The Darkest Age - Unreal Engine Filmmaking
The Darkest Age - Unreal Engine Filmmaking
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How to Create A Massive Zombie Horde in Unreal Engine 5.5 - Niagara Crowd Simulation, AnimToTexture
discord.com/invite/thedarkestage
This is an in-depth tutorial on creating a massive, stampeding horde of zombies using a modified Niagara fountain emitter and static mesh zombie particles that are animated using Vertex Animation Textures (VAT). We use a tool built by @TrashPraxis to convert zombie skeletal meshes into static meshes, with their animations baked into their material instances, which uses Unreal Engine's AnimToTexture plugin. This is all done in Unreal Engine 5.5, without having to leave to bake the static meshes. I also draw heavily from @CodeLikeMe's tutorial on creating a rat swarm tutorial, which I have also linked below.
Link to Trash Praxis' Tool on Github: github.com/kromond/AnimToTextureHelpers
Trash Praxis' Tutorial: th-cam.com/video/vrlFozqB0jA/w-d-xo.htmlsi=oJtM5twCbO8QBgXz
CodeLikeMe's Rat Swarm Tutorial: th-cam.com/video/NilyMiB1fos/w-d-xo.htmlsi=YBCah9zDPOLh9Aq3
Zombie Characters Used: fab.com/s/66eae7a3094c
Zombie Animations Used: fab.com/s/53aed38d6191
Affiliate Links to Support the Channel:
ElevenLabs for AI Voice morphing: try.elevenlabs.io/srb9mtho4n0l
QuickMagic for Body Mocap: www.quickmagic.ai?code=clmew4 (if link is broken, referral code is: clmew4)
Artlist for Cinematic Music and SFX: artlist.io/referral/dd1d776b-740e-43da-8557-29c2fe35e03d
00:00-00:34 - Intro
00:35-01:20 - CINEMATIC
01:21-04:20 - Overview of Effect
04:21-07:13 - Limitations
07:14-08:13 - Benefits
08:14-09:57 - Main Tutorials Used
09:58-11:29 - Project and Plugin Setup
11:30-13:02 - Download and Install Vertex Animation Texture Tool from Github
13:03-15:25 Adding Zombie Characters and Animations
15:26-16:33 Retargeting Zombie Animations
16:34-17:10 Organizing Meshes
17:11-24:19 Modifying Materials wtih AnimToTexture Blueprint Code
24:20-34:03 Baking the Vertex Animation Textures and Generating Static Meshes with Trash Praxis' Tool
34:05-38:13 Setting Up More Zombies
38:14-38:50 IMPORTANT Do Not Apply LOD If Prompted When Closing Static Mesh Window
38:51-43:13 Setting Up Niagara Emitter and Adding Meshes, Initial Spawn Velocity, and Collision
43:14-44:23 Changing Particle Lifetime and Randomizing Initial Scale
44:24-47:35 Applying Linear Force to Particles
47:36-49:58 Setting Up Variation in Linear Force and Adding Sine Wave Movement
49:59-51:23 Changing Spawn Volume Shape
51:24-53:39 Changing Spawn Rate of Particle Emitter
53:40-56:40 Adding Another Linear Force to Give More Directional Control to Horde
56:41-58:23 Making Zombies Face the Proper Direction, Aligning them to Direction of Velocity
58:24-59:40 Fixing Zombie Bounce by Changing Restitution, Fixing Clumping by Reducing Bounce Friction
59:41-1:00:00 Lowering Linear Force So They Don't Run So Fast
1:00:01-1:00:37 Turning On Cast Shadow for Particles
1:00:38-1:03:05 Adding a Curve to the Mesh Scale So Particles Ease In and Out of existence
1:03:06-1:04:37 Outro
มุมมอง: 12 588

วีดีโอ

Budget Mocap Tutorial - Quickmagic.AI and Metahuman Animator (Android/Frame Mancer) Unreal Engine 5
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This is a high-level breakdown of a battle scene created in Unreal Engine 5. The scene depicts the battle between the Spanish Armada and the English Navy, in the year 1588. The Spanish were confident of victory going in, but Sir Francis Drake and Queen Elizabeth I were able to defeat them in one of the greatest naval battles in history. I used Metahumans as the characters, and created the perfo...
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Metahuman Animator has made AAA facial animation easy and cheap to create, but motion capture suits are still too expensive for many. However, there do exist some low-cost, easy-to-use full-body motion capture solutions, such as AI-based Move One. This is a detailed tutorial showing every step to creating a cinematic scene with Metahumans in Unreal Engine 5 using Move One and Metahuman Animator...
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0:00-3:40 Short Film 3:41-5:03 Behind the Scenes This is another test of our AI-based motion capture pipeline, featuring Move.AI for the body motion capture, and Metahuman Animator for the face animations. This film features two custom Metahumans, which were converted using the Metapipe conversion pipeline. The sasquatch/gorilla dude has a custom groom, with nearly 500k fully simulated individu...
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This is a short scene testing out Metahuman Animator on a non-human creature, that has been converted to the Metahuman rig using Metapipe. The motion capture is done using six GoPro 10's and Move.AI, and the facial animation is captured using an iPhone 13 and the Rokoko headrig, then processed in Unreal Engine using Metahuman Animator. The woman's voice is converted using ElevenLabs speech to s...
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Kill or be killed is the daily life of an orc. This film is the follow-up to my last film, ENCOUNTER, and is a piece in the ongoing saga of life from an orc's perspective. A deadly sword fight between an orc and a nameless knight. The motion capture was done using Move.AI and the facial animation is all done using Metahuman Animator. The orcs were purchased from Polyphoria, and the character ri...
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This is a test of the Metahuman animation pipeline. I used six GoPro 10's at 4k 60fps to capture the body, and a homemade headrig and iPhone for the face capture, then processed with Metahuman Animator. The speech is from Braveheart, obviously, and I have had it memorized since 7th grade. The Metahuman clothing is from the Medieval Armor asset pack from Polyphoria. I like the aesthetic, and wil...

ความคิดเห็น

  • @unreal_metronomus678
    @unreal_metronomus678 2 ชั่วโมงที่ผ่านมา

    Thank you very much for this! Can anybody please tell me if you can also use a LOD system using this method? I guess it will be difficult, because the vertices are baked and removing them will cause funky issues - right?

  • @GreyWolf-m2u
    @GreyWolf-m2u 3 ชั่วโมงที่ผ่านมา

    very very very cool!

  • @Hmarco_1
    @Hmarco_1 3 ชั่วโมงที่ผ่านมา

    Is there a way to make them swap with another mesh?

  • @maxdyomin
    @maxdyomin 12 ชั่วโมงที่ผ่านมา

    You forgot to make her hair wet

  • @thomaswindfeld728
    @thomaswindfeld728 17 ชั่วโมงที่ผ่านมา

    So cool

  • @JoyFou_
    @JoyFou_ 19 ชั่วโมงที่ผ่านมา

    Thank you so much for the tutorial! That's exactly what I needed :) For the Time offset driven by Niagara, you have to modify the "ML_BoneAnimation" and make an add with a Dynamic Parameter on the TimeOffset already in there. Then you drive it at spawn time in the Emitter (and you have to multiply it by an Integer, because it's an offset on frames). That should do it 👍

  • @MrBlacksheep73
    @MrBlacksheep73 19 ชั่วโมงที่ผ่านมา

    Great tutorial thank you!

  • @MannDevani
    @MannDevani 21 ชั่วโมงที่ผ่านมา

    Thanks for using the plugin, it's nice to look at people who are having fun with the updated version of plugin.

  • @VELVET462
    @VELVET462 21 ชั่วโมงที่ผ่านมา

    i cant even use Niagara with a i9 14900k and RTX 3090 lol.. UE5 will instant Crash when i drop the Effect into the map, dont know whats wrong, dont realy have any other problems with UE5

    • @TheDarkestAgeUnreal
      @TheDarkestAgeUnreal 20 ชั่วโมงที่ผ่านมา

      Hmm that is very peculiar. It's crashing with just a normal fountain emitter? I would try updating drivers, reinstalling engine perhaps. Try on a different version of UE too

  • @lordnaps
    @lordnaps 22 ชั่วโมงที่ผ่านมา

    so dope. i had just watched the secret level presentation from Unreal Fest 2024 on the Unreal TH-cam channel and i was mindblown when they said they used Niagara to populate the stadium crowd, and i was wondering how they did it. this must be the way! thanks for the tutorial

  • @toonanimationstudio
    @toonanimationstudio วันที่ผ่านมา

    I'd recommend more tutorials like this in ue5 cause there are very few. Idk why

  • @nerdherbs
    @nerdherbs วันที่ผ่านมา

    but we will not be able to shoot them with line trace (guns) right ?

    • @TheDarkestAgeUnreal
      @TheDarkestAgeUnreal วันที่ผ่านมา

      I am notbsure about line trace specifically, because of how the collisions work. I know you could interact with them and destroy them and have them spawn ragdolls or gibs

  • @goldennboy1989
    @goldennboy1989 วันที่ผ่านมา

    Can we actually interact with the zombies or are they just a cool effect? Like can they attack the player? Can we kill individual zombies and will they ragdoll?

    • @TheDarkestAgeUnreal
      @TheDarkestAgeUnreal วันที่ผ่านมา

      CodeLikeMe's part 2 of his rat swarm tutorial shows how to make them follow the player. And yes, you could make the particles get destroyed by shooting them or something, and when they are destroyed, spawn a ragdoll or a bunch of zpmbie bits, but that was too much for this tutorial. Maybe part 2

  • @JeevaJeeva-zd1jh
    @JeevaJeeva-zd1jh วันที่ผ่านมา

    My pc crying In the corner 😂

  • @thecreatorx3d439
    @thecreatorx3d439 วันที่ผ่านมา

    Bro i was trying to figure how this would work in unreal engine. Zombie horde. Love it. Awesome tutorial.

  • @KageBlink
    @KageBlink วันที่ผ่านมา

    Bro I can’t believe no game has ever done this. Project zombie is the closest one. It does a great job, the game is extremely detailed in mechanics and you can mod it. Only issue is I barely know anyone interested cause it’s top down 😂. One of my all time fav zombie games regardless! Hope somebody takes this in VR or something! ❤❤❤

    • @desgner_droz8716
      @desgner_droz8716 วันที่ผ่านมา

      project zomboid's engine is well optimized like roller coaster tycoon 3, it's crazy how those zombies have mechanics too like lootability and rotting corpses that's on the screen at once. I always wanted to create something like that in 3rd person but it does require a shit ton of tinkering and knowledge with how your engine interacts with the hardware.

    • @ChiliChicken
      @ChiliChicken วันที่ผ่านมา

      the world war Z game has some massive hordes and it creates a really cool atmosphere

  • @100EmotionalDamage
    @100EmotionalDamage วันที่ผ่านมา

    Imagine a Prototype remaster in UE5! 😏

  • @Vlogdelguia
    @Vlogdelguia วันที่ผ่านมา

    I have been waiting for this tutorial we need a plugin that helps a lot

  • @mjesensky2760
    @mjesensky2760 วันที่ผ่านมา

    Love it, love it, love it! You make it so clear and probably easy to follow. I will definitely try this out, thank you so much!! 👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍

  • @T0mT4yl0r
    @T0mT4yl0r วันที่ผ่านมา

    Now I have to do that without that limitations and without Niagara but every one is a single individual actor with full AI controls by state tree.

  • @tejasparastekar7271
    @tejasparastekar7271 วันที่ผ่านมา

    Which Gpu do you have?

  • @donndior1536
    @donndior1536 วันที่ผ่านมา

    That was a crazy intro! The camera animation and compositing-ouh! It really sell it. *Chef's kiss!*

  • @juanfernandojimenezbuitrag2434
    @juanfernandojimenezbuitrag2434 วันที่ผ่านมา

    The English accents lol, this was like how USA imagine countries , like Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt going to the imaginary Colombia that a stupid gringo imagined instead of researching

  • @jdsd_arch
    @jdsd_arch วันที่ผ่านมา

    I read that thumbnail as "Husbands of Zombies" for a second which in all honesty would be a hit show for Bravo to develop.

  • @jellybeanz3405
    @jellybeanz3405 วันที่ผ่านมา

    strange everything works up until baking i cant get past that part

  • @marcmclean3049
    @marcmclean3049 วันที่ผ่านมา

    I've been hunting for a tutorial like this for ages. Thanks for this 👍

  • @minhhieudang7552
    @minhhieudang7552 วันที่ผ่านมา

    can u make a tutorial to make that city

    • @TheDarkestAgeUnreal
      @TheDarkestAgeUnreal วันที่ผ่านมา

      It's the City Demo project from Epic Games, it's free

  • @Megasteakman
    @Megasteakman วันที่ผ่านมา

    Wow, this is crazy! Thanks for the in-depth look at this: I've been curious about vertex animation from a texture for a while.

    • @TheDarkestAgeUnreal
      @TheDarkestAgeUnreal วันที่ผ่านมา

      Thanks! Yeah the free tool from Trash Praxis makes it really easy to make them in UE without other software

  • @intruderstudio4703
    @intruderstudio4703 วันที่ผ่านมา

    I just found this tutorial th-cam.com/video/_uL6myuQUY0/w-d-xo.htmlsi=dSdZPc64fDgL0LEc that archive the animation offset of a Texture Vertex Map in Niagara, sadly I don't know how to apply this same principle to your approach.

  • @michaelmano7261
    @michaelmano7261 2 วันที่ผ่านมา

    you could have this and just spawn real actors around the player, have the real actors kill the player.

  • @Native_Creation
    @Native_Creation 2 วันที่ผ่านมา

    Very impressive, a good combination of different features

  • @kennetherhabor5543
    @kennetherhabor5543 2 วันที่ผ่านมา

    Already hit the like button even before watching.

  • @julesramette
    @julesramette 2 วันที่ผ่านมา

    This is crazy, thanks for sharing this tuto!

  • @dehghanian1
    @dehghanian1 2 วันที่ผ่านมา

    Excellent, dear friend, you teach a new and cost-effective style of making animation with your training, and I am grateful to you. Can this multiplication solution be used for the population of the ancient corps in front of each other and when the two corps meet and fight? 😍🤩🤩

  • @voneface
    @voneface 2 วันที่ผ่านมา

    You're super cool. Thank you. like-subscribe- van love

  • @kunalbiswas3936
    @kunalbiswas3936 2 วันที่ผ่านมา

    Excellent video very unique pls bringing videos like this🙌🏻🥹

  • @lairdsummers5315
    @lairdsummers5315 2 วันที่ผ่านมา

    shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit! LOOKS AMAZING! ITS CRAZY!

  • @Lv7-L30N
    @Lv7-L30N 2 วันที่ผ่านมา

    Awesome, very nice, beautiful

  • @mayssayasmina2072
    @mayssayasmina2072 2 วันที่ผ่านมา

    great JOB thank you for sharing it, can you make a video tutorial please, how to make a CFD wind tunnel with niagra (for pedestrian confort) like this one please? th-cam.com/video/ObriFE3i6go/w-d-xo.html and here th-cam.com/video/Md_XTOzp7tk/w-d-xo.html&ab_channel=MariuszHermansdorfer

    • @TheDarkestAgeUnreal
      @TheDarkestAgeUnreal 2 วันที่ผ่านมา

      That's super cool, not sure if i have any plans for something like that 8n the enae future

  • @Sindrsus
    @Sindrsus 2 วันที่ผ่านมา

    Interesting!

  • @intruderstudio4703
    @intruderstudio4703 2 วันที่ผ่านมา

    I was just waiting until the end for the offset animation trick. Hope you could find the solution for Part II, I try same approach several month ago and have no luck getting the right answer.

  • @Catology5
    @Catology5 2 วันที่ผ่านมา

    U are the best man can I use it in game creation

  • @pjkorab
    @pjkorab 2 วันที่ผ่านมา

    Awesome work as always! One complaint about the camerawork though: not sure about the unmotivated shaky cam - the handheld style makes sense if the camera is positioned and moving in a way that a person would (the shake always draws attention and makes us aware of the camera on some level). Here the position and general movement is of a crane or a drone shot (several meters above ground, long distances covered relatively fast), so when it simultaneously shakes like someone's running with it, it becomes artificial and uncanny. The zombies look amazing though, I'm definitely bookmarking this for future reference! Keep up the great work :)

    • @TheDarkestAgeUnreal
      @TheDarkestAgeUnreal 2 วันที่ผ่านมา

      You are totally right, I did the shaky cam really to just make it feel more intense

  • @bobby.boltfitnesssupply
    @bobby.boltfitnesssupply 2 วันที่ผ่านมา

    INSANELUV IT!!!!!!!! TYTYTYTYTYTY

  • @BotakReis
    @BotakReis 2 วันที่ผ่านมา

    how do you do this part 9:20 how can you adjust the animation using control righ

    • @TheDarkestAgeUnreal
      @TheDarkestAgeUnreal 2 วันที่ผ่านมา

      Right click on the skeletal mesh track in the Sequencer and select bake to Control Rig, select metahuman control rig. Then add an additive layer to the control rig track

    • @BotakReis
      @BotakReis 2 วันที่ผ่านมา

      @@TheDarkestAgeUnreal thanks

  • @MindlessProds
    @MindlessProds 2 วันที่ผ่านมา

    Going to try this tonight! I have so many video ideas with hordes now. Thank you so much for your tutorials

  • @Sodomantis
    @Sodomantis 2 วันที่ผ่านมา

    So thats how you get VAT in to niagra. Ty so much. Been using flock and flocks for flying shit. But this. Using vat animated meshes in nigari. The possibilities.

  • @intruderstudio4703
    @intruderstudio4703 2 วันที่ผ่านมา

    I just say the first 1 and half and I will grab a cup of coffee and learn that shit all together today for sure ! Thanks!

  • @capitanfalconfm2741
    @capitanfalconfm2741 2 วันที่ผ่านมา

    How can I make the zombies turn and follow my character?

    • @TheDarkestAgeUnreal
      @TheDarkestAgeUnreal 2 วันที่ผ่านมา

      Check out @codelikeme tutorial on rat swarm, he has a second part that shows how to follow the character

  • @mulagraphics
    @mulagraphics 3 วันที่ผ่านมา

    I know what im doing today🤣🙌🔥🔥