In an unknown future, a sinister entity takes control of a subject spawned from unethical laboratory experiments, and subjects the being to a series of deadly challenges as reality blurs with illusion…
This is the chilling vision brough to life in New Specimen, the 2024 real-time 3D animated short created by French director and technologist Dmitri Vallein. The 4’30” sci-fi/horror piece was entirely self-produced utilizing Unreal Engine 5 has won festival honors and been the subject of special presentations at Animation First (New York) — with Flow producer Ron Dyens, Boris Labbé, and Leslie Lynch — and VIEW Conference (Italy).
New Specimen is a follow-up to Vallein’s 2022 short The Last Star, and the second sci-fi short he has created since he began exploring filmmaking in Unreal Engine. Prior, Vallein was focused on developing AR experiences and video games. His latest short was inspired by a single frame render by a friend, Qtn.cis, featuring a lone figure in a misty field at night. Qtn.cis worked with the director on his Vortex music video project, and created the environment and lighting for this short. Vallein tapped childhood friend Vincent Guyon to help create the short’s story.
The “Specimen” itself was created by taking a head scan from 3DScanStore, which Vallein then “MetaHumanized” to take advantage of MetaHuman’s animation features, such as its facial rig. Vallein notes in his production breakdown that one of the biggest challenges was creating believable facial expressions on the 3D character. “I didn’t have an experience actor around me, so I did it myself,” the director writes. Vallein used the Live Link Face app on his iPhone to capture each sequence, processed the data in UE and added facial keyframes occasionally to push and correct the results.
Vallein also did not have the budget to rent a motion-capture stage, hire performers and pay a tech team for clean-up, so the body animation was again performed solo. “I explored markerless video-to-motion options and chose the tool Move.AI for its accuracy. I set up four iPhones on tripods around a small capture area, ran the standard calibration, and recorded all the performances myself in my living room. The best part of this process was the iteration speed: If a take didn’t work properly, I could re-record the animation immediately,” he explains. Cloth simulation was done on “the hard road” by simulating clothing for every shot; The Last Star collaborator Jon Sanchez designed the Specimen’s hospital gown and variants in Marvelous Designer.
Check out the exclusive, extended making-of video Vallein shared with Animation Magazine below. You can watch the full short on YouTube here.
