Across the media and entertainment industry, we’re seeing increasing adoption of Unreal Engine into production pipelines. Epic Games says its engine is now been used on over 600 major motion pictures and episodic TV shows, as well as bringing new efficiencies and creative freedom to animated content, and opening up new possibilities for broadcast and live events.
First showcased in 1998, in the video game Unreal, Unreal Engine was developed for first-person shooters in PC, but it was quickly adopted by game creators to develop a variety of genres of games. It’s so popular that in 2014, it was named the world’s “most successful videogame engine” by Guinness World Records. Adoption by other industries came later, but the name Unreal Engine is most popular, outside gaming, in the film and television industry, which shares much of the same tech and needs as… games!
Over the past several releases the team at Epic Games has continued to extend and refine the feature set for filmmakers and other creatives in the industry. Building on these innovations, the recent release of Unreal Engine 5.3 sees further advances to the virtual production toolset—as well as refinements to the broader feature sets—and prepares for the next generation of ICVFX stages.
The Unreal Engine team has shared on their blog the news about what’s coming in this version of the software, from nDisplay support for SMPTE ST 2110 to a new Cine Cam Rig Rail or support to solve anamorphic lens geometry for distortion. These are just a few of the new features in UE 5.3. Other highlights include path-traced volumetric rendering with support for openVDB import, a new Skeletal Editor, and panel-based Chaos Cloth, all Experimental new features designed to enable more creative workflows in engine. You can see all the new features in Unreal Engine 5.3 in the release notes, and following the link to the blogpost at Epic Games.