The Human Race (Unreal)
At this year's GDC, Epic Games showed off the power of Unreal Engine once again, but this time it partnered with Chevrolet to showcase its new technology in a short movie trailer called The Human Race, which showed a human driver in the new Chevy Camaro ZL-1 competing against an AI driver in the ultimate test of man versus machine. When the trailer was over, Chevy executive Sam Russell took the stage with a Lenovo Phab 2 Pro smartphone. With the movie playing again in the background, Russell was able to use his smartphone, specifically a Tango-based Chevy app, to change the colors of the Camaro within the movie in real time.
To achieve the technological feat, the car used in the initial phase of shooting was The Blackbird, a buggy-like vehicle created by a visual effect studio called The Mill, and attached to it is a multi-camera rig that shoots 360 degrees of 3D video at 6K resolution. The Blackbird was also covered in markers, which is used by the Unreal Engine in post-production. Combined with the footage of a second camera that films the Blackbird zipping through the mountains, Unreal Engine rendered the Camaro over the Blackbird and also utilized its Sequencer feature to line up the real-world footage and the rendered car in order to show a trailer that looks close to the real thing.
MORE: Real-Time Cinematic VR Rendering With Epic Games And The Mill
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Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice (Unreal)
Rendering a car in real-time is one thing, but achieving the same feat to mimic the real-life movements of the human face within a game is quite impressive. Epic Games, along with Cubic Motion and 3Lateral, showed that it's up to the task with last year's demo of Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice.
The short clip features Senua facing personal nightmares as she searches for her beloved. The three giant screens within the room showed the demo as well as the face capture session with Melina Juergens, who played the part of Senua. It wasn't until the end of the demo that we discover that Juergens' performance was rendered in real-time into the game. Juergens herself was performing unseen on the left-hand side of the stage.
With this new technology, game directors can easily tell actors how to perform in specific scenes because they can see the character in the game environment in real-time instead of seeing a green screen backdrop. Developers can even add effects like fire, change the environment lighting, or even manipulate the camera angle in real time. The result is a more realistic facial and overall motion capture performance, all because the director can actually see the game environment as they shoot the scene.
MORE: Unreal Engine Getting Impressive 3D Cinematic Tools, VR Editor
