TRACER KID [SHORT ANIMATION 2025]

This is a project I collaborated on with the talented Thai artists Chalermphol ( Arthurnal Animator - https://vimeo.com/195644345 )! Big shoutout to Plug (Saran Kijjarouk) for inviting me to jump in. We worked on this project in Unreal Engine 5.3–5.4, and from the start, I set out to experiment with two main things:

1. USD in Unreal
I wanted to test USD workflows, but I ran into an issue when playing animations between two rigging methods—blend skin vs. parent constraints. The frame rates didn't match, and the only way to fix it was by importing everything as USD cache. The issues? That made shader updates impossible, basically turning it into Alembic. In the end, I just went with ABC, which worked more smoothly. Even though USD caches are lighter, the models in this project were already low-poly, so it wasn't a big deal.

2. Tackling a Stylized Look (My Personal Challenging Area!)
Stylized art has always been a challenge for me, so this was a great chance to push myself. I developed an auto-paint tool in Substance Designer—a filter for Substance Painter—to help with texturing since there were so many assets. I also experimented with HLSL shaders, making a Kuwahara filter to transform both textures and post-process effects into a more painterly style. However, the shader was too heavy when used directly on Texture Samples, so I ended up just painting the textures manually.

For post-processing, I combined Toon Shading, Edge Detection, and Lens Filters to give it a unique touch. Overall, I think the stylized approach worked, though it's definitely my own take on it.

Challenges
Since this was an older project that wasn't originally prepped for Unreal Engine, I had to deal with a bunch of issues:
- Incompatible models (vertices & faces) drove me to completely rebuild the main character’s model.
- Scene rotation was off, meaning when assets were placed on a flat plane, animations ended up floating. Some shots had to be re-animated to fix this.
- Environment animation did not suitable in Unreal's Level system. The workaround? Link characters and the camera to an Actor, then animate in reverse—a bit of a hack, but it worked!
- Plenty of other last-minute problem-solving along the way.

What I Did
For this project, I was responsible for:
- Modeling the entire environment
- Remodeling the main character’s outfit
- Texturing, lookdev, lighting, tech anim, FX, compositing, and color grading
- Handling all Unreal Engine work

Final Thoughts
This project was a huge learning experience, and I picked up a ton of tricks for working in Unreal Engine.

Big thanks to Chalerm for letting us be part of this awesome ride!
And of course, thanks to Plug for inviting me and supporting the whole way through!

Credit:

CHALERMPHOL WATTANAWONGTRAKOOL : arthurnal@hotmail.com
https://www.linkedin.com/in/chalermphol-wattanawongtrakool-8a714535
PRESENT | LAYOUT | ANIMATION