Looking ahead
Earlier this year, Engine House was awarded an Epic MegaGrant. We’d noticed the exciting work the studio was doing in the realm of animation using real-time rendering, and wanted to give the team some help to work on their own IP, something they want to do more of in the future.“There’s so much more we want to do across Film and TV,” says Mike. “With a slate of development projects at various stages, we want to challenge children and young adults with more thought-provoking narratives, reaching them via new and exciting platforms.”
“It goes without saying, financial investment is hugely valuable, especially in animation where there is a heavy spend during early development to create assets and lock down a style,” says Tash. “However, we have found our relationship with the team at Epic goes way beyond the grant. We have been supported in many different ways through helpful conversations, advice and introductions.”
As for Unreal Engine’s role in the studio’s future, Jason is unequivocal. “We are committing to using it as our default for all work unless otherwise directed,” he says. “We regularly find ourselves saying ‘imagine if we’d made this the traditional way, how much more back and forth there would be.’ Especially when you get into feedback and client changes, to be able to just sweep through a list of comments and do it all in one piece of software really speeds things up.”
For a studio that likes to push media boundaries, there’s another exciting prospect to anticipate.
“In the future, we’d love to be able to showcase the real-time aspect of it more,” says Jason. “We end up rendering out an image sequence to create a video file, when you could just as easily put a VR headset on and be inside the footage we’re making and experience it in real time. You can get so much more out of the assets and work you’re creating in Unreal.”
Source: Unreal Engine Blog