Realism and Historical Recreations with Dynamic Materials
Wenrui“ Ray”
Wenrui“ Ray” YIN
Art Creation
Realism and Historical Recreations with Dynamic Materials
For my Thesis project, I created two hyper-realistic 3D characters with historical costumes and dynamic material effects in Unreal Engine 5. My goal was to explore how realistic character art, historical costume reconstruction, and interactive material systems could work together in a complete real-time character presentation.
The project focused on three main areas: Hyper-Realism, Historical Recreation, and Dynamic Materials. For Hyper- Realism, I worked on facial likeness, anatomy, skin, eye shading, hair, and overall character believability. The male character was based on Kit Harington and wore a reconstructed 16th-century German cavalry armor, inspired by“ Reiterharnisch( Küriss)” displayed at Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. The female character was based on Emilia Clarke and wore a gown reconstructed from“ Portrait of Empress Elisabeth of
Austria”( 1554 – 1592), Queen of France and wife of Charles IX. This historical portrait provided important references for costume structure, fabric layering, jewelry placement, and ornamental details.
For Dynamic Materials, I created three real-time effects: molten fire, sandy erosion, and frozen accumulation. These effects were built using Unreal Engine material nodes such as Fresnel, Dissolve, World Position Offset, and Emissive controls. I then integrated them into Blueprints, allowing the material transformations to be triggered interactively through keyboard input.
This thesis directly supports my development as a character artist. It strengthened my ability to create realistic characters with accurate costume design and present them effectively in Unreal Engine through shaders, lighting, animation, and real-time material systems.
28 ART CREATION