Unreal Engine (UE4) has time and time again proven itself to the world as one of the most rewarding creative tools. Its genius accessibility and innate power to produce high-end graphics has given many users the freedom to become the game artist they aspire to be. I first experienced this feeling in January 2019 when I decided to shift my artistic intentions towards interactive and immersive film. The fluidity and immediate rewards of using UE4 sparked a wildfire of creativity and ideas, the feeling was so intense I felt an unquestionable desire to pivot my entire creative career. I spent every free moment I had learning UE4 and concepting new ideas. For me, the first major payoff for this creative shift was meeting the team at Evil Eye Pictures, and the Siggraph team from Epic Games.
Emergence is an animated short film, a coalescence of motion design, architecture, and games. Epic Games hired Evil Eye Pictures, who I collaborated with, to create a compelling video showcasing the massive design capabilities within UE4. The power of live ray tracing in engine had started to close the gap between offline renderers like Octane / Redshift / Vray and Unreal Engine. Unreal Engine is not just a tool for creating games, it has now entered the realm of film and motion design. Emergence is a showcase film calling out to designers everywhere, from traditional games to graphic design and film. The power to create visualize the dreams inside your head is here, and it runs at 60fps.
Emergence was made to play during the Unreal Engine User Group presentation at Siggraph 2019. We feel so fortunate for the positive reception from everybody. Epic Games has decided to release the video as a stand-alone film
CONCEPT + DESIGN
Emergence is the story of civilization, the passage of time and the civilizations that are born and fall. An endless cycle of creation and destruction. Tying the link between the natural world and the superficial structures we build on top of it. Technology and art imitates nature, as it is all we know. Brutalist architecture represents a unique cross between design and technology, the summation of years of civilization’s evolution in practical and creative fields. Brutalism is a visual departure from most organic forms, so it served as a contrasting medium to the natural and fractal shapes. By forcing these two aesthetics of technology and biology together, we are reminded that nothing we do or build can escape the cycle.
Styleframes
CAPTURES FROM FILM
The following screens are captured from the final film in UE4. No post processing or compositing was used, everything was captured in Unreal using the native ray tracing render engine.
PROCESS PHOTOS
The very first step in the design process was creating a kit-bash kit of brutalist architecture parts. Starting in Maya, I created about 25 modular pieces that could snap together in various ways on a predetermined grid size. This allowed for quick sketching using the mograph tools in C4D. After finding a few layouts we liked, I imported the individual low poly pieces into Zbrush to use as a base for sculpting the detailed normals. Using the high poly sculpt form Zbrush I created some custom aged cement materials in Substance Painter. Originally I had divided up the pieces into groups of 4 or 5 that shared a single UV space, however this proved problematic once we viewed everything in UE4. The pieces get instanced thousands of time in scene, and although the majority of their screen-space is very small, there are constant shifts in scale in the film that puts the camera very close to some of the geometry. Eventually I was forced to give each piece of geometry its own UV space and 4K texture. While it was overkill for most shots, it dramatically helped the fidelity of the close ups.
Below is a stream of photos from within the software used to create the final product:
CREDITS
CREATIVE DIRECTOR | Dan Rosen
TECHNICAL SUPERVISOR | Stephen DeLuca
CONCEPT & DESIGN | Conor Grebel
CINEMATOGRAPHY & ANIMATION | Euisung Lee
EDITOR | Matt McDonald
PRODUCER | Yovel Schwartz
LIGHTING & RENDERING | Stephen DeLuca, Conor Grebel, Euisung Lee
ASSET CREATION & CAMERAS | Conor Grebel
PRODUCTION COORDINATOR | Johnny Carroll
PRODUCTION ASSISTANT | Shreya Kapoor
MUSIC SUPERVISION | Pollen Music Group
MUSIC SUPERVISOR | Alexis Harte
SCORE | Sycamore Sound
COMPOSER | Peter Lauridsen
DESIGN CONSULTANT | GMUNK
SPECIAL THANKS TO EPIC GAMES | Kim Libreri, John L. Jack, Miles Perkins, Jodie Anderson Juan Cañada, Max Chen, Michael Gay, Elijah Dixon