A quick introduction to Unreal Engine for those who have never worked in it before. 2.5 hours of “Intro to Unreal” content to unlock the course for beginners.

An introduction to what Virtual Production is, what the Virtual Art Department does, and how to start thinking like a VAD artist

Starting a new project and creating a virtual set using a combination of blockout geo from the mock Art Department and custom blockout geo of your own design. We learn about BLO vs publish assets, Lightmapping, and creating Blueprint Prefabs.

An exploration into the major aspects of creating a scene for usage in Virtual Production, including working with Chess Pieces and running Prelights with DP’s. We also learn how to create an LED Wall/Volume blueprint and how to create art directable tri-planar materials.

We learn to get comfortable with rapid iteration as part of the 3D concepting process. We’ll dive into terrains, Megascans, and create scene variants. In addition, we’ll dive further into material parameters and material functions.

We’ll look into different processes around plussing up assets. We’ll also look at specifics around working with sculpted assets and creating custom lightmap channels.

A demonstration on using displacement based sculpting and custom masking to further plus up assets in a set.

From set dec to decals, we continue polishing the set. We’ll get more comfortable working across variants and lighting scenarios. We’ll also learn how to get the most out of our work when we’re in “The Grind.”

We’ll add the final polish to the set using foliage and motion to help it feel alive. Then we’ll dive into the post process before we get our final camera captures.

Some extra tutorials that are helpful for a VAD artist but didn’t fit into a specific module. These tutorials touch on vertex painting, creating custom decal materials, and using sequencer.