Latest update features major enhancements to animation authoring, rendering, virtual production, mobile game development, and developer iteration toolsets.
Working from just a single day on-stage with an LED wall, the studio’s virtual production harnessed Unreal Engine to create an expansive world for the battle between good and evil in a style reminiscent of iconic tales from the film and gaming realm.
Update boasts new experimental features, including Orthographic Rendering and cinematic-quality volumetric rendering using SVT, refined workflows and capabilities across Lumen, Nanite, Path, Tracing and new standards suite for the next-generation virtual production - within nDisplay.
For Junior animation student Alexandra Young, jumping into Unreal Engine to direct the school’s latest animated film, having never worked in 3D, was at first like drinking water from a firehose; however, she and her team quickly and effectively embraced the powerful real-time animation platform to tell an epic fantasy story in ways they couldn’t have done otherwise.
Photogrammetry app uses pictures taken with Android or iOS device to create high-fidelity 3D models; export to Sketchfab or download to use in other apps such as UE or Twinmotion.
The UE demo, unveiled at this year’s ‘State of Unreal’ at GDC, showcases experimental Procedural Content Generation – tech allows users to build scalable, virtual worlds fast with an iterative design pipeline.
The new update introduces Procedural Content Generation tools and a Substrate shading system providing artists with new real-time functionality – both showcased in March at GDC’s Electric Dreams real-time demo; also announced Unreal Fest 2023 coming to New Orleans in October.
Tapping NantStudio’s advanced LED stage powered by Unreal Engine for its ‘auto demo’ project, the studio demonstrates the sustainability impact of harnessing the cutting-edge technology, both in financial and environmental costs.
The 10-minute animated African horror fable by instructors Miguel Ortega and Tran Ma - known as Half M.T. Studios - employed hand-drawn and cutting-edge 3D techniques, with tools like ZBrush and Maya for characters and Substance Painter for texturing, and was rendered exclusively in the game engine.
