Hello all - One of my close friends works on a lot of films and television shows with massive amounts of special/visual effects. Recently, he, I and another party worked on a spec commercial for a high-end Japanese Gin. My friend, having been working larger scale with virtual sets created by a team using Unreal Engine, created a fantastic, very small scale set for the commercial. After finishing (still waiting to see if the spec is picked up), we began discussing using Unreal Engine to create virtual sets as well as the cost associated. Obviously creating the sets is one thing, but the space required to create a believable world ("The Mandalorian" which uses virtual almost exclusively now), is even more difficult. I wanted to see if anyone has used large scale virtual sets created with the Unreal Engine and, if so, did you find it to be more efficient and worth the money in the long run? We are not looking to do a big-budget project ($500-$750k), but we know we can get some amazing production value from the virtual sets... we just need to do more research and value other takes on it. Thanks a lot!
Anything Goes : Experience with Unreal Engine by John Forrest
Experience with Unreal Engine
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I am currently at the beginning of a Virtual Production in a Volume. From the approaches and budgets, there are a few things that are very clear. At this time these are high budget productions with costs amortized over a lot of shooting days and the complexity of the shoots. With the aims and intent of the productions, the costs are break-even over an extended period of shooting. The advantages of unchanging weather and consistent sun position being just a few time, and therefore money, savers. Shifting some of the post operations to actual production in Virtual Production does not seen to be much of a saving just a re-allocation of budget items. There are a LOT of people, gear and specialized techniques involved. So much so that at this point it might be out of reach for small one-off productions.
There are some future possibilities. As more environments become available as pre-built artwork in Unreal Engine, the costs using existent artwork should be a big savings over creating unique places assuming that the look works for a given production. Familiarity with the techniques will develop efficiencies across the board for, I believe, significant savings. As the number of Volumes to shoot in increases, rental costs for them might come down, although the build costs look pretty stable and are understandably very high for a Volume stage compared to a standard stage or location. The complication of a production also has an effect. If the volume is merely used as a backdrop or series of backdrops, then the cost of creating the locations in Unreal Engine and the support needed on stage can be significantly less. It is relatively new tech so it will take a while longer for costs to come down.