Realistic CG Animated Short Film ”Till This Day” by Nako Baev

Realistic CG Animated Short Film ”Till This Day” is about a man with a haunted past visits a town where an accident took place that claimed his brother, he returns to face his past, but not all is what it seems.

Director’s Vision for ‘Til This Day’

I wanted to try something new with the outstanding technologies Unreal Engine has given us. That’s where the exciting part comes – I achieved such results using the UE 4.27 version not only for production purposes only but for faster workflow. I used NVIDIA’s newest real-time raytracing plugin – RTX GLOBAL ILLUMMINATION (RTXGI) to provide the most accurate lighting as possible. Motion Capture was very limited so I had to be careful with the character’s behavior given the circumstances but MOCAP Online did an amazing job for more low-budget projects. Facial animations & expressions were done using the METAHUMAN Creator by Epic Games captured from an iPhone. Overall I truly believe real-time rendering will play huge part in filmmaking in the close future & that’s why I’m here for to be a part of it’s journey.

The story is about a man who used to work in the coal mines, Centralia, PA. When an accident happened a fire broke out. He worked there along with his brother who strangely disappeared in the mines when the fire started. Many years after he decides to come back to this ghost town because he keeps on having flashback and weird dreams about the incident. He comes back to find his brother (he looks exactly like him). The incident is a true story and this coal mine is still burning since 1962. As he comes back he experiences visions & hallucinations of his brother. Then he faints out and finds himself deep in the burning mines when he panics and starts running. Afterwards he finds himself in the control room where they process the coal. He wanders around where he has his last vision of his lost brother and that’s when the short film ends. Right at the end we come to realize that man never had a brother. He’s gone completely insane because of the accumulated toxic fumes when he used to work there.

Credits:
Nako Baev

Environment Support:
KK Design
MacKenzie Shirk
Dave Berg

Motion Capture:
MoCap Online

Character Mask Modeling:
Vlad Matic

Character Modeling:
Roman Fedorenko

Sound Design & Voice Acting:
Oliver Magana

Metahuman & Face Animation:
Epic Games