CTO of Epic Games says Unreal Engine 5 will provide continuity between games and movies

One of the main goals of Unreal Engine 5 is to allow developers to import graphic elements directly from movies, often consisting of billions of polygons, into their games without degrading their quality. The Nanite microgeometry system, the cornerstone of Unreal Engine 5, promises to achieve this.

In an interview with Gamespot, Kim Libreri, CTO of Epic Games, said that games and movies will be even more intertwined thanks to the next generation of hardware tools like Unreal Engine 5. He even hinted that new forms of entertainment might emerge.

For some time now, the main tools we use to create assets for games and movies have been very similar. Over the last twenty years, Hollywood has been a pioneer of computer-generated graphics in its pursuit of realism. We have been able to support this industry on its way to complete photorealism in video games.

Almost everything we have done to help Hollywood create better pixels is also used by game developers; better systems for faces, better eye shadow, better hair, all for titles that require the use of digital characters. But what’s really great is that both industries are starting to think the same.

We see games with amazing stories created with the Unreal Engine and other graphics engines that definitely use Hollywood tricks to focus and frame things, which helps players better understand the story they’re trying to tell. Jon Favreau used the Unreal Engine 4 for many of the scenes in the Mandalorian series.

The technology of facial animation is pretty much the same in both industries. If you play Red Dead Redemption or Horizon Zero Dawn, you’ll see that they have great facial animation. They’re not exactly the same as the movies of this generation, but they will be in the next one.

I think there will be a continuity between the two worlds, and I think the artists will go from one to the other. If content creators have to make computer-generated assets, be it a car or a chair or whatever, it will be the same for both industries.

Does that mean that games and movies will be better? Yes, but I also believe that we will see new forms of entertainment. Look at how the boundaries between one and the other are blurring at Fortnite, where concerts are held with millions of visitors. The world of entertainment will mutate in an amazing way over the next five years.

Pretty promising words from the CTO of Epic Games. We will have to wait and see if they really prove to be forward-looking. We hope so, anyway.

Do you agree with Kim Libreri? Do you think that we will see new forms of training in the next few years?
Source: WCCFTech