Unreal Engine might be essentially the most well-known online game software set on the planet. Its fifth iteration is the system that types the inspiration of Fortnite and dozens of different video games, together with Black Fable: Wukong, the Oblivion remaster, and the upcoming Witcher 4. However do you know that Unreal Engine is used for extra than simply making video video games? The expertise, developed by Epic Video games, has additionally been used to create theme park rides, tv exhibits, and flicks – and is quick changing into an everyday software for the leisure business.
Taking centre stage in Galaxy’s Edge, the Star Wars-themed part of Disney’s parks in Florida and California, is the Millennium Falcon. Head inside and you may journey Smuggler’s Run, a simulator expertise that allows you to pilot the long-lasting ship. It’s genuinely spectacular – you and your six-person crew have direct (if restricted) management over the Falcon’s actions and weapons, and in order you alter the pitch and yaw of the ship, not solely does the whole cockpit bodily lurch round, your inputs are mirrored within the flight path and enemy encounters. All which means the world past the cockpit’s home windows isn’t only a easy video. It’s dynamic and interactive. Merely put, the crew at Walt Disney Imagineering have created a online game. Maybe unsurprisingly, it’s in-built Unreal Engine.
Throughout a latest presentation as a part of Unreal Fest Orlando, Disney Imagineering’s Govt VP of Artistic & Interactive Experiences, Asa Kalama, defined that Smuggler’s Run relies on a “customized fork of Unreal Engine model 4 that helps a variety of particular results that we and our companions at Industrial Mild & Magic felt have been actually essential to ship one thing that feels cinematic. It feels such as you’re within the film.”
“[We did] quite a lot of work to develop customized shaders and customized full display house results like bloom,” Kalama explains. “Movement blur was one thing that we truly had quite a lot of attention-grabbing philosophical conversations round, as a result of in actual life there is no movement blur, however a key high quality of constructing one thing really feel like Star Wars and really feel actually cinematic is the power to have that impact on. So after quite a lot of testing and quite a lot of analysis, we truly decided that that was one thing that made it really feel extra actual, despite the fact that the truth is it was truly barely much less actual.”
Lots of Unreal’s built-in results weren’t usable by Disney’s crew, as Smuggler’s Run’s 5 interlinked projectors wanted to make use of a dice map rendering approach, which was incompatible with many typical Unreal options. However the ensuing customized department of Unreal Engine 4, full with belongings taken straight from Industrial Mild & Magic’s library, means the journey’s digital results each work as supposed and really feel genuine.
The present mission utilized by Smuggler’s Run opened in 2019, however a model new one is presently in growth, which is deliberate to launch alongside the discharge of The Mandalorian and Grogu in Might 2026. Whereas not linked to the occasions of the brand new film, Mando and his little good friend will nonetheless characteristic as a part of the mission, which sees crews seek out a high-stakes bounty.
“We’re upgrading our present sport laptop, so newest era CPU graphics playing cards,” Kalama reveals. “After which we’re additionally shifting from Unreal Engine 4 to Unreal Engine 5, and we’re actually enthusiastic about all the extra visible constancy that that is finally going to unlock for us.”
The mission can even characteristic branching pathways, permitting crews to discover both Cloud Metropolis, Corouscant, or the wreckage of the Dying Star relying on the flight path they select. “After which, even inside every of the extent environments themselves, we have labored with our companions at ILM to develop ranges which have significantly extra branching,” Kalama provides. “In order that even should you return to the identical vacation spot, there is a new route or new secrets and techniques to uncover.”
It looks like the thought is to additional blur the road between theme park journey and online game, which in flip will improve the immersive impact of truly commanding the Millennium Falcon. In fact, Smuggler’s Run is much from the primary Star Wars venture to make use of Unreal Engine in an unconventional means. The system has been used to create the digital backdrops utilized in TV exhibits like The Mandalorian and Ahsoka. The Third Ground, a visible results firm primarily based in LA, has labored alongside Industrial Mild & Magic to create these Star Wars exhibits.
“We began experimenting with sport engines with numerous choices within the 2010s,” remembers The Third Ground’s Chief Artistic Officer, Joshua Wassung. “And actually, simply as Unreal matured within the mid 2010s, we began getting actually enthusiastic about shifting into that platform and actually dove all in for The Mandalorian in 2019. [That’s] once we made the large shift.”
Star Wars could also be in a galaxy far, distant, however The Third Ground not too long ago took Unreal Engine to an entire new frontier – the world of The Predator. The brand new film from Prey director Dan Trachtenberg, Predator: Killer of Killers, was completely animated utilizing Unreal Engine 5.
“Unreal is a system that allows you to accomplish that many alternative issues,” Wassung enthuses. “It permits you to pursue your personal artwork. So our explicit strategy was that we actually needed to lean into shifting idea artwork. We needed all the pieces to be hand painted.” Unreal Engine was used to ingest a whole lot of work, which have been then utilized by a real-time compositing system to mix a number of layers collectively. “It was the flexibleness of the engine that allowed us to essentially push that exact look that we have been going for,” says Wassung.
One of the vital spectacular sequences in Predator: Killer of Killers replicates the “one-shot” fashion of filmmaking. In it we see a Viking girl, Ursa, combat in opposition to an array of enemies in a single steady, unbroken shot. This fashion is among the many most advanced approaches to create in live-action filmmaking, demanding in depth rehearsal, strict timing, and pin-point precision. It’s a special story when animating in Unreal, the place there’s no probability of an actor flubbing their line or lacking their mark. However that’s to not say there aren’t any challenges.
“There’s so many components,” says Wassung. “I believe we had 98 characters all preventing in that scene. And so we now have perhaps only a handful of animators. So juggling how you can choreograph them is extremely advanced. However then you definately additionally should animate the digicam in a means that feels such as you’re actually there. It is simply a lot thought goes into it, and it took months, however we love the consequence.”
However whereas making a “one-shot”, or certainly any shot, in Unreal is much from a stroll within the park, there are various instruments obtainable within the engine that assist ease manufacturing woes. Formidable initiatives might be made comparatively shortly, which in flip can cut back budgets.
“Unreal does allow you to work in parallel, so that you’ve got groups working a bit extra concurrently, which does velocity up the manufacturing, and time is cash,” Wassung says.
“However the different factor is the real-time suggestions,” he notes. “Usually, pictures in an animated characteristic may take an artist say one, two, even three weeks for one shot. Our quota, as soon as the crew obtained going, was 4 to 5 hours per shot per artist for First Move, which is simply insanely fast. So it is actually the time, the truth that you possibly can go quicker permits you to save prices general.”
This value saving component is unlocking new filmmaking potentialities. Revolt Developments, the proprietor of Decide Dredd and the broader 2000 AD comics universe, is presently growing a brand new Rogue Trooper film. Set on the violent battlefields of the far future, this comedian adaptation would possible value a whole lot of thousands and thousands of {dollars} to supply if made utilizing extra conventional filmmaking strategies. However Rogue Trooper is just not a live-action film, nor a classically-developed CGI movie. As an alternative, it’s being made in Unreal Engine 5.
“We’re considerably cheaper,” Revolt CEO Jason Kingsley advised IGN in an interview final 12 months. “We have accomplished it on an indie funds. We have by necessity needed to handle the money circulation as a result of it is us making this. It is not an enormous studio doing it.”
Kingsley goes on to notice that such financial savings “maybe takes a few of the shackles of restricted funds off individuals who need to make one thing indie and artistic. I hope it does. I hope it is the start of one thing actually thrilling.”
Whereas Revolt is the custodian of 2000 AD, the corporate is finest identified for growing video video games, such because the Sniper Elite sequence. And so comes the large query: with out the Hollywood-grade instruments utilized by the likes of Industrial Mild & Magic and Wētā FX, will Rogue Trooper simply be a feature-length online game cutscene?
“One of many key factors was to make it very a lot not appear to be a online game,” Kingsley emphasises. “So we now have skilled film makers engaged on this. We now have cinematographers, we now have film lighting specialists, we have all of the individuals with the {qualifications} to make the absolute best films.”
Amongst these individuals with {qualifications} is Duncan Jones, director of Moon, Supply Code, and the CGI effects-heavy Warcraft film. With Jones on the helm and a small military {of professional} filmmakers backing him, Revolt has all of the individuals required to make sure Rogue Trooper doesn’t appear to be it’s operating on an Xbox.
Rogue Trooper’s forged, which options Aneurin Barnard, Hayley Atwell, Sean Bean, and Matt Berry amongst many others, is being dropped at life with the help of MetaHuman rigs, a personality creation and motion-capture expertise constructed into Unreal Engine 5. The system was not utilized by The Third Ground for Predator: Killer of Killers, however Wassung nonetheless sees quite a lot of worth in it.
“So many occasions you are making CG people for no matter cause. They could be simply doubles for a stunt, or they could be your lead character. You are sort of doing the identical work again and again, at the least on a base stage,” he explains. “And I believe that MetaHuman is that this monumental shortcut as a result of quite a lot of that work is now already constructed into this software. So I believe that that permits a younger filmmaker by themselves to leap proper into a personality that is already at this very excessive stage.”
For Revolt and its animation companions at Treehouse Digital, options like MetaHumans and the visible results that Unreal Engine 5 is able to have been key to bringing the unusual world of Rogue Trooper to life. “What we’re not making an attempt to do is make it look precisely the identical as it could if we have been filming stay motion,” says Kingsley. “We’re making the most of the digital house so we will do extra with volumetric fogging, for instance, than you would in actual life.”
Whereas Unreal Engine should be predominantly identified for its use in online game growth, it’s clear that it has quietly unfold its attain all through many different sectors of the leisure industries. The galaxy of Star Wars is virtually united by Unreal, with exhibits, video games, and theme park rides all making use of the engine. Elsewhere, we’re seeing the tech utilized in many filmmaking corners, from the pre-planning of the desert sequences in Dune: Half 2, to whole films created within the engine, similar to Predator: Killer of Killers and Rogue Trooper. One factor appears sure: that listing will solely carry on rising as new studios and new creatives start to experiment with Epic Video games’ versatile expertise.
Matt Purslow is IGN’s Senior Options Editor.
