Disney uses Epic's Unreal Engine to render real-time sets in The Mandalorian
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Disney uses Epic's Unreal Engine to render real-time sets in The Mandalorian
"If you looked at it casually, you thought you were looking at a live-action set"
In context: The Mandalorian, a Disney+ exclusive, is the first-ever live-action Star Wars television series in the history of the franchise. It is also the first production of the property that uses Epic's Unreal Engine.
Fans started noticing Epic Games listed in the credits of The Mandalorian shortly after the show debuted back on November 12, but Disney revealed the collaboration back in a 2018 investors brief. However, the company didn't mention the show by name, so it somewhat slipped under the radar.
"Epic Games, developers of Unreal Engine and Fortnight, is collaborating with Lucasfilm to bring the power of Epic's Unreal Engine real-time rendering to live-action production for the first time ever on a series for Disney's Direct-to-Consumer streaming service launching late next year," the briefing read.
VFX blog "befores & afters" noted that at Siggraph 2019, head writer and creator of the show Jon Favreau discussed how the game engine was used to help with the previsualization (previs) process.
"We used the V-cam system where we get to make a movie, essentially in VR, send those dailies to the editor, and we have a cut of the film that serves a purpose that previs would have," Favreau told the crowd at Siggraph.
Unreal was not just used to create dailies, though. The Mandalorian set had LED video walls used to provide "in-camera composites." The SFX team projected pre-rendered content like environments on the LED walls, which served as dynamic green screens of sorts.
"We got a tremendous percentage of shots that actually worked in-ca