This week in the world of film making:
Unreal Engine
Metahumans
Motion Tracking
VR
What is Unreal Engine?
Unreal Engine is the cutting edge of 3D technology. Version 5.0.0 was recently released to the public for the first time. It is still in Beta so there are some bugs and has been known to occasionally crash. Although it is still in development, it is even quicker than the previous versions.
Unreal Engine in primarily used for high end, triple A games. It was used to build games like fortnight and more...
Although it began as a game engine, it has recently been used in movies. Unreal Engine was used to create the Mandalorian series!
It is not only designed for large studio's, but is also aimed at amateur's. It is extremely easy to use and offers many prebuilt assets!
How will we use it?
I plan on using Unreal Engine within the movie in order for there to be a real time interactive experience, in which we are not stuck to specific plans.
Instead I believe that this graphics engine will enable us to move forward in a quicker and more flexible way than could ever have been imagined
only a few years back.
What are Metahumans?
Have you ever dreamt about playing God. Maybe you have imagined you have the ability to create and control humans. Well you dreams could just be closer than you imagined.
Metahumans allows you to create super realistic 3D human models of all different ages and races. Every human you make is fully customizable and will look different every time!
But the fun doesn't end there. Once you have completed you metahuman, you can download it and bring it into Unreal Engine. Then you have the tools and technology to animate and bring it to life. You can control the models entire body, from arms to fingers and even down to the facial features.
How will we use it?
Actors, Actors, Actors. There just isn't enough of them!
Metahumans will allow us to use as many actors as we want (as long as the computer can keep up). And the best thing is … They work for free. They are, after all, not real!
Yet they look realistic enough to be past as a real human actor.
They are also completely flexible. This means that if, during the movie, we decide that we want to add another character. Instead of needing to completely reshoot all of our shots, we can simple add another metahuman into the scene. If we wish to change the script, we need only to change how the mouth of the person
moves.
What is Motion Tracking?
Motion Tracking is a way to record the movement of a human body accurately as a specific rotation value for every joint. For example, the motion tracking system may measure that your shoulder joint is rotated 50 degrees upwards.
There are a variety of different motion capturing techniques, but the one I will be using is conducting using only a camera and some trackers attached to the clothing of the subject.
The data recorded by the motion tracking system can be used for a variety of different applications.
The Motion Tracking system we will be using is currently being developed by me and is still in the very early stages of its life. I can only hope that in the future, the method of motion capture which I am inventing, will be the cheapest and most effective.
How will we use it?
The Motion Tracking system will play a major role in the development of the movie. I plan on directly linking the system up to our metahumans which will allow us to act as them and to animate them in a even more realistic way.
Sometimes, moving sliders and pressing buttons just doesn't give as realistic an effect as the human touch. This is the point of motion tracking, to add that human touch the animating of our characters!
In this final segment, I will be explaining the glue which will hold our entire process together - Virtual Reality!
VR - That sounds expensive! Well I don't plan on using some fancy headset that comes with games and hand controllers. I believe that we can very easily use a phone to create the VR experience. We therefore shouldn't need to buy any fancy technology!
Unreal Engine already comes with the tools to use VR and I most certainly will be taking advantage of them to help us build out movie.
Instead of actors acting on a green screen, not really feeling immersed. Or spending millions on making a huge 280 degrees screen room. I plan on using VR to make the actors feel as if they are really in the movie. My hopes is that it will make their action and reaction seem even more real.
Just Imagine wandering around an alien world. Movie you hands up to your face, but instead of seeing you fingers, you see the fingers of the character you are playing. The smooth fresh hands of a child, or maybe the old cut hands of a sailor.