Ultimate Beginners Guide to Virtual Production in Unreal Engine 5

Published on March 11, 2023

Unreal Engine Tutorials

Beginner, unreal engine 5, Virtual Production

Unreal Engine 5 for Beginners

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Virtual Production

Virtual production has revolutionized the way movies and TV shows are produced. By blending physical and virtual elements, filmmakers can create stunning visuals that were previously impossible to achieve. You can create worlds that don’t exist. You don’t need to go and shoot on location. The possibilities are endless.

And one of the powerful tools for virtual production is Unreal Engine, offering a suite of features that enable filmmakers to create realistic virtual environments and characters. Unreal Engine is even used when making the Mandalorian. Combining led panels, stunning world and real sets. Creating a phenomenal looking series.

Setting up the environment

The first step in virtual production is setting up the environment. Unreal Engine makes this super easy. With a wide range of tools for building virtual sets, including landscapes, architecture, and props. You can create an ultra realistic world in no time. And on of those tools I can recommend is Quixel. They have a vast library with stunning assets which you can drag and drop easily.

Then once you’ve built your environment, you can add lighting realistic lighting. And of course add other effects to make it look even more realistic. For instance fog, which immediately adds that something extra to the scene. Here I can again recommend the easy fog tool from William Faucher. A must have!

Real-time compositing

Real-time compositing is the process of blending physical and virtual elements in real-time. Unreal Engine provides a range of tools for real-time compositing, including a powerful compositing tool called Composure. Composure enables you to create complex composites that blend physical and virtual elements seamlessly.

Next we will capture the scene using a virtual camera. Of course we don’t want a tripod shot because that’s boring. So we are going to use a tracking system from Vive to record our camera movement. This way we can do every movement that we want and sync everything in Post production. Meaning our real camera shot where we recorded an actor in front of a green screen and our unreal engine shot.

Deity

Deity Microphones is committed to making unique microphones and products that get the job done. With their Timecode gear you can work and sync faster in post-production. In today’s video we will be using the TC-1 Wireless Timecode Generator and the TC-SL1 Timecode Slate to create stunning virtual production.