I am increasingly convinced that we are facing an epochal change for the entertainment industry, whatever the future of film storytelling, the video game will play an important role in its evolution, where storytelling and interaction, the boundary between cinema and video games will always be more united.
The Matrix Awakens: An Unreal Engine 5 Experience
Once again the technology of Unreal, which was one of the forerunners of the use of real-time technology of the video games engine applied to the VFX on the set in real-time, joins with its technology, one of the leading cinematographic products of this end 2021, which is the new chapter of The Matrix.
“I imagine the first company to build a true Matrix, a fully immersive and persistent world, will be a games company and Epic is definitely leading the way for that. It’s astounding how far games have come in twenty years.
Epic Games has announced Matrix Awakens: An Unreal Engine 5 Experience:
>Now available for free download on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X / S.
Written and directed by Lana Wachowski, the film features Keanu Reeves and Carrie-Anne Moss reprising their roles as Neo and Trinity and, in a new reality, also play themselves.
The project brought together many members of the crew who worked on The Matrix seminal trilogy, including James McTeigue, Kym Barrett, John Gaeta, Kim Libreri, Jerome Platteaux, George Borshukov, and Michael F Gay, in collaboration with the Epic Games teams. and partners, such as SideFX , Evil Eye Pictures , The Coalition , WetaFX (ex Weta Digital).
“Keanu, Carrie and I had a lot of fun making this demo. Epic’s sandbox is really special because they love to experiment and dream big. Whatever the future of cinematic storytelling, Epic will play a significant role in its evolution.”
With Wachowski and many of the original crew on board, the team set out to create something with Unreal Engine 5 that was nothing short of spectacular – an experience that blends art forms in new and exciting ways.
The demo begins with a cutscene that features exceptionally realistic digital humans, before transforming into a fast-paced interactive experience of car chases and third-person shooter action.
Despite the complexity of the city, a relatively small core team was able to create an incredible experience, thanks to a set of procedural tools including SideFX’s Houdini. Procedural rules define how the world is generated: from the size of the streets and the height of the buildings to the amount of debris on the sidewalks.
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The demo features the performance and likeness of Keanu Reeves and Carrie-Anne Moss as incredibly lifelike digital humans. To achieve this, Epic’s 3Lateral team captured high-fidelity 3D scans of the actors’ faces and 4D captures of their performances in their Novi Sad studio.
Vehicle movement, character clothing, and building destruction are all simulated in the engine using Unreal Engine’s physical chaos system. During the chase experience, as car crashes are simulated in real-time with Chaos, the same crash will never happen twice. It is unique in every race.
