[MUSIC PLAYING]
NATHAN MADDAMS: This project is a series of four distinct shorts
that we've created in cooperation with Universal.
And it's a re-imagining of the Universal Monsters
in a new and exciting way.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
MARK MCCREERY: Fortnite has, around Halloween time,
this Shortnitemares, which is a collection of shorts
based around the Halloween theme.
And the Universal Monsters fits perfectly into that category.
NATHAN MADDAMS: Universal really wanted to execute a new vision,
to try to be true to the original spirit of what the monsters were,
which were creatures that were misunderstood rather
than being true monsters.
MARK MCCREERY: But we're going to change them up and make them
more contemporary, more global, more inclusive.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
NATHAN MADDAMS: It's a mix of Shaw Brothers' martial arts, heist film,
and everything in between.
The biggest challenge was the timeline.
We had a very condensed timeline with a lot of set changes,
a lot of extravagant locations, a lot of characters,
crowd, creatures, creature animation, all sorts of things.
So our goal with this project was to pretty much
have final pixels in Unreal.
Everything from the character's effects, lighting, rendering,
everything is done in Unreal.
We were deciding what it looked like as the project progressed.
So one thing that MetaHumans did was allowed
us to visualize characters very quickly, get them to rig,
get them onto mocap stage, and actually get them to capture.
So we were able to get characters up on their feet,
so to speak, really early in the process.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
MARK MCCREERY: I was really excited about designing Bride
because she is really the ringleader and she's the hero.
In the original film, she was on film for, like, three minutes [LAUGHS]
and she's never been explored since.
So to make her the hero and make her kind
of like the impetus for this whole adventure that's
about to happen, empowering her I thought was just so appropriate.
NATHAN MADDAMS: And she's actually six different MetaHumans
heads put together, then re-sculpted externally, and then re-imported
back into Unreal.
From Crash's original designs we would go through and create our base
MetaHumans heads.
Before Crash saw them, we would actually
apply the skull parts and some of the finesse to get it really
kind of on model shoot and get it
close to the essence and the spirit of his original designs.
The hair was created externally and then
we would bring them into Unreal.
It's quite a complex, braided kind of design.
So something you would traditionally not attempt in a real-time engine.
But it looks amazing.
It looks really cool.
And all dynamic.
MARK MCCREERY: I was receiving MetaHuman models
that I could work on top of.
I mean, they were textured, lit.
It was such a rare thing for me to be able to work with,
that within literally a day or two, I had
the final look of our design, which was unheard of before.
So the MetaHuman was a game changer for me as a designer.
NATHAN MADDAMS: So MetaHumans is basically
giving us for free all of these face shapes
and all the hard work has already been done for us.
Normally, we'd run anywhere from 80 to 300 scans that
would have to be compiled, resurfaced, re-topologized,
ingested into a rig, micro and compound expressions put together.
With MetaHumans, we're there straight out of the box.
We've got a really amazing base that we can then add our detail
to and plus from there.
VLAD: How?
BRIDE: Bite him.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
NATHAN MADDAMS: One thing with Unreal that was really advantageous
was being able to work with a more synchronous workflow.
We could start with the MetaHumans base head
and actually start to capture with actors.
We could start to develop scenes, look at lighting,
do costume design tests while the characters were actually
being worked on.
This allowed us to parallel assets, sets, animation.
So things would just keep improving and keep moving towards the end goal
as the project went on.
With Bridge, while the animators are working in Maya,
they're able to see the characters essentially lit, shaded,
in scene in parallel with the asset team and lighting team
building those elements.
Essentially by the end of the animation process,
they're animating in final lighting and final sets.
We set out to achieve something in such a tight timeline
with such lofty goals.
Such a massive cast of characters, huge amount of sets.
And to be able to sit back and realize we
achieved this in such a rapid timeline is pretty amazing.
MARK MCCREERY: I'm used to digital tools kind of upping the game.
It's like things are getting faster and more efficient.
So using the Unreal Engine, that kind of just
ramped everything up to a level that I hadn't really experienced before.
I mean, I'm used to going a year later just to the theater
to see what things look like and this is immediate.
And it's so satisfying.