ENGAGE // VALORANT CINEMATIC
This is by far one of my most ambitious projects I have created! It started out as a simple test with omen's character selection, but quickly grew. This project required me to learn how to re-create in-game VFX, improve my animation skills, and hand-paint textures (Shoutout to Echo for help with the painting on the second shot, and giving me ops throughout painting). I'm especially proud about how similar the final output was to the official trailers, and I think I have a rough workflow down now. If you enjoyed the video, or want more BTS, let me know below! Thanks for reading :)
STILLFRAMES
PAINTING PROCESS
In order to replicate the stylized look that Riot Games publishes with their content, I needed to hand-paint textures. The workflow involved creating a base scene, baking the textures onto an unwrapped UV map, painting over the textures in Photoshop, and finally placing the textures back into blender. The painting process even saved time when rendering, as light paths didn't need to be calculated on objects that were painted. I also would like to give a huge thanks to @madxecho for guiding me through the painting process and even painting on the second shot of the animation.
A texture that has finished being painted in Photoshop
RAW Render w/o painted textures versus Raw Painted Render
RECREATING IN-GAME VFX
Most of the in-game effects in VALORANT are easy to replicate in 3D software (Emission maps for example are easy to implement virtually anywhere). However, certain visual effects I needed for this project required more attention and complex node setups to complete. I successfully recreated Omen's teleport as well as bullet impacts. Below are screenshots of the process.
ADDITIONAL SCREENSHOTS
CREDITS
Models + Base Textures: Riot Games
Shot #2 Painting Artist: @madxecho
Animation, Compositing, 3D Animation, Painting: Brainez Visuals | Max G.