Go Under the Hood of Unreal Engine 3 in a Jaw-Dropping Trailer

[John Funk]

Go Under the Hood of Unreal Engine 3 in a Jaw-Dropping Trailer

[video=3034]

I don't know what half of these graphics terms mean, but they sure do look pretty.

We can probably all agree that the recent Unreal Engine 3 [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/108294-New-CryEngine-3-Trailer-Shows-How-the-Next-Generation-Could-Look] trailers were both stunningly gorgeous, but they were obviously aimed at different markets. The CryEngine trailer was an obvious tech demo, boasting all of the engine's technological features to convince developers to use it for their game; the Unreal trailer was more like a cinematic from a videogame.

Well, it's Unreal's turn to give a tech-focused trailer, and Epic's engine doesn't disappoint. As an Epic employee informed us on the forums [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/7.269620-Gorgeous-Next-Gen-Unreal-Tech-Demo-Would-Make-an-Amazing-Game#10356831], the earlier trailer was indeed running in real time - but it's not until we see the engine like this that it's very easy to wrap our minds around.

This behind-the-scenes video debuted last week on Kotaku [http://kotaku.com/#!5789088], and it is staggeringly gorgeous. This is the power of Unreal and DX 11, and it makes my computer's poor video card squeal in terror just watching it.

It's also surprisingly lush for an Unreal Engine video. What happened to my gunmetal gray and chest-high walls? Oh wait, there they are. Phew, I was getting worried for a moment.

Permalink

 

[Art Axiv]

This made me want to play with the editors. Too bad my laptop is too archaic...

 

[gigastar]

Damn, that looks nice...

I think its getting to a point where the graphics in games are starting to surpass real life.

 

[Wolfram23]

Funny, I seem to recall seeing this thread already in the gaming discussion forum =P

Anyway, yeah, looks fantastic. Here's hoping we see some games try pushing that kind of graphical fidelity in the next few years.

 

[Frank_Sinatra_]

Oh man that's an amazing engine. The cloth effects just blew me away as cloth is one of the hardest things to animate. (Yes I do have animation experience)
That foliage was pretty sweet as well.
The multichannel keyframing is quite interesting and I'll tell ya that having that in PMG Messiah would save me a ton of animating time.

 

[Ghengis John]

Between these trailers and ID's upcoming unveil of ID tech 5 in RAGE, it seems everyone's making a big push to get their engines out before the public.

Also I'd seen these trailers before, but it's nice to see an official posting.

 

[Proteus214]

It's another step towards making the current hardware generation just a little easier to develop high quality content. The Unreal mobile stuff is huge. Thank christ for the navigation mesh mode.

 

[draythefingerless]

Well this is U3, so i guess i shouldnt ask much from it. Overall, it has the Unreal problem of over polishment and over reflection. The lighting could be better. I always loved the clothing ingenuity in it thou. It looks kinda weird in the details, but its good in the physics and polimerization. IN the end thou, this is a engine showcase, aka, you will never see nowhere near this complexity in games. Takes too much time and is too complex to be worth it.

 

[carpathic]

Ummm...I have to say that it looks pretty friggin impressive. My video card is currently curled up in a corner, crying like a little baby. Curious to see where this engine ends up getting used.

 

[Vrach]

Damn, that looks nice...

I think its getting to a point where the graphics in games are starting to surpass real life.

Hehe, made me think of Futurama:
"You need to go out and see the real world."
"But this is HDTV! It's got better resolution than the real world!"

And yah, me likes :>

 

[XT inc]

I wonder what the gen after this will look like.

 

[solidstatemind]

Tim Sweeney is a genius of the first order. I hope the new tools are in the UDK already. I've had an idea banging around in my head for a while now...

 

[NickCaligo42]

A lot of the impressive stuff is just the new DX11 features they implemented last month, and a lot of that is just additional post-processing garbage that puts an extra coat of gloss on things. Otherwise everything from roughly 1:03 on is old news--year-old news, to be specific, and older. Except Unreal Landscape, anyway, and I'll admit that it is rather a big improvement on the original terrain editor.

Their claim to "realistic foliage" made me laugh on account of the fact that it has nothing to do with their editor at all--how realistic or non-realistic a plant looks is entirely up to the environment artist who's modeling and texturing the plant and what kind of shader you put together for it. As it stands a lot of the assets they're showing off have huge shader networks that do ridiculous things to get the realistic effects seen; it's definitely professional, but it's anything but easy and requires considerably more effort than the standard "normal map, specular map, diffuse map" workflow that results in all those ugly Gears of War Frank Miller-ish-looking models that we know Unreal for and it's got to be a fairly costly solution in terms of computing power.

 

[Hiken no Ace]

*Mentally calculating the cost of a rig required to take full advantage of this technology*
. . . . . . .
"Ouch..."

 

[Callate]

It's pretty, certainly. The landscape, tessellation, bloom effects, and depth-of-field look particularly nice.

The way clothing moves still doesn't look quite right to me, though. Small enough quibble, but it's strange that they can make the notoriously difficult hair look good but loose clothing just doesn't quite look like it's moving in all the ways it should.

 

[Throwitawaynow]

It's also surprisingly lush for an Unreal Engine video. What happened to my gunmetal gray and chest-high walls? Oh wait, there they are. Phew, I was getting worried for a moment.

Cmon, as long as concrete is grey and dirt is brown shooters that take place on a planet will be grey and brown. I know it's the standard joke to talk about how dull the colors are, but look at this. If they go for realistic or even have normal colors, it should be grey and brown.
As a game they have a luxury to make up anything they want. They shouldn't have to be restricted by what is present in the real world, but it can't be denied that this is what is there. Dirt is brown, dirt is everywhere, everywhere is brown.

 

[Valiance]

If any of you were wondering, the music in this video is a version of Foregone Destruction, specifically the version used in Unreal Tournament III.

Spoiler

The technology displayed in this video is pretty sweet, especially the displacement and tessellation. Smoke/Steam/Fire effects in Unreal always looked fantastic, but here they look better than I've ever seen them. Surprised they didn't show off some of the texture detail/lighting from Mirror's Edge, haha. But really, the Depth of Field is pretty exciting stuff too, background blurring depending on focus and whatnot...

I really love Unreal Engine 3, and I used to be a big Epic fan. While that's dropped a bit in recent years, I hope their mobile device development leads to some sweet games on the NGP, and a proper sequel to UT.

 

[xanovich]

Sweet! I just wonder what kind of alien tech PC will be required to run it smoothly...

OT: Oh, the music...

 

[Leaper]

Surprised they didn't show off some of the texture detail/lighting from Mirror's Edge, haha. But really, the Depth of Field is pretty exciting stuff too, background blurring depending on focus and whatnot...

Well, as far as I know Mirror's Edge used different lightting engine than the UE3 buil-in one.

Though I'm absolutely impressed by the way hair looks, if hair will actually look like this on in-game characters its a huge leap for game developement (and dont laugh at this, making hair look like actual hair has been a priblem in game developement since like when Teris came out).

And music indeed makes this clip a lot cooler to watch