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It’s the most headache part, both two scene have render issues.

For the fantasy scene:

At first I can’t see the ghost beluga and the sea when I was rendering.

For the beluga I originally think it’s because I open this subsurface fake light parameter on material instance, which is not able to render using ray tracing.

But I try different way, it didn’t work, even I tick off, it didn’t work as well. But if I assign the glow material on other beluga, it can work. That shows it’s doesn’t caused by it.

Surprisingly, I just duplicated the character on the lever sequence, and delete the original one, it works! Weird…

Then is the sea, I watch so many tutorials and check the detail panel, And I found this: Unless I select it to level sequence, it will not be shown in render, although it’s visible in screen right now.

After that, I got this view:

For the main scene, when I hit render, it will crash immediately. I tried different render setting but didn’t work.

Finally, I found where the problem is. It’s the waterline setting again… I have to choose add it to level sequence. But this one will cause crash instead of not render that object.

I got this view:

For my main character beluga, the asset only have skeleton mesh with simple animation. But I want to have more flexible control on my character.

So the first step I create the control rig for this skeleton mesh. Because of the straight body shape, It’s easier for sea animation to rig. So I create the controller one by one:

And I did an animation test by key framing the controller:

Then I realize I also need those preset animations like swim and idle pose which I already have in the asset to give it a sense of naturally floating in water. But I found out the control rig and animation are not fit well, if I want to apply preset animation I have to delay the control rig. So I wonder is there a way that I can use the control rig on top of my animation.

I watch a lot of online tutorial and found out there is a function called bake animation to control rig. Basically, it treats animation data like motion capture data and applies that on the control rig.

How to Modify an Animation Sequence in Unreal Engine: Bake to Control RIg – YouTube

But I found out I couldn’t find my rig inside bake animation button. I found result on Epic game community—because I only have forward solve direction when I was rigging, I also need to add a backward solve direction so that I can bake the animation back to the control rig.

Control Rig Forwards Solve and Backwards Solve in Unreal Engine | Unreal Engine 5.5 Documentation | Epic Developer Community

And I manipulate again on my control rig:

I choose and apply the animation that I want for the character first, after that I bake the animation on my control rig and get a series of keys. By adding a additive track of control rig, I got another track to control the animation on top of the original one in a non-destructive way.

I want to create a cinematic shot, two scenes intertwined and edited parallel together, telling a story of depressed whale trapped in a dark aquarium or laboratory.

One scene is a fantasy scene, showing a traditional Chinese myth of Kun and peng, which are the giant whale like creatures from Chinese poetry “Xiao Yao You” that ‘spreads its wings for thousands of miles’ showing its freedom in the sky.

Another scene is a realistic scene. The whale trainer feed a captive whale in a super narrow aquarium, the whale’s dorsal fin is wilted, and it can only swim in circles.

Inspiration:

I watched an interview video about a whale trainer, ShaoRan, who was almost killed by the beluga she fed. I was strongly touched and loved the core idea: not an animal belong to the cage.

Here is the full interview:

“没有生命是属于牢笼的。” |华南第一女驯鲸师专访|白鲸Sophie故事系列|第一集_哔哩哔哩_bilibili