Unleash Your Creativity Side Challenge

12/24/2025 12:11:13 AM · #26

The current list of challenge themes to Unleash Your Creativity

Architecture (expires January 7, 2026)
Balance
Postcard
Daily Rituals
Inanimate Macro
Pet Peeves
Reflected Self
Motion

12/26/2025 07:33:08 AM · #27

Originally posted by MargaretNet:

Theme: Postcard
Medium: video of a 3D scene with sound and subtitles
Duration: 63 seconds

Postcard

I forgot to add notes to this one. It was an exercise in building the set, lighting it, adding cameras and finally coming up the story (the reverse of the standard approach ; )

The original idea was a postcard lying on the table between 2 people, I had no idea then what the card was nor what the characters would say. I built the set starting with an old room that I got some time ago in Unreal Engine Fab.com, the marketplace where you can get resources for your projects, a lot of them are free. Then I found 2 photo-scanned people, also free, that I thought would match the environment. I also downloaded a free 3D postcard from sketchfab.com.

I worked on the set moving some items and removing some other. I put the scanned sitting man on the chair and the standing woman on the other side of the table. I had problems with lighting behind the woman and had to remove some of the original lights and add lights to put focus on the postcard and the characters. I kept the overall scene rather dark.

For me the music is very important so I consulted ChatGPT about sources of royalty free music. It suggested pixabay.com and I found the piece I liked. This music set the tone for the short dialog about the postcard.

The scene was filmed in Unreal Engine Sequencer with multiple cameras and then edited in DaVinci Resolve video editing software to add sound and subtitles.

12/29/2025 12:09:18 AM · #28

The current list of challenge themes to Unleash Your Creativity

Architecture (expires January 7, 2026)
Balance
Postcard
Daily Rituals
Inanimate Macro
Pet Peeves
Reflected Self
Motion
Photoshop Terms
Craftmanship

01/02/2026 11:04:09 AM · #29

Originally posted by MargaretNet:

Theme: Postcard
Medium: video of a 3D scene with sound and subtitles
Duration: 63 seconds

Postcard

Hey there, just catching up on things after the holidays and did a rewatch of this (I had watched it when you originally posted) and really enjoyed it. Interesting to read about your process and I agree that the music definitely makes it. I didnt know unsplash had music! Very cool. I love how the whole story came together. Great work. :)

01/02/2026 11:11:06 AM · #30

Here's my submission for "Balance."

Honestly the ideas weren't flowing for this theme, and I had started to work on other things. I actually randomly started to put this piece together and it ended up being entirely different than what I started with, which is a part of the process that I really love. That "aha!" moment when something becomes what it was meant to be. I didn't even realize this would fit with the theme until I was talking about it with my partner and saying how much I really enjoyed certain elements of the image, how pleasing it was that things flowed a certain way, and he then mentioned that it had a nice balance. I wonder if the word was floating around in my mind and in that way became part of the result of this...

Anyway, here is my weird art! Hope you like. :)

01/02/2026 11:15:00 AM · #31

Originally posted by kichu:

Originally posted by MargaretNet:
Theme: Postcard
Medium: video of a 3D scene with sound and subtitles
Duration: 63 seconds

Postcard

Hey there, just catching up on things after the holidays and did a rewatch of this (I had watched it when you originally posted) and really enjoyed it. Interesting to read about your process and I agree that the music definitely makes it. I didnt know unsplash had music! Very cool. I love how the whole story came together. Great work. :)

Thanks, Nancy! I am stuck at the moment on a very steep technical learning curve with animated metahumans but I hope to get something together soon :)

01/02/2026 11:18:10 AM · #32

Originally posted by kichu:

It is very good! I like the colors, the composition, the unexpected horizontal head, the overall impact of the image. How do you make them?

01/02/2026 11:39:04 AM · #33

Originally posted by MargaretNet:

Thanks, Nancy! I am stuck at the moment on a very steep technical learning curve with animated metahumans but I hope to get something together soon :)

I cant wait to see how your skills evolve!

Message edited by author 2026-01-02 11:39:15.

01/02/2026 11:43:31 AM · #34

Originally posted by MargaretNet:

It is very good! I like the colors, the composition, the unexpected horizontal head, the overall impact of the image. How do you make them?

Thanks :) I just use a silly little app called piccollage and snapseed for a bit of editing. I source images from unsplash and pexels, as well as photos I take from magazines and tons of books I've gathered from book sales at the university I work at.
I definitely would like to branch out and learn photoshop and other ways of arranging the pieces that are more sophisticated. While I think I really have used piccollage to it's fullest capacity, I feel like I'm not expressing exactly what I want with the limited tools I have. I feel like you, on a steep learning curve in the digital art world. I haven't even scratched the surface.

01/02/2026 11:45:38 AM · #35

also *Crickets* on this thread...I thought folks would jump at the chance to share art that they do other than photography! genuinely surprised nobody else is posting

01/02/2026 12:30:45 PM · #36

Originally posted by kichu:

also *Crickets* on this thread...I thought folks would jump at the chance to share art that they do other than photography! genuinely surprised nobody else is posting

To be honest I am very happy that it unleashed your creativity but the main reason why I started this thread is to keep my brain cells working, it is quite a challenge at the moment. If others join in I will be very happy but I will continue even if they don't :)

01/02/2026 03:09:42 PM · #37

Originally posted by MargaretNet said on 2026-01-02::

Originally posted by kichu:
also Crickets on this thread...I thought folks would jump at the chance to share art that they do other than photography! genuinely surprised nobody else is posting

To be honest I am very happy that it unleashed your creativity but the main reason why I started this thread is to keep my brain cells working, it is quite a challenge at the moment. If others join in I will be very happy but I will continue even if they don't :)

agreed, happy to continue, us two is perfectly enough :) I hope those brain cells are stirring...

01/03/2026 02:54:25 AM · #38

Originally posted by kichu:

Originally posted by MargaretNet:

It is very good! I like the colors, the composition, the unexpected horizontal head, the overall impact of the image. How do you make them?

Thanks :) I just use a silly little app called piccollage and snapseed for a bit of editing. I source images from unsplash and pexels, as well as photos I take from magazines and tons of books I've gathered from book sales at the university I work at.
I definitely would like to branch out and learn photoshop and other ways of arranging the pieces that are more sophisticated. While I think I really have used piccollage to it's fullest capacity, I feel like I'm not expressing exactly what I want with the limited tools I have. I feel like you, on a steep learning curve in the digital art world. I haven't even scratched the surface.

All these apps and sites are new to me, I learned something! :)

I think Photoshop is easier now to learn with all the new AI tools but it is expensive. I took a 7 day trial recently just to make a couple of composites but I would use it too rarely to justify the cost. It was much more affordable when it was combined with Lightroom, I guess Adobe got very greedy :(

01/03/2026 05:08:47 AM · #39

...

Message edited by author 2026-01-03 06:16:59.

01/03/2026 06:15:48 AM · #40

Theme: Motion
Medium: video of a 3D scene with music
Duration: 28 seconds

Dance

Notes: With this theme I started by thinking about moving cars and soon realized that I am thinking like a photographer, and not a videographer! As a videographer, dance came to me immediately because it is a form of a beautiful motion :)

In 3D I wanted the dancer to dance on the street. I already had a 3D model of environment called Nordic Harbour so I thought it will make a great set for the dance. I removed all lights and used my favorite natural light plugin called Ultra Dynamic Sky. I set the time to just before sunset to get the color and the backlight on the dancer.

Next was the more difficult part, the Metahuman dancer. The latest version of Unreal Engine came with a new version of Metahuman so I had to learn how it works. It turned out that the new Metahumans come without clothes so I had to find some clothes for my dancer. I found only one free sample of modern clothing, she is wearing it.

Now the really difficult step, dance animation. I got the sequence I liked from ActorCore MoCap (Motion Capture). It is a sequence recorded by a real dancer and then retargeted to the Metahuman. As soon as I played animation her clothes started to get deformed and fall off ! I spent a lot time looking for a solution, long chats with ChatCGT, mostly useless, I finally thought maybe I'd better render to files and see what happens. And no worries, the animation was fine. Apparently my 6 years old PC with 2080 Ti card cannot cope with real time rendering. It looks that I'll have an expensive upgrade soon.

The final step was to assemble the video in DaVinci Resolve and find suitable free music.

PS No idea why the dancer is gliding, I will have to work this out in one of my next projects

Message edited by author 2026-01-03 06:40:15.

01/04/2026 11:03:49 AM · #41

Theme: Craftsmanship
Medium: AI ChatGPT Still Image

Notes: I don't have much time nor energy to start another ambitious animated Metahumans 3D video project so I decided to do it easy way, just asked ChatGPT to create an image of an old carpenter making a chair in his workshop. I think it is not bad but there are some strange things happening ;) How many errors can you see?

01/05/2026 03:21:00 PM · #42

Originally posted by MargaretNet:

Theme: Motion
Medium: video of a 3D scene with music
Duration: 28 seconds

Dance

This was so lovely :) thanks for sharing! Just before sunset was the right call I think. Frustrating that in the end it was your equipment that needed an upgrade! I would have been pulling my hair out. ugh.

Curious - how long does a 28 second clip like this take you to make?

01/05/2026 03:21:19 PM · #43

Originally posted by MargaretNet:

Theme: Craftsmanship
Medium: AI ChatGPT Still Image

Notes: I don't have much time nor energy to start another ambitious animated Metahumans 3D video project so I decided to do it easy way, just asked ChatGPT to create an image of an old carpenter making a chair in his workshop. I think it is not bad but there are some strange things happening ;) How many errors can you see?

that one hand, omg hahaha

01/06/2026 10:39:40 AM · #44

Originally posted by kichu:

... Curious - how long does a 28 second clip like this take you to make?

If I did not need to learn about the new version of Metahumans and had no problems probably a day. With learning and problems it took about a week. This is what the problem looked like in real time rendering:

01/06/2026 12:34:54 PM · #45

Originally posted by MargaretNet:

Originally posted by kichu:
... Curious - how long does a 28 second clip like this take you to make?

If I did not need to learn about the new version of Metahumans and had no problems probably a day. With learning and problems it took about a week. This is what the problem looked like in real time rendering:

Ah ok interesting. And that would be so frustrating! glad you figured it out though

01/06/2026 08:04:57 PM · #46

- for "Architecture"

- for "Motion"

I'm way too tired to write anything about these. Maybe tomorrow.

01/07/2026 08:12:56 PM · #47

Originally posted by kichu:

- for "Architecture"

- for "Motion"

I'm way too tired to write anything about these. Maybe tomorrow.

Write about Architecture as I am a bit lost about the connection. Motion is more obvious. I like it a lot but I would not include the gun, that's my personal preference for many reasons.

01/08/2026 01:42:26 AM · #48

The current list of challenge themes to Unleash Your Creativity

Postcard
Daily Rituals
Inanimate Macro
Pet Peeves
Reflected Self
Motion
Photoshop Terms
Craftmanship
Symmetry in Nature
Holiday Tradition
Weeds
Outside the Box Still Life
In the Style of Martin Parr
Faces of Emotion