Epic Games announced Unreal Fest Online, a free global event taking place on Tuesday, July 14, with registration open now. Covering five content tracks with over 50 sessions (including live Q&A), and an attendee lounge for networking, the packed event caters to creators of all levels across games, media and entertainment, automotive, architecture/AEC, and other fields.
Unreal Fest Online will feature live participation with many leaders from Epic and prominent studios using Unreal Engine, with content available to play on demand following the event. Sessions will be posted to the Unreal Engine YouTube channel at a later date.
Those interested in learning more about Unreal Engine 5, should to attend the Unreal Engine for Next-Gen Games session, presented by Epic Games’ Nick Penwarden, Marcus Wassmer, and Jerome Platteaux. Additional Unreal Fest Online session highlights in the Games section will include sessions as The Evolution of Real-Time VFX with Unreal Engine’s Niagara (Epic Games), which may also be an interesting subject for filmmakers to watch.
The Games sessions, as well as those in the other industries where Unreal Engine is used, are a clear invitation to creators across all industries “to come together to hear about the latest Unreal Engine developments (including more on what’s coming in Unreal Engine 5), learn new techniques and skills, and watch inspirational speakers from companies like Audi, Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates, Rocksteady Studios, and Zero Density reveal how they use Unreal Engine in their projects.”
Cinematographers have a whole series of conferences to follow. A hot topic at the moment, “Work From Home Virtual Production”, by cinematographer and developer Matt Workman, is a great session for live-action filmmakers and VFX/3D artists looking to get into virtual production. The author will break down how he used a mix of real-world camera equipment and 3D knowledge in Unreal Engine to set up an indie virtual production studio in his house.He’ll also deliver insights into his remote collaboration workflows.
Another session included in the Film, TV & Live Events track is “The Future of Real-time Broadcast Graphics”. In this session, Faraz Qayyum, Technical Artist at Zero Density will dive into the use of Unreal Engine, across a range of broadcast scenarios, from green screen virtual set productions to on-screen CG. He’ll explore the benefits of node-based logic development using Blueprints at the backend of real-time graphics, and how this is different from conventional hard-coded and hierarchy-based systems. He’ll specifically demonstrate unconventional use of UMG (Widget Blueprint) to design CG’s Overlays and TV channel brandings i.e Lowerthirds, split screens ortickers. Attendees will learn about the advantages of visual programming for non-programmers, object-oriented approaches to designing graphics templates, and the benefits of using Unreal Engine in a broadcast environment.
The session “Immersive Cinema Experiences with Unreal Engine” offers a view into the choices made by Alexandre Piedade, Director at Reactic, for the production of his immersive 360° historical film Saint Cross. He’ll explain the choice to use three projector screens with complementary footage—not just colors—along with the hardware challenges of using three projectors in 4K HDR with 5.1 surround sound.
Using Unreal Engine, Alexandre will show the technical setup for aligning three different cameras to achieve an immersive scene, from how FOV and camera lens have to be calibrated on all three to get a perfect sync, to a custom setup of Sequencer to export renders. He will also share a sneak peek of Saint Cross with attendees, which is set for high-fidelity screenings at movie theaters in 2020. This session is great for videographers, photographers, cinematographers, filmmakers, directors, producers, modelers, animators, editors, sound engineers and theater technicians.
After seeing Epic’s collaborative LED Virtual Production demonstration, Paul Hamblin, a partner at indie production company Treehouse Digital, thought “how do we do this on a tight budget?” Three months later, using one gaming PC, a Vive puck, Unreal Engine, and the kindness of an LED company, his team were filming a car crash that would have taken months of planning and VFX to execute in any otherway.
In the session under the title “Bootstrapping Live-Action Real-Time In-Camera VFX for Indie Filmmakers” Paul Hamblin will discuss learnings from that project, including how to plan an LED shoot; how to discover your minimum kit requirements; the power of “in camera”; how to work with a director to find creative solutions to problems; the benefits of real-time rendering; why this technology is going to change filmmaking for the better; and how it’s possible on a smallbudget. The session is great for filmmakers, VFX artists and video professionals.
A session for film professionals and people with an interest in the film production is “The Making of His Dark Materials”. In this session, Dan May, Co-Founder at Painting Practice, will explain how Unreal Engine was used for the production of the TV show His Dark Materials, focusing in particular on how the engine helped the team transition from a traditional production pipeline to using virtual production tools.
During the session Dan May will delve into the reasons the studio chose Unreal Engine for the production, with a focus on its VR and game-creation capabilities. He’ll explain how Painting Practice developed its own app Plan V using Unreal Engine—a production tool that allows production staff to remotely explore 3D environments alongside typical previsualization materials.
These are some examples of the 10 different sessions available in the Film, TV & Live Events track on the Unreal Fest Online. The sessions included in the other industry tracks also offer plenty of information that may interest anyone. Because Unreal Fest Online runs several sessions concurrently for each timeslot, it may be difficult to follow all sessions, but they will all be available, at a later date, when Epic Games posts them to the Unreal Engine YouTube channel. Remember to register for this FREE event.