FFor this project, I challenged myself to create a full cinematic entirely inside Unreal Engine 5. Although I was already familiar with UE5 at the time, this was my first time using it to produce a complete short film from start to finish.
The story follows a young person celebrating their birthday alone. I wanted to create the illusion that there might be other people present at first, only to reveal at the end that the character is actually by themselves. That final realization was important to me, because I wanted the short to feel quiet and intimate, but still deliver an emotional gut punch.
Apart from the external assets, I handled the full production myself, including the concept, layout, camera work, lighting, rendering, audio and animation pipeline. I captured and cleaned the motion capture data, retargeted it onto a MetaHuman character, and refined the animation for the final cinematic. Luis Pedro Vargas de la Rosa did an amazing job as the motion capture actor and brought a lot of life into the performance.
For the composition and lighting, I used ShotDeck and various film scenes as references, which helped me approach the project more cinematically. Through this project, I gained valuable experience with cinematic workflows inside Unreal Engine, especially motion capture cleanup, MetaHuman retargeting, Sequencer, lighting and visual storytelling. It was an important step for me in understanding how real-time tools can be used not just for interactive projects, but also for complete cinematic productions.
