The Matrix Awakens (2021) – Unreal Engine
Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WU0gvPcc3jQ&t=506s
Type: Video game
Overview: The Matrix Awakens is a video game created by the Unreal Engine team to showcase the new functions of UE5. Since it’s just a technical demo, it only contains a short storyline at the beginning, and then the player can walk inside the city and experience the world.
Aesthetic inspiration: My project is inspired by the open-world city known for how huge, complex and realistic it is. It takes 16 kilometers square with each building incredibly detailed and photoreal. The player can even see through the windows of the buildings. I also want to create a realistic city like it since not many video games have the amount of details in an open-world map, and it must be cool to do so.
Technical inspiration: According to an article I found in Epic Game’s official website, “Despite the city’s complexity, a relatively small core team was able to create the experience thanks to a set of procedural tools including SideFX’s Houdini. Procedural rules define how the world is generated: from the size of the roads and the height of the buildings, all the way down to the amount of debris on the sidewalks.” It inspires me to use procedural tools of Houdini to create a huge city which seems to be impossible to do purely by hand.
"The Land of the Dead" in Coco (2017) – Pixar
Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yOvfedkA_JM
Type: Animation
Overview: The Land of the Dead is a realm in Coco, and also the main setting in the movie. It is an afterlife location, an underworld known in Mexican folklore as the final destination for spirits of the deceased.
Aesthetic inspiration: Although the place is obviously fictional, it is greatly based on an existing city in Mexico, which inspired me to get references from the real world to make the fictional world more immersive and convincing. Also, the city is surrounded by water and filled with buildings. I really like the crowded and cluttered feeling and want to apply this vibe to my project.
Technical inspiration: Creating the Land of the Dead was a massive amount of work. One example was the lighting. A multitude of nooks, crevices, and cracks needed to be filled with lights of varying gradients. Pixar programmers developed a code whereby the different lights could be grouped into fifteen types, making it more manageable for the computer to process than seven million individual lights. Although I’m not able to apply their technology to my project, I’m inspired by their attitude towards technology and art – they have a sophisticated technical art team that makes the tools easier to use for artists and thus helps them to create better art.
Cities: Skylines II (2023) – Console Game
Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vlKoMi4Qr0
Type: Video game
Overview: Cities: Skylines II is a single-player open-ended city-building simulation. Players engage in urban planning by controlling zoning, road placement, taxation, public services, and public transportation of an area.
Aesthetic inspiration: I like how the player is the designer of the cities and they are responsible for building effective road and traffic systems in the game, since it is an important problem that is usually solved by the game or movie developers.
Technical inspiration: The game is created by Unity, I’m not sure what technology they used, but the idea of creating the city by dragging and clicking some buttons on the menu is fascinating. I suppose they use similar procedural tools but move it to the player’s side instead of keeping it backend for the developers.