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 enviro

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.