To eliminate the unpredictable behavior of the cables during rendering, I adjusted the Anti-Aliasing settings, specifically the Engine Warm Up Count. This parameter determines how many frames Unreal Engine renders before recording the final output, allowing all simulations to stabilize. This applies not only to Cable Actors but also to effects such as heat distortion and wind. (For Niagara systems, warm-up can be enabled directly within the system itself — I set it to the maximum value of 9.96 seconds.) After some experimentation, I found that a warm-up count of 120 produced stable results.
I also spent some time experimenting with Spatial Sample Count and Temporal Sample Count. Spatial samples primarily improve the quality of static geometry, producing sharper and cleaner images, while temporal samples mainly affect moving elements such as the animated cloth, wind, and heat distortion. I was surprised to see how much difference increasing the Temporal Sample Count to just 3–4 made — the animation immediately became much smoother and more natural. The downside, however, was render time. On my relatively modest PC, a 40-second cinematic took nearly two hours to render.
Even after that, I felt the final renders could still be improved. Ever since I started creating my first prop renders, I’ve always enjoyed post-processing. This project was also my introduction to DaVinci Resolve. Previously, I had done all my post-processing in Photoshop, but Resolve turned out to be a much more powerful and comprehensive tool. One recommendation I’d give to anyone planning to work in DaVinci Resolve is to render your images in the EXR format. Although the files are considerably larger, they preserve a much wider dynamic range and significantly more exposure information, allowing Resolve to make full use of that data during color grading.
The first thing I noticed on the scopes was that the image contained far too much red. While the environment is set in a desert, the warm tones were still overpowering the overall look. I reduced the Temperature value into the negative range, then created separate masks to improve the lighting around the bar, adjusting parameters such as Highlights, Bloom, and others. I also added a stronger bloom effect to the light fixtures. Lowering the temperature caused the already blue sky to shift toward an indigo hue. To fix this, I used the HSL Qualifier to isolate the colors of the sky, then refined the selection with the Window tool so the correction wouldn’t affect other blue elements in the scene, such as the painted wooden boards or the decorative architectural patterns.
Finally, I applied a subtle sharpen effect to the overall image along with a slight blur in the areas surrounding the bar to enhance the sense of depth. I won’t go through the entire post-processing workflow here, since there are already countless excellent DaVinci Resolve tutorials available online, and the software itself is surprisingly approachable. I’ll only mention that for the cinematic shots I relied heavily on tracked masks, refining them according to the movement of the camera throughout each sequence.
The screenshot below shows what the overall post-processing workflow looked like:
