{"id":176765,"date":"2019-11-20T22:00:38","date_gmt":"2019-11-20T14:00:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.geek.com\/featured\/-1811238\/"},"modified":"2019-11-20T22:00:38","modified_gmt":"2019-11-20T14:00:38","slug":"how-the-mandalorian-uses-fortnites-game-engine-for-filmmaking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/itteacheritfreelance.hk\/test\/wordpress\/2019\/11\/20\/how-the-mandalorian-uses-fortnites-game-engine-for-filmmaking\/","title":{"rendered":"How \u2018The Mandalorian\u2019 Uses \u2018Fortnite\u2019s\u2019 Game Engine for Filmmaking"},"content":{"rendered":"
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There were a lot of cameos to catch during Disney+\u2019s Mandalorian<\/em><\/a> premiere last week. Prisoners frozen in carbonite, Salacious Crumb\u2019s siblings on a spit-roast, an IG assassin droid, and a brief background shot of a secondary Mandalorian figure with armor almost identical to Boba Fett\u2019s. But eagle-eyed production nerds may have noted a surprising real-world cameo in the episode\u2019s credits: Fortnite<\/em> developer Epic Games.<\/p>\n

Fortnite<\/em> is the new killer app<\/a> among generation Z, adding a competitive edge to the building mechanics they learned in Minecraft<\/em>. But Jon Favreau\u2019s team isn\u2019t crediting Epic because of on-set battle royales. Instead, The Mandalorian<\/em> makes use of Epic\u2019s other cash cow- its widely used Unreal Engine 4 game development engine.<\/p>\n

Unreal Engine 4, or UE4 for short, powers not just Fortnite<\/em> and other Epic properties like the fittingly named Unreal Tournament<\/em>, but many high-budget \u201cAAA\u201d games across the industry. These include stylish games like Kingdom Hearts 3<\/a><\/em> and Dragon Ball FighterZ<\/a><\/em>, and even Star Wars games like the recently released Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order<\/a><\/em>. And during a surprise on-stage appearance<\/a> at the Unreal Engine User Group at the SIGGRAPH 2019 computer-graphics conference earlier this July, Mandalorian<\/em> executive producer Jon Favreau explained how he\u2019s using the popular game development tool for filmmaking.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s start with how UE4 helps streamline existing filmmaking practices. \u201cWe used the V-cam system where we get to make a movie, essentially in VR, send those dailies to the editor,\u201d explained Favreau. \u201cand we have a cut of the film that serves a purpose that previs would have.\u201d<\/p>\n

There are two big takeaways from this quote. First is the \u201cV-cam system,\u201d which refers to a built-in tool for Unreal Engine called the \u201cvirtual camera plugin<\/a>.\u201d This system allows users to take the mock environments they\u2019ve built with Unreal Engine 4\u2019s more vanilla features, render them in real-time, and create customized virtual cameras to move about 3D space within the scene to record it live.<\/p>\n