[UE5] RAVENOUS | Monster & Cinematic Lighting

I'm very pleased to present "RAVENOUS" a UE5 student psychological horror game made in 6 months at ESMA GAME, for our second year of game art and design specialisation. This game is the result of a collaboration between 8 students, members of the Ravenous Team. Personnaly I was responsible for Game Design, Level Design, Narrative Design and Lighting. And this post is the second part of my work on the game's lighting with the monster appearances and the cinematics.
---------------------------
In this post, I created the cinematics, lighting, vegetation and some animations. I was able to learn a lot of things, such as the basics of speedtree, the basics of PCG, and in-depth learning of the sequencer and how to use it in game. You can find more details under the images and videos of the post but I used Lumen only for the opening cinematic to get a good rendering in a short time (especially since the cinematic is played in video).
I would like to thank William Faucher for his EasyFog plugin which helped me a lot to improve the look of the forest.
https://www.artstation.com/will_faucher

The Opening Cinematic of Ravenous. For this, I exported the sequences in ACES and did some color grading on Da vinci resolve. Then I edited on Adobe Premiere Pro.

To create this environment I created trees and vegetation with speedtree and used PCG to create a forest quickly. William Faucher's EasyFog plugin helped me a lot with depth.

The monster's first appearance from the player's point of view. (The lights used in the cinematics disappear when the sequencer has finished.)

For this appearance, I wanted to play with the silhouette, as I didn't want the monster to be too visible when it first appeared in the game. That's why I didn't use a fill light, but to enhance its visibility I did use a rim light.

The monster's second appearance from the player's point of view.

I exaggerated the orange candle lighting to ensure visibility of the monster's shape, and I wanted to take advantage of the cold blue light on the left to create a complementary rim light.

The monster's third appearance from the player's point of view.

As the main light is behind the monster, I reinforced its silhouette with a light rim to make it stand out more easily from the background.

The monster's fourth appearance from the player's point of view.

I wanted to make sure that the monster's mouth was particularly visible in this close-up, with a strong light on the side, creating a specular effect on its flesh and mask. But to ensure good visibility, I used 3-point lighting with a blue fill light.

In-game end of Ravenous cinematic. Made with the Sequencer.

I wanted the piece to be very dark and mysterious because this is the final revelation. And I wanted the monster's appearance to be visually striking, thanks to the staging and its red light.