The most striking one was Ninja Theory, the creator of Senua’s Saga: Hellblade 2, showcasing Epic’s brand-new MetaHuman Animator. By enabling independent developers to record realistic facial performances using an iPhone rather than specialised equipment, the tool claims to increase the accessibility of realistic facial capture for this market. The tool enables a studio to swiftly and precisely turn a closeup video of an actor into something a studio can use in-game, as you can see from the two demonstrations Epic supplied. The animator will debut this summer, according to Epic.
In a separate demonstration, Epic showcased some of the improvements in Unreal Engine 5.2 using, of all things, a digital reproduction of Rivian’s R1T electric truck. The EV ended up being the ideal showpiece for the new Substrate shading technique in UE 5. With the aid of technology, artists can produce several shading models and overlay them anyway they see suitable. To demonstrate how Substrate can allow multiple material layers to interact with one another without producing lighting errors, Epic gave the R1T an opal body in the demo. Additionally, the demo served as a demonstration for the new Procedural Content Generation capabilities from Epic. With just a few carefully designed elements, they enable level designers to produce vast, intricate worlds.
