For the past few months, users of Unreal Engine 5 have marveled at the Early Access version, which includes some of the most leading technologies, when it comes to 3D tooling.
With Epic Games soon set to launch UE5 to the masses with all its features, users across multiple industries are excited to see how the new engine will push the boundaries of what they can achieve.
To know more about the Unreal Engine 5’s tools and its impact in the future, IGN India talked to Arvind Neelakantan, tech Evangelist –India/ASEAN, Epic Games, where he shed some light on the Early Access program, and the implications of UE5 in the metaverse. Read ahead to see what he has to say about one of Epic’s most prolific launches lately.
For a while now, Unreal Engine 5 has been hyped as the next big thing, and you could say that it started ever since the first tech demo showed up almost two years ago. In your ideal world, where do you expect to see this technology once it’s all said and done?
That’s a good question. The launch of Unreal Engine 5, it’s a generational leap for Epic Games, and in fact, I would say even for the entire industry. You mentioned the tech demos that we showed almost two years ago, which is involved Lumen and Nanite. Then, we added another tech demo called the Valley of the Ancient, and of course the latest one is The Matrix Awakening. Now, we are looking towards the release of Unreal Engine 5. So, what we’re beginning to see is that it is pointing to the way, where game engines are becoming central to production. It essentially translates the aggregation of this complex content, which doesn’t pair with complex game systems and game logic, and then publish that content outside the game. We have seen Unreal in gaming, and I would say that Unreal Engine 5 would become part of an ecosystem that supports creators to create content, and by ecosystem, I also mean stuff like Metahuman centred-ability to deploy and operate your game using the Epic online system, and also even publishing and experiencing games through the Epic Game Store. Just to give you a bit of history, it’s been nearly eight years since we shipped Unreal Engine 4, and since then, we are seeing games becoming bigger, more photorealistic and vivid than ever. We have seen amazing titles being shipped across multiple platforms and generations of platforms. Even an entire genre, like Battle Royale, has exploded in popularity, and it has transformed games. That’s something that we are beginning to see and we’re hoping to see in the future in places like music, fashion, automobile, architecture and so much more, where it can become an integral part of real time experience through Unreal Engine 5.
We have seen what Lumen and Nanite bring to the table with Unreal Engine 5, as they’re some of the most powerful features we have ever seen. What do you hope to see out of the developers in the near future, who will use this once it comes out this month?
So, what we need to understand is that Unreal Engine 5 enables game developers to create games. But, in regions like India and Southeast Asia, we’re also seeing a wider adoption of Unreal Engine across industries, who are realizing this with leading technologies like Nanite and Lumen, which allows for extremely high fidelity and flexibility that they have never seen before. Games are no longer just games, as they now provide people with real ways to engage with others like their favorite actors, athletes, fashion labels, and they even do that superheroes. And likewise, for a while, it was only used for making video games. But now we are transforming the way people are working in any industry.
Any use of virtual production techniques to create film and television content was a pipe dream, and today, we are seeing final pictures from a game and we’ll use the shots on the big screen. And this is just the start. In 2021, gaming, metaverse, and hardware grew more and more powerful, and the nature of experiences people want to have is also constantly changing now. And these shifts are reflected with the new technologies like Lumen and Nanite, and we look forward to really helping people in studios create games and experiences that are also going to grow the audiences. We’re really excited to see what the developers of today and the near future will be able to get across games and across industries.
It’s 2022, and the trending word that’s on everyone’s mouth is probably the metaverse, and going virtual. How does Epic factor into this evolving equation, and does Unreal Engine 5 play a huge part in that?
Our vision of the company is really directed towards the idea of the metaverse. We are still figuring out what that might look like. But with Unreal Engine 5, it is really a part of an ecosystem within Epic Games that supports creators in creating content. So, when we’re talking about Unreal Engine 5, and I mentioned it’s an ecosystem because we also have other tools such as Quixel and Metahuman creators. We also talked about deploying and operating through the Epic Online System, and also the ability for you to publish an experience through the Epic Game Store.
Our commitment is really to provide tools, which enables everyone to create amazing experiences and games, using our products and services, which essentially translates into creating for the metaverse. In fact, in the last few years alone, Epic has welcomed some of the world’s leading technology companies to this ecosystem, with the goal of democratizing 3D content creation, which of course, translates into creating for the metaverse. This includes 3Lateral, Psyonix, Cubic Motion, Quixel, Hypersense, ArtStation, Capturing Reality, and I can go on and on. At Epic Games, we are adding to the ecosystem of tools that can be accessible to anyone who wants to be creating for the metaverse, and of course, Unreal Engine 5 plays a very important role in that.
With UE5, what is the biggest challenge in modern gaming that you guys hope to solve for the developers out there?
Unreal Engine 5 and the rest of the tools in the ecosystem are fantastic. But we need adoption of these tools by the users and that’s really key. Specifically talking about India and Southeast Asia, we want to reduce the entry barrier for anyone to learn and use these tools. And to do that, we provide free training to anyone who wants to learn Unreal Engine and the tools around the Epic Games ecosystem, and we further reduced the entry barrier for anyone who needs access to powerful GPUs that can run Unreal Engine by providing free virtual missions. So far, we have trained like hundreds of game developers, content creators, and filmmakers in India alone. Besides that, to enable adoption by folks who are subject experts, we have also launched a couple of programs in India called the “Women Creator Program” and the “Shorts India Program”. The idea of the creator program was to get animators off the ground with in-depth training using Unreal Engine, only this time the focus is on women. Last year, we had a brilliant response and we are running this program once again this year, while also expanding it to South East Asia. Similarly, the other program is “Shorts India Program,” which we launched last year, and we’re running that as well this year. Last year, in over three months, we had hundreds basic creators and animators from all around India to explore real time filmmaking, and it attracted some of the biggest names in the industries, including AR Rahman, and Bharat Bala, along with studios and production houses like Technicolor, Toonz Animation and a lot more. And of course, Technicolor emerged as the winners, with Holocraft coming in second, and a cobbled together team from IIT Bombay coming in third. We are currently in the planning stages for the Short Film Challenge 2022, and excited to see who gets to participate. But we are trying to reduce as many hurdles as possible through these programs, by removing entry barriers for hardware and software so that adoption in the region becomes bigger, which then translates into more creators and business.
So, from what I understand that Epic Games is starting at the absolute grassroot level, especially in the Southeast Asia region?
It’s both ways, right? Grassroots level is providing this free training to students or anyone who wants to learn Unreal Engine. And on the other side, you’re also directly talking to the industry experts. So, when it comes to film and television, we’re working with some of the best names. Like today, when you look at the biggest movie in current paraphernalia, which is RRR, Srinivas Mohan, one of the VFX supervisor talked about using Unreal Engine in pre-visualization. So, we’re also speaking and enabling creators from both the grassroot level and the industry experts.
Unreal Engine 5 has been out on Early Access for quite a while. What has been some of the biggest reaction from the community of developers and creators regarding this enormous step in development from Epic Games, and has there been any favorites for you?
Because it’s been in early access, we have seen quite a lot of adoption. We have seen Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook burst with content that unlocked with realism that Unreal Engine 5 can provide. Now, in terms of my favorite ones, it’s hard to pick one because most of them have been hobbies or smaller teams experimenting with it. But what I have seen is that there is a general appreciation for the leap in fidelity that Unreal Engine 5 helps unlock, and we are seeing folks who aren’t necessarily tech savvy or VFX savvy use features like Nanite, Lumen or even meta cells. This is a new paradigm for immersive audio rendering, and all of these are being used to create this very immersive gaming experience.
Another reaction to the community has also been the ability to build large worlds because the current generation tech involving open world games or simulation projects quickly hit technical limits on terrain sizes, and they struggle with complexity of authoring and streaming workflows. In UE5, you can build workflows or partitioning and stream large levels, while also using the collaboration between multiple people who are working in the same virtual worlds. We have seen a lot of examples of people creating this huge expansive world for players to explore, and even the content that really scales. Finally, because of the redesign of the editor itself, we’re also seeing more artists, programmers and engineers, who are feeling more focused, or more refocused with the new UI, which integrates asset design and new authoring workflows into the editor. This reduces the need for external applications. We then offer new tools for working more smoothly with multiple targets like consoles or mobile devices. So, the reaction from the community has been on these fronts, and we have been seeing quite a few examples of people leveraging the ability to build bigger worlds and have a more focused UI in the editor.
Unreal Engine 5 has now launched globally and you can check out its amazing features here.
