SMU Guildhall Graduate Catalog 2021 — Cohort 29 2021 | Page 20

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Yuanfang Liu
Art Creation
Environmental Change , Destruction , and a Living Painting
My thesis artifact was about an HMS Endeavour sailing in the middle of the sea , while a storm raised up and destroyed the ship , sinking it to the bottom of the ocean .
At the beginning of the scene , the time was set as afternoon . The setting sun had dyed the clouds and the sea golden . Everything looked so peaceful . But suddenly , the clouds turned thicker , and the waves were falling one after another , throwing the ship up and down . Lightning and flashes appeared in the distance . Thick fog began to gather above the sea , and even the sun became dim . The rain was falling , and the sails were whistling in the wild air . An explosion happened in a flash , and the flames ignited the deck and burned through the hull . There was a big hole in the ship and the water poured in quickly . As the ship sank , it gradually turned over , stirred up a wave , and finally disappeared under the sea . In the end , only a few pieces of broken wood floating on the sea ’ s surface witnessed the whole story .
The goals of my project included realizing the change from sunny to stormy weather , adding an oil painting effect , and creating the process of destruction . I also made the scenes more realistic by adding more functions in master materials . I thought the idea of making an interactive scene was cool and would challenge me to go beyond my comfort zone to explore more possibilities . The project took me 11 months , approximately 530 hours , to finish . I enjoyed accomplishing my goals , learning new skills , and getting more familiar with the blueprints system in the UE4 engine , including creating animations and linking between different actions .
This project would be useful for the video game industry because it strongly relates to technical art . It could help artists solve the work of dealing with the game engine and help programmers undertake part of the task of improving the image effects so that content production and effect improvement can be decoupled .
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