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Tons of studios are now using Unreal for final rendering, including Disney and several blockbuster movies. The fantastic thing about Unreal is that you can do

Tons of studios are now using Unreal for final rendering, including Disney and several blockbuster movies. The fantastic thing about Unreal is that you can do realtime rendering on-set (e.g. for directorial choices/actor feedback) and then post-production upscale it with the ceiling only being cost. Unreal in the TV/Movie industry is already huge and only getting bigger, year-on-year. You've definitely seen a TV or Movie that used Unreal.

packetslave 4y ago
You've definitely seen a TV or Movie that used Unreal. Name a major-studio movie that rendered final camera-ready VFX in Unreal. For TV, you can name The Mandalorian season one, sure, but even then, ILM switched The Volume to their own in-house real-time engine for season two.
- dagmx 4y ago
  DNeg did one sequence in the latest Matrix film. But it looked very obviously “real-time”. But yeah otherwise I agree with your points. The person you’re replying to is vastly over estimating unreal use for final CG. Definitely isn’t being primarily used for hero character work.
  - packetslave 4y ago
    Yup. The state of the art for real-time rendering just isn't there yet for hero work. Even ILM's custom Helios renderer is only used for environments and environment-based lighting, as far as I've read. Assets, fx shots, and characters are still rendered offline. Even with real-time rendering for environments, I'm sure there's plenty of post-processing "Nuke magic" to make it camera-ready. It's not like they're shooting UE straight to "film". I have seen reports of Unreal Engine being used quite successfully for pre-viz, shot planning, animatics, etc., though.
  - Arelius 4y ago
    I mentioned it in another comment, but Star Wars Rogue One also used it for a few shots.
    - dagmx 4y ago
      Ah yeah that’s the perfect kind of show for it. It was for K3-SO for certain shots iirc.
short_sells_poo 4y ago
I'm inclined to believe you, but can you quote one reasonably popular movie that was rendered with Unreal?
dahart 4y ago
Which Disney films use Unreal for final render? Disney has two separate path tracing renderers that are in active development and aren’t in danger of being replaced by Unreal. https://disneyanimation.com/technology/hyperion/ https://disneyanimation.com/technology/hyperion/ https://renderman.pixar.com/ https://renderman.pixar.com/ These renderers are comparable in use case & audience to MoonRay, which is why I don’t think you’re correct that MoonRay needs external contribution to survive. “Used unreal” for on-set rendering is hand-wavy and not what you claimed. Final render is the goal post.
- Arelius 4y ago
  Star Wars Rogue One had used Unreal for final render of a couple of shots. However it was more a proof-of-concept then a better worflow or anything. Edit: I worked on this, Adding reference video from GDC https://youtu.be/pnigQTOig8k?t=510 https://youtu.be/pnigQTOig8k?t=510
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - dahart 4y ago
    Hey that’s pretty cool! Thanks for the link, it’s helpful to see the shots in question. Am I understanding correctly that the K droid was rendered from behind using Unreal in those shots, and the front shots were rendered with the in-house renderer? If true, I’d love to hear what the reasons were for not being able to use it on all the shots in the sequence. Are there more recent examples? Is Unreal still being tested like this at ILM, or is the focus on the in-house real time renderer? BTW I’m hugely in favor of pushing real-time rendering for film (and I work on high performance rendering tech, aiming squarely at film + real-time!) I only was disputing the broad characterization by @Someone1234 that Unreal is widely used today for final, and that film studio path tracers are in imminent danger of death by game engine.
    - Arelius 4y ago
      Hi! So, it's been a while, but I'll try to add clarification from the best of my memory. So, in this sequence, I think it is the case that K2-SO was only rendered from behind. IIRC, the reasons for not using it on more shots, and specifically the front shots in the sequence were two-fold, Primarily, we only had one TD/Lighting Artist trained in our pipeline using Unreal, which was still a little clunky to fit into our pipeline, so we were time limited. Now, K2-SO was not rendered from the front in a close-up due to problems with complexities with his eyes. (Some details from Naty later in the talk) Specifically, K2's eyes require fully lit transparencies with the full lighting model, at-least at the time Unreal only supports their full lighting feature set in their deferred renderer, and their forward renderer, used for transparencies was a vastly simplified lighting model which isn't able to fully capture the effect of K2's eyes. We were building a capable Forward renderer inside of Unreal internally, but this was not finished in time for Rogue One. As an aside, we had a parallel internal renderer we were building for use on Rogue One, that even at the time had advantages, but Unreal was chosen for what I saw as political reasons. I do not know of more recent examples, but I'm not involved in this project anymore, I know they used Unreal for Season 1 of the Mandalorian, but moved to their internal real-time renderer for Season 2. The internal renderer has a few advantages, not having to deal with the complexity of merging significant changes with Epic's engine for example with the forward renderer was one major advantage, but my understanding is that the major win, is just being able to build a renderer that integrates much better in their existing pipeline. Unreal's renderer is pretty strongly integrated into the rest of their engine, and the engine itself is very opinionated regarding how content is managed. And as you can imagine, ILM has their own opinions going back to about 30+ years of history. I agree with your dispute of the broad characterization, but thought the counter-example would be illustrative. BTW, I'm starting a new project investigating real-time rendering for film, and always interested to new perspectives, hit me up if you want to chat real-time rendering sometime.
explaininjs 4y ago
Unreal is used in TV quite often, yes. But no major studios use it for theatric releases, and I'm not aware of any who plan to. (Partner is in the industry)

packetslave 4y ago

You've definitely seen a TV or Movie that used Unreal. Name a major-studio movie that rendered final camera-ready VFX in Unreal. For TV, you can name The Mandalorian season one, sure, but even then, ILM switched The Volume to their own in-house real-time engine for season two.

dagmx 4y ago
DNeg did one sequence in the latest Matrix film. But it looked very obviously “real-time”. But yeah otherwise I agree with your points. The person you’re replying to is vastly over estimating unreal use for final CG. Definitely isn’t being primarily used for hero character work.
- packetslave 4y ago
  Yup. The state of the art for real-time rendering just isn't there yet for hero work. Even ILM's custom Helios renderer is only used for environments and environment-based lighting, as far as I've read. Assets, fx shots, and characters are still rendered offline. Even with real-time rendering for environments, I'm sure there's plenty of post-processing "Nuke magic" to make it camera-ready. It's not like they're shooting UE straight to "film". I have seen reports of Unreal Engine being used quite successfully for pre-viz, shot planning, animatics, etc., though.
- Arelius 4y ago
  I mentioned it in another comment, but Star Wars Rogue One also used it for a few shots.
  - dagmx 4y ago
    Ah yeah that’s the perfect kind of show for it. It was for K3-SO for certain shots iirc.

short_sells_poo 4y ago

I'm inclined to believe you, but can you quote one reasonably popular movie that was rendered with Unreal?

dahart 4y ago

Which Disney films use Unreal for final render? Disney has two separate path tracing renderers that are in active development and aren’t in danger of being replaced by Unreal. https://disneyanimation.com/technology/hyperion/ https://disneyanimation.com/technology/hyperion/ https://renderman.pixar.com/ https://renderman.pixar.com/ These renderers are comparable in use case & audience to MoonRay, which is why I don’t think you’re correct that MoonRay needs external contribution to survive. “Used unreal” for on-set rendering is hand-wavy and not what you claimed. Final render is the goal post.

Arelius 4y ago
Star Wars Rogue One had used Unreal for final render of a couple of shots. However it was more a proof-of-concept then a better worflow or anything. Edit: I worked on this, Adding reference video from GDC https://youtu.be/pnigQTOig8k?t=510 https://youtu.be/pnigQTOig8k?t=510
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- dahart 4y ago
  Hey that’s pretty cool! Thanks for the link, it’s helpful to see the shots in question. Am I understanding correctly that the K droid was rendered from behind using Unreal in those shots, and the front shots were rendered with the in-house renderer? If true, I’d love to hear what the reasons were for not being able to use it on all the shots in the sequence. Are there more recent examples? Is Unreal still being tested like this at ILM, or is the focus on the in-house real time renderer? BTW I’m hugely in favor of pushing real-time rendering for film (and I work on high performance rendering tech, aiming squarely at film + real-time!) I only was disputing the broad characterization by @Someone1234 that Unreal is widely used today for final, and that film studio path tracers are in imminent danger of death by game engine.
  - Arelius 4y ago
    Hi! So, it's been a while, but I'll try to add clarification from the best of my memory. So, in this sequence, I think it is the case that K2-SO was only rendered from behind. IIRC, the reasons for not using it on more shots, and specifically the front shots in the sequence were two-fold, Primarily, we only had one TD/Lighting Artist trained in our pipeline using Unreal, which was still a little clunky to fit into our pipeline, so we were time limited. Now, K2-SO was not rendered from the front in a close-up due to problems with complexities with his eyes. (Some details from Naty later in the talk) Specifically, K2's eyes require fully lit transparencies with the full lighting model, at-least at the time Unreal only supports their full lighting feature set in their deferred renderer, and their forward renderer, used for transparencies was a vastly simplified lighting model which isn't able to fully capture the effect of K2's eyes. We were building a capable Forward renderer inside of Unreal internally, but this was not finished in time for Rogue One. As an aside, we had a parallel internal renderer we were building for use on Rogue One, that even at the time had advantages, but Unreal was chosen for what I saw as political reasons. I do not know of more recent examples, but I'm not involved in this project anymore, I know they used Unreal for Season 1 of the Mandalorian, but moved to their internal real-time renderer for Season 2. The internal renderer has a few advantages, not having to deal with the complexity of merging significant changes with Epic's engine for example with the forward renderer was one major advantage, but my understanding is that the major win, is just being able to build a renderer that integrates much better in their existing pipeline. Unreal's renderer is pretty strongly integrated into the rest of their engine, and the engine itself is very opinionated regarding how content is managed. And as you can imagine, ILM has their own opinions going back to about 30+ years of history. I agree with your dispute of the broad characterization, but thought the counter-example would be illustrative. BTW, I'm starting a new project investigating real-time rendering for film, and always interested to new perspectives, hit me up if you want to chat real-time rendering sometime.

explaininjs 4y ago

Unreal is used in TV quite often, yes. But no major studios use it for theatric releases, and I'm not aware of any who plan to. (Partner is in the industry)