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)
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.
AFAIK Unreal was only used in the first season of the Mandalorian several years ago. Disney switched to using ILM's Stagecraft software, which is what they use for their films as well.
Where are you getting this information? Not only have I never heard of this, "the major VFX vendors" don't really do 'virtual production' or previz, with the exception of the ILM stagecraft stuff.
I haven't heard of anyone using unreal for final frame rendering in film.
Unreal and Unity are already used in TV production. This will continue. They will add some ray tracing features in the future.
Real-time TV production is here and it will get more popular. The main reason isn't because of RTX but because Unreal and Unity just look amazing using current real-time techniques.
They made a point of highlighting the use of Unreal during the production of Season 1, but then it's completely absent from their discussion of later seasons, instead only referencing an in-house renderer they call Helios. Have they specifically said anywhere that they're still using Unreal Engine?
This 2021 article mentions that external productions using StageCraft services can choose to use either Unreal or Helios for rendering, so the Unreal integration may still be available for those who want it, but obviously ILM didn't write a brand new renderer for the fun of it. Unreal must not have been cutting it for their own productions.
I'm not really sure if they are competing with Unreal. Large studios will probably never use real time rendering for the final render unless it achieves the same quality. Dreamworks have built a renderer specifically for render farms (little use of GPUs, for example) which means they are not targeting small studios at all, rather something like Illumination Entertainment or Sony (think Angry Birds movie).
Yes and definitely no. RT rendering (or close to it, well more like RT rendering techniques) are making it into production. Not as much as film, but TV definitely and it's only a matter of time when two worlds converge. ZAFARI is a recent example - https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/blog/animated-children-s-...
One of the most common uses of unreal engine for film is to use it to render in huge screens around the actors (instead of chroma), so you can record with the right light hitting the actors, or maybe even with the background already there.
I am curious how expensive these screens are, and the computers to drive it, but I imagine they are not cheap.
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.
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.
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.
I wonder how much of a blocker to real use not having things like model rigging or fine-tuned control over things will be to practical use of this? Clearly it can be used in toy examples with extremely impressive results, but I'm not entirely convinced that, as is, it can replace the VFX industry as a whole.
Was wondering why virtual production doesn't pop up more often in this thread. The Mandalorian and its behind the scenes triggered a slew of similar studios, for example [1]. Alot of them use Unreal in their workflow. (Another tool often used is Notch[2]). And COVID (travel restrictions, no in-person events etc.) gave them a huge boost.
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