : Bloodstained battlefield

Both scenes 4 and 5 were made with the same methods and assets. The only difference is that some characters and the camera were moved, and the unused objects were deleted in scene 5.

This scene was the first to be completed and rendered.

Scene setup

Camera

The original scene features a visible parallax effect : objects close to the camera (flowers, weapons) move very fast, and the characters move slower, based on how distant they are from the camera. For this reason, it was appropriate to use a long focal length (200mm) to replicate this effect in the 3D setting. A Camera shakify effect was also applied in both scenes.

Terrain and background

The ground is made with three mesh planes, each equipped with a subdivision modifier, which is necessary to apply the displacement of the textures used. This method is enough to create an uneven terrain, with hills in the background.

The sky background is a EFT screenshot placed on an emissive mesh. It is placed on a separate view layer for compositing reasons. A circular mesh with high emissivity is placed in front of it to be used as a sun. This will be useful later in compositing.

The foreground uses the Scatter on surface modifier, which instances a collection of two weapons.

Important

For this to work properly, each weapon has to be a single object. If all parts have not been joined beforehand, the modifier will randomly select parts of the weapon.

Just in front of the camera, the same barbed wire as the previous scene was used. It is animated moving on the X-axis, to accentuate the parallax effect.

Lighting

Each character is lit by several sources :

• A source (spot or area) to highlight the character (head and shoulders), which will be used to create the red highlights.
• A source (point or area) directed at their weapon to better outline them.

Tip

An easy way to place the lights is to use the track to constraint. This way, the light can be moved around while always facing its target.

Large area lights were also placed to make sure the ground was visible, but not bright enough to be affected by the compositing.

Wind animation

For the cloth animation, I used kutson blend’s method, instead of an actual cloth simulation which would have been more difficult.

This method consists in using a displacement modifier on the cloth meshes, with an external object that controls the displacement texture. By animating this object, the clothes appear to be affected by the wind.

The EFT characters have exposed skin of solid elements on their mesh (gloves, pistol holster, knee pads, shoes) which should not be affected by wind. By specifying a vertex group in the displacement modifier, you can select which parts of the mesh are affected and get a believable result.

Compositing

The original scene is in black and white with red highlights, which makes it memorable. It took some time and several attempts to find a suitable way to do it.

This scene is rendered in EEVEE on a transparent background (Render/Film/Transparent).

First attempt

My first attempt was to use the color ramp to assign a red value to the highlights. However, this looks very unnatural as it makes the highlights look completely red, when the brightest colors should get closer to white and thus be desaturated.

Final method

This method overlays a filtered red image on a black and white background :

The black and white image (A) is the pre-processed render converted with a RGB to BW node and adjusted with a RGB curve.

The red image (B) is created with the following node setup :

• The Exposure node increases the overall brightness of the image (this is needed for the bloom step)
• The Sepia node turns the image red. This could also be done by plugging a black and white image in the red channel of a combine color, but this method allows for more control, and will be easily reused for later scenes which use a different sepia tone.
• The Luminance Key node makes dark areas transparent based on its threshold values. Here, this node is used to control which parts of the image will be affected by the red color.

Then, both images are combined with a Mix color/overlay node. This node makes the bright parts brighter while leaving the dark areas unaffected. The Luminance key/Matte output and Overlay/Factor input are connected, so that only the bright areas are affected.

Finally, a Glare/Bloom effect is used to “spread” the color around the brightest areas. The Tint paramater adds even more color.

Then, a Alpha over node is used to add the background. A RGB curves node is used to adjust the contrast and make the clouds more visible.

The last thing to do is to add the flare effect. This involves the emissive mesh placed in the scene earlier, which ensure the flare will behave realistically : it will move with the camera and interact with the characters. The mesh having a higher emissivity than any other object in the scene, this also makes it easier to find a Glare threshold that will not affect the other objects.

The flare effect used here is the sum of a Streaks nodes and a Bloom node. A Dilate/erode is used before the streaks node to reduce the size of the highlights, which allows to control the width of the streaks. The resulting effect is then added to the image. Depending on the activation of the Clamp result option in the add nodes, this setup can produce different results.

It’s finished ! This effect took some time to create, but the resulting setup looks good and will be able to be used in many other scenes.

Transition

The transition was added afterwards during the editing. It is a render a of a AK-74 with no light on a transparent background, with a blur effect. It is animated to cross the screen horizontally. This transition is also used in other scenes.