Moonray — Real-time Pipeline for Stylized Animation

Sep. 12, 2024

A short film project created in collaboration with Jamil Lahham and Federico Bresser, Moonray is a series of three surreal episodes serving as a trailer for the eponymous game. Entirely hand-animated in Quill and rendered in real-time in Unreal Engine, these shorts were delivered in January 2025.

Episode 1: Falling Gods

Episode 2: Rouge Dances

Episode 3: Divinity Lost

As a Pipeline Technical Director, I was responsible for maintaining and adapting our existing real-time pipeline as well as developing specific tools to facilitate the production of Moonray. My role enabled artists to collaborate efficiently across Shotgrid, Quill, Unreal, Maya, Nuke, Deadline.

✦ Key Contributions:

  • 📽️ Automatic generation of Unreal sequences based on the shots defined by the edit, with sub-sequences to isolate tasks for different departments.
  • ⚙️ Integration of the Deadline render farm with Unreal for remote rendering and production tracking by shot, sequence, and episode.
  • 📦 Automated import and splitting of complex Alembic files into multiple tracks to allow parallel and smooth workflows.
  • 🔄 Import/export tools for animations between Quill and Unreal, as well as environments between Unreal, Maya, and Quill in USD format.
  • 🎧 Automation of sound track imports, renders to Nuke, and FX/animations created in Maya to Unreal.
  • 🎯 Development of a Shot Manager in Unreal to facilitate artists' navigation between shots.
  • 🛠️ Tools for scene compliance between Maya/Unreal to prevent errors during exports.