So the basics of the event was to introduce and promote Unreal Engine 4 as a creative tool outside of the traditional videogames field using keynotes, lectures, workshops, exhibitors and general mingling of creatives.

It was held at the Excel Centre in London which is an event space like the NEC or Earls Court. It is a bit smaller I think than those two but a much more modern and slicker operation than Earls Court. We were based upstairs in some conference rooms but the main area is a series of show floors flanking a concourse of bars and fast food joints. Travel was a piece of piss and the DLR dumps you out right at the entrance.

The Unreal area consisted of a main hub area with exhibitors and refreshments, a huge room dedicated to the keynote stage and then smaller rooms for lectures and workshops.

Teas, coffees, juice and soda available all day, just help yourself. Hot breakfast and fruit in the morning, hot lunch and dessert, cookies at elevenses. The second day had drinks and nibbles. The first day we were ferried off to Giant Robot which is a faux street food place with bars. All of that was include in the £100 ticket, the bar at Giant Robot was open and  not that shitty “we put crates of Fosters behind the bar” open, proper open.

There was also a goody bag of various stuff including some horrific socks.

All in I thought the presentation was incredibly slick, I felt fully looked after and it was clear they ere spending more than the ticket cost, which is fair enough as it was very much a marketing exercise as much as a training course.

At the central hub there were several exhibitors.

Unreal

Unreal themselves were demonstrating their online learning portal. They also had a sort of genius bar setup where you could go and chat through potential projects and ask in depth questions that were perhaps not appropriate or didn’t have time for in the lectures/workshops. There were Unreal staff and contractors milling about as well.

 

Microsoft

MS were showing off Hololens with an Apollo 11 mission thing. Unfortunately I missed this. It was hidden in a far corner of the event and I didn’t realise it existed until the last day. I think everyone was the same and the queue was always over an hour long.

 

Lexus 4k Virtual Showroom

This was a touch screen TV where you could select paint and trim options on a Lexus, pan around it, sit in the driver’s seat etc.

Fairly similar to the editor in any car game but the purpose was to have them in showrooms. I believe Lexus and Audi have these all over now and BMW will be following soon. This will be standard in every dealership eventually I am sure. It is a much better solution to the glossy catalogue for options.

 

Troll

Some interactive movie mainly used to show off some of the nice lighting, hair, water stuff being implemented in Unreal.

 

Iliad

Wacom painting stuff.

 

Streamcolours

interactive kolida scope with 3d depth, fun to play about with but whatevs.

 

Mo-Sys

This was cool. It was the camera setup they are using in the MotD studio among others.

A counter balanced camera, on top of the camera body there is an iinfrared camera pointing upwards. Over the whole stage or set is basic black netting with randomly placed reflective dots, the same material as the silver strips on high viz jackets.

The infrared camera is used to map the set from 0,0,0 then is able to one to one track motion with a camera within Unreal engine.

Here they had placed a 5 ft by 3ft box on the set and were tracking a Buggati model onto the box, really cool to see happing in realtime on a TV behind as people move around it. They were then instantly switching that to an artificial environment and changing paint colours etc.

This had an introduction to the event and a general talk on what is to come.

Mohen Leo – Industrial Light and Magic

This was mostly on VR and interactive experiences that ILM are working on and have released.

They discussed Vader Immortal. Main take away were about the research they discovering how to better have users feel involved in the game. Initially they had the player as more of a fly on the wall character inside this story involving Vader. They found people quickly became disengaged if characters weren’t talking directly to them, so they switched up the project so the player was Vader and focused heavily on having characters talk directly to the user.

Another thing they found was that people really like to pick things up and look at them so they made sue to put in as much of that type of content and discovery as possible.

 

After that they discussed how to overcome actors being displaced from the environment when using green/blue screen technology. I doubt they would admit it but they probably watched Plinkett’s reviews. That issue the prequels have of actors running into shot, stopping and running out of shot without any real engagement in their surroundings.

A number of solutions occurred from this for use in FA and Solo. Firstly both practical and digital sets were made in unreal first which could then be moved in in VR. Allowing set designers, actors and crew to get a strong feeling of where they were supposed to be. Secondly sets were partially built and mapped in on the fly so actors have something to latch onto and crew can see a first draft render of the scene in real time, a common shot of this is the train scene from Solo.

Lastly they used huge, warp around LED panels to create the set and influence lighting in cockpit scenes. This tech was then taken and used for the Millennium Falcon ride at Disney.

Quixel

Quixel are a team of about 100 that have gone around the world gathering 3D scans and HDR images of any number of surface and items. They then sell these as content libraries. The assets are very customisable as well.

Their stuff has been used in loads of movies and games, Lion King, Anthem etc. I can’t find out for certain but I am sure Death Stranding must have used them.

The bombshell announcement was that Epic have acquired them and are giving away their Megascans content for free to Unreal users and at a slashed price for other users. This is huge news, especially for indie and small studios. It could lead the way to possibly making indie games that look as good as AAA games. The whole concept is to take away the repeat work multiple studios do and lead the way to allowing time and money to be spent on the creative aspects. (and to lock everyone into Unreal I am sure)

Fuck me I was tired for this. Got home at 2:30am and was up at 6:30am.

SH0P

Architecture this time round.

A lot of VR here, working with clients in VR to get approval on designs beyond single angled visuals or movies. The advantage being the client gets a real feel for what it is like to be surrounded by the space, sit at  their desk, walk to the kitchen etc etc. Even down to weather and time, spotting if the CEO’s desk gets a blinding sunbeam across it 4:30pm everyday is quite useful to know.

All these things are easy to change in a virtual environment but at best involve a compromised and/or expensive solution once built.

Also with VR they were using it on site to show workers how to build certain, more complex parts of the build, hopefully saving time and money from errors.

Outside of VR they used 3D scans of the real life build, placed over CAD model to quickly calculate progress and snagging on the fly.

Another project they showed involved 1000s of metal panels to create a curved object. Each panel was unique so needed to be placed correctly. Using a barcode system and Unreal they could tarck each panel, its manufacture and correct placement, updated live.

 

BlueZoo

Animation studio that have adopted Unreal to create a non-linear workflow.

Using Unreal allowed various parts of the studio to work on the project at once. As Unreal can take everything from placing sets, characters and props, lighting, cameras, post effects and rendering in one place it meant different roles can work within one project just updating their assets.

This opens up the creative process massively and allows for a huge amount of flexibility.

There is no end rendering process as well. Anyone who has done animation or stills rendering will know how frustrating and stressful the final render process can be. Errors can result in restarting the whole render process and it often results in post staff like editors and compositors twiddling thumbs.

This was a great presentation, worth a google .

Rewind

I wrote about this in the VR thread so will copy paste from there.

a collab between Ford, Universal and Holoride the studio doing the keynote.

The project involved creating a VR experience for Universal Studios California. The park guest is fitted with a VR headset and controller then put in the backseat of a Ford SUV. They are then driven a set route on public highways around the park.

The route is pre mapped and planned as a track with a story and enemies to shoot. Key places on the route result in gameplay set pieces, things like traffic lights and the park entrance relay to events in game.

 

The VR headsets are hooked up to the telemetry data from the car and GPS with the game playing out in an elastic fashion between the set pieces to allow for changes in traffic.

 

The result is going for a short drive becomes an interactive VR game with one to one feedback by being in an actual car that tracks along with the game, engaging the player more and avoiding motion sickness.

 

Their plan is to extend it out to be an option in Ford cars by 2021 for back seats and then eventually, if legally possible, all seats in self drive cars.

 



 

BBC Motion

This was the talk covering the MotD studio, how it came about and what they want to go moving forward. The camera I covered earlier. I think I have posted about this somewhere else on here but let me know if I haven’t and you want to know more.