Unreal Engine | paulodealmada

I was approached by Detroit rapper “The Dealerman” to create a music video for one of his tracks called “Drug Bosses”. This project interested me, but would be challenging. I mean, I love rap, but not all rap. What got my attention when listening to this track for the first time, was that the theme was about the relationship between the dealer and the cartel as opposed to the dealer and client.

In the beginning, I wasn’t sure how I was going to approach the content, but I did know I wanted to create this music video in Unreal.

A couple of conceptual ideas came to mind. The first, a more traditional scenario of following a character being seduced by the drug world and maybe even the drugs themselves. The second one, more street symbolic and visual. I ended up leaning towards the second because it was straightforward and more dynamic. Some of the visuals are a little bit heavy, but I think they go well with the weight of the rap lyrics.

A big thank you to The Dealerman for giving me the opportunity to collaborate and mix the art of music with the art of visual storytelling.

Here is a short scene from my upcoming personal animation project done in Unreal. I was also able to do the voices which I have a lot of fun with.

It was a blast collaborating with such a talented team of artists for the Master Valorant project from Riot Games along with the amazing creative directors from Massive Assembly, Eugene Art Seo and Jason Yeh. I contributed to the creation and development of the four 3d environmental sequences in the promo (after the 2d transition) from conception to delivery. The initial character rigging, character poses, animation, and environment were done in Maya as well as the cloth that surrounds the character, Omen. The explosion element for the character, Raze, and knife trail for the character, Jet, I created using Maya paint fx and ZBrush. All were textured in Substance Painter and transferred to Unreal Engine 4.26 where I lighted and rendered the four full shots for the sequence adding smoke and amber particles . The Omen's sequence is definitely my favorite. Congratulations to all who contributed to this dynamic and visually stimulating promo.

Short movie made it with Unreal / Unfinished

Having been a huge fan of Unreal for some time now, I finally decided to test it for myself. Here is a shot I created from an animated feature film idea I had a couple years ago called 5051: SAVING MOBY and THE PHANTOM OF LIFE. This is still a work in progress, but my plan is to create a trailer/teaser to get investors interested. Working on simple shots like this with Maya and one computer would have taken me several days if not weeks to render. Plus, I would have spent months modeling rocks. Using Unreal 4, Unreal Megascans,and still just one computer, it took me under 20 minutes to render 1,300 frames at 3k, final image, plus 4 passes. That is just crazy insane. Plus the fact that there is an amazing collection of models, environments, and mocap animations available on the Unreal Market. This is an incredible time for visual storytellers. Unreal is giving independent creators like me the ability to create visual sequences that are dynamic and stimulating at a production speed that blows your mind. I will continue to hone my skills with Unreal. I look forward to more projects using Unreal. Thank you Unreal. You rock!!!

Short movie made it with Unreal / Unfinished

Character design development, personal project rendered in UNREAL 4.26