Insomniacs

"Like moths to the light"

The Challenge

In 2022, Epic Games ran a challenge called Better Light Than Never — meant to highlight the features and use of Lumen in the engine. Any genre was okay, but the main theme was light!

The Goal

These challenges are the best way to learn new tools. I mean, the prize pool is great, but there’s no chance to win if you don’t give it 100% effort/skills/time — which I had none of :) But I wanted to use it as a driver to learn new skills. So the goal was to get better at:

UE in general
Cinematography/lighting
A bit of photogrammetry

The Story

I like to keep it open — start more with a visual I want to try out and then let it marinate until a simple story idea comes out.

The visuals were based on night city photography. I love hanging out around the city at night, looking at silhouettes of buildings, street lamps, alleyways, and cars. Then adding more saturated lights and going heavy on stylized lighting.

The theme of the challenge is light, and I wanted to somehow have illuminated characters. But I didn’t have the skills or time to create complex ones, so — what if the whole figure is an illuminated being? Cool. Simple way to use Lumen, right? Emissive material and let’s go.

I didn’t want a linear story — I just wanted a vibe — but I needed some progression. Otherwise, it’s a snooze fest.

I needed some direction for the beings to go. And I just took that idea very literally :) What if they flock to a bigger source of light, like moths to a flame? Or just... a bigger light? What is that bigger light? Oh, fuck it — why not a giant glowing being? :) Got it.

That means I have human light sources illuminating the environment. They’re definitely going to levitate — obviously :) And they’ll start outside the city and travel through it to an industrial site, where they “ascend” toward the giant being.

And the name “Insomniacs” came naturally out of it — beings “shining” into the night? Lost souls traveling through darkness? Flocking to light? That’s pretty much a definition of people with insomnia :)

So, the tagline would be somehing like this:

"Light doesn’t rest."

The Environment

The starting environment is actually a forest. I wanted to start in nature to contrast it with the ending, moving into the industrial cityscape.

And I needed a pond in that forest to get that cool shot of a levitating figure illuminating it as a single point of light.

As usual, the marketplace to the rescue — I found this awesome forest pack.

Then for the cottage, old house, gas station — it was a mix of free assets from Sketchfab and Megascans. Trees also from Megascans I think, and from the forest pack. Electricity poles and wires from Sketchfab.

The alleyway was a cool scan from Sketchfab, and the industrial site came from this great pack with the curved road and a construction site.

Please, check my submission post for the full list.

The Photogrammetry

I’m completely in love with one of the most hideous buildings in my neighborhood — an abandoned house of culture called EDEN (irony right there...) that’s slowly falling apart. I’m not sure what it is about that building, but I love this type of architecture. I’m in the process of digitizing it and building a whole database of these types of buildings — but that’s for another time ;)

For the challenge, I wanted to use and learn a bit of RealityCapture and digitize at least a small part of the building. I chose a filthy corner on the lower side that smells exactly how you think it smells...

I used RC in a very limited way, but I totally fell in love with it — and it started my journey into learning photogrammetry and digitalization in general.

The Animation

Very basic. All the character animation is from Mixamo. I just used the Sequencer tools to mix multiple animation tracks together and control playback speed.

The Cinematography

I always lean toward handheld. I know, David Fincher would not approve :) But fuck it — I need to hide a lot of stuff and missing detail.

Right from the beginning, I wanted to use POV camera. And also to have the camera be a light source — the implication being that the viewer is one of the illuminated beings as well. Yes, you are the insomniac too. You know who you are :)

I used real tracked handheld animation from these two packs — 1, 2. I love using these. It makes a huge difference if the camera shake is generated or tracked from footage, I think. I also wanted to use my own virtual camera using my iPhone / iPad at home, but I think I was happy with the camera shake animations.

And the aspect ratio and lens should be wide-angle anamorphic — which dictates the DOF and a bunch of other visual aspects, such as…

The Lens Flare

Always had a soft spot for anamorphic flares. I used this flare tool directly in UE and I was happy with it — ended up using it on a bunch of other projects since. The rules of the challenge dictated that there couldn’t be any post-production outside of UE, so I couldn’t use Video Copilot or any other tool for creating flares. Final pixels from UE — that’s it.

The Music

I’ll keep using them — I don’t care :) The track is from Kings & Creatures. Licensed through Position Music.

I used their music in Machine Junkies and Mission to Minerva as well. Volume up!

The Conclusion

First place in the challenge was very much deserved — and as I expected, the artist put in tons of effort and skill. For me, it was great fun. I learned exactly what I set out to in the beginning — and found a bunch of cool stuff along the way.

For example, did you know that lack of sleep is bad for you? :)

Thanks for checking out the project!