Music video

A personal project made to learn Unreal 5 and Ableton at the same time, finished in two weeks on purpose so perfectionism could not stall it.

Client: Personal project
Year: 2023
Role: Everything — music production, mixing and the visuals
Built with: Unreal Engine · Ableton · Autodesk Maya · Marvelous Designer · Substance Painter

What it is

Curiosity can lead me to try and learn something new, and with the set of skills and knowledge that I have, sometimes I mix them together. This is the form of how I learn something: by creation. That year I always ended up using Unity in all of my projects, and I always wanted to try Unreal, especially after they released version 5. Besides that, I had also taken an interest in music production using Ableton. So why not combine them and try to make something.

The problem

Because it is a personal project I can finish it whenever I want, and finish it when I think it is already good enough. As a perfectionist, that can lead to a project that never finishes. So I gave myself a restriction: finish it within two weeks or so, regardless of the quality. When you are trying to learn something the main objective is not to deliver something perfect, but to try it and understand how it works. And that alone is not enough, it can leave you wandering indefinitely.

What I did

For the music part, I just did what a music producer does: arranging which instruments I wanted to include, deciding how the music was going to feel, what the BPM was, what the song structure looked like, plus learning what a chord progression is, the circle of fifths, and mixing. To put it more simply, I just put whatever I felt at that time into music.

For the visual part, I used my own models that I already had and put everything into Unreal Engine. I learned how to prepare the models, level design, how to use post-processing, camera setup and rendering.

Outcome

As expected it is far from perfect, and I still need a lot. But I am grateful that I made this project. Because of it I know how to make a song from the ideation stage until it is available on a music streaming platform. If someone around me wants to make a song or a collaboration, I am down.

And for Unreal Engine, a year or so after I made this I took a step to make a product for a company. If I had never done this project, I would have had second thoughts about starting that one.