[joegibbs]

It's a video game engine. It's got a ton of optimisations and tweaks to make it run in realtime, but if you're making a movie there's no reason not to spend hours rendering each frame. You don't need to optimise meshes at a distance, or use real-time raytracing with noise reduction rather than just simulating a thousand bounces or limit yourself to 4K textures, you can use as many particle effects and simulations as you'd like. You can't do this with a game engine though - Unreal does have the ability to render out video but it's not going to be the same fidelity.

I didn't think they were actually using the video straight out of the Volume though - my assumption was they'd just use it to make sure the lighting reflected on to the actors nicely and then redo the CGI elements with something else.

[gambiting]

>> It's got a ton of optimisations and tweaks to make it run in realtime, but if you're making a movie there's no reason not to spend hours rendering each frame.

That's how it's used though? It only runs real time for preview, but the final product is very much not rendered in real time at all. Obviously it's a very flexible tool that works with what you need and what you can afford - Disney runs it on their compute farm and they can throw the resources at it to render at the fidelity required. But obviously there are plenty of production houses which don't have those kind of resources and they have to make do with less. But then you wouldn't expect Pixar's own pipeline to work in those circumstances, would you.

>> Unreal does have the ability to render out video but it's not going to be the same fidelity.

I really encourage you to look into what's possible with UE nowadays. Custom made pipelines from Pixar or Dreamworks are better still, of course, but UE can absolutely stand next to them.

[Arwill]

The problem is the way surface lighting/scattering is calculated, which does not match what traditional offline renders do.

My issue with UE is the opposite, the engine went too far into cinema production, and making it a performant game engine requires code refactoring. At which point an open-source engine might be a better choice. Its a mix of two (three) worlds, and not the best choice for one specific use.

For what is actually hard to do, like character animation, UE is a good choice. The lighting can be replaced more easily than the animation system.

[hasperdi]

On the other hand, it depends on what kind of movie you're making and who the target group is.

Say you're making children's videos like Cocomelon or Bluey in 3D, you don't need all these nice things.

At the end, movies are about the stories, not just pretty graphics.

[delta_p_delta_x]

> At the end, movies are about the stories, not just pretty graphics.

The great people at Pixar and DreamWorks would be a bit offended. Over the past three or so decades they have pushed every aspect of rendering to its very limits: from water, hair, atmospheric effects, reflections, subsurface scattering, and more. Watching a modern Pixar film is a visual feast. Sure, the stories are also good, but the graphics are mind-bendingly good.

[Popeyes]

I've always wondered why they have never done a remaster of Toy Story.

[LeoNatan25]

Because they also want to tell new stories. It’s never just about the graphics, unlike most modern video game “remasters”, for example.

[expedition32]

I don't know about that. I watched Avatar 3 last month and I liked the experience but the story was forgettable.

People don't pay 45 eurodollars for IMAX because they like the story.

[LeoNatan25]

Haha, "ton of optimizations" is quite the overstatement, given how terrible games run even on the highest end PC configurations, let alone consoles.

[__alexs]

They definitely do use the video directly from the Volume a lot of the time. It's not just immersion or fancy lighting for the actors.