Production company Hazimation has utilized DaVinci Resolve Studio in the creation of "Rift," an animated feature film that employs virtual production techniques. The project, which began during the pandemic, was developed by a distributed team using Unreal Engine and DaVinci Resolve Studio to manage various aspects of production.
Flexible Workflow
The process has been incredibly flexible, according to Director and Producer Hasraf (HaZ) Dulull. HaZ explains that his team is entirely based in the cloud, working with an unconventional approach. Unlike traditional storyboards, DaVinci Resolve Studio served as a planning and timeline tool.
Seamless Integration
The film was created and rendered out of Unreal Engine as 4K EXR final pixel renders. The edit updated automatically each time a shot was revised, eliminating the need for compositing in an external package to produce final shots. HaZ states, "We’d create a first pass of the characters so that I could begin work creating shots, and then the team would do another pass later in production once they could see what I was doing with the characters in the shots."
Audio Post-Production
The audio integration process was also streamlined. HaZ used DaVinci Resolve Studio’s Fairlight Sound Library along with his personal sound collection to rapidly sketch out a soundscape, bringing the edit to life quickly. These were then exported and delivered to the sound node team, eliminating the need for sound spotting sessions or extensive excel spreadsheets.
Challenges and Solutions
Finding a distinctive style was one of the challenges faced by the production team. The film had to avoid looking like a video game or falling into the "uncanny valley" of animated films. Mock-ups in Resolve allowed the team to experiment with OpenFX plugins before creating shaders in Unreal Engine.
Game Development
A MegaGrant from Epic Games enabled HaZ and his team to develop custom anime style shaders as well as various tools and widgets, giving HaZ control over every element of each shot. During a collaborative session, the team realized they were effectively building the basics of a video game, leading to simultaneous development. An early access demo is available via Steam in June.
"The node-based approach used in the Fusion page is very similar to the system we're using for the game," concludes HaZ. "This has helped accelerate the process in unexpected ways."