Maya Artist Tries Unreal Engine for the First Time!

you may already know this but i've been using maya for about nine years now as my main tool for everything primarily animations but also everything else i need to do and we did this video once before with blender and since then i've been having a blast using both maya and blender depending on what i'm doing i'll mix and match and try to come up with some workflows but today we're jumping into unreal engine 5 we're going to open up the valley of the ancient project and just play around see what there is to see and get a sense of this whole real-time game engine stuff i have been living under a rock for the last two years as everybody else has been learning unreal engine and making all this cool stuff in it and i don't know how to do any of it that changes today if you are as new to this as i am unreal engine 5 you should absolutely watch this video i have a link to this page down below these are my computer specs which is a pretty beastly computer so we're going to see how this performs on the 30 90 and everything else i got going on but with that let's dive in wow that looks really good geez uh first question how do i move can i move like normal hey yeah okay oh what did i click oh shoot wait i think you can right mouse click oh i can move like a game that makes sense in a game engine whoa what the heck oh you click on the camera and you can see through the camera that's cool fire looks great all right let's just back oh my gosh oh my gosh look how big the world is are those like cloud what are these cloud masks jenner oh so it's like generating all right oh look i can see the end of the world if i loaded more i right click load selected cells will that give me more i can't even imagine having this much geometry in a 3d scene the fact that it's all like lit and rendering i mean i feel like i'm going to sound like an old man like wow back in my day i don't know [Music] any other 3d software would i feel like would struggle i just feel like they're not built for this type of thing so this is really cool already i haven't even done anything yet let's find out oh my god it worked wow i was kind of thinking like are these matte paintings like these are oh my god oh my god these are actual assets interesting because yeah i guess a map painting wouldn't make sense it has to still be in 3d space so you have like backdrop oh and it shows me where they exist like in the world space so that must be just like a lower level of detail or it's not level of detail anymore because unreal engine 5 i don't know it's something like that who knows let's let's play let's see what happens all right this is looking really nice look at the little subtle motion of things okay drone gimme oh well this is sick oh wait whoa whoa whoa whoa okay hold up we're gonna zoom in on this middle the middle of the screen look at that there's like a there's like an atmospheric like turbulent heat distortion this is look how much geometry is loaded in i mean i mean we see this in games right like i'm this is kind of uh i don't want to sound i have to i have to like phrase this very carefully oh my god look at that indirect lighting the global illumination that's nice here's the thing we i play a lot of games we all have played some games and you often see big sweeping vistas like this but this is different this is a ridiculous amount of detail both close up and far away like this is there's no like you know 2d cards in the background that are snapping in and out of level of details focus like this just looks crazy good so this i'm guessing is what the quixo mega scan library is that what they're using the like the rock scans because this is great sorry let's go ahead and just return and it says to move okay nice animation ah it's so cool again this is something that people who work in games are probably really used to but like as someone who's only ever done like i've only ever learned from like the movie feature pipeline side of things or even a little bit of tv you don't make your stuff in your software and then play it at the same time like this is so cool yes eject detach from the player controller f8 okay yeah okay oh that's spatial audio though wait wait left and right oh my god i don't know if you can hear it in your headphones or your speakers but like my headphones have all the 3d stuff the gaming headset it like absolutely knows where it is and it gives you the audio spatially like behind and around you so you can actually edit it that's crazy and look at the lighting because this is the part of the demo where i go to the dark world right 2 000 years later okay that's sick as a heads up that loading transition i cut it down it does take a really long time the first time you run it but apparently it's like five seconds after that i'll test that later this is sweet though oh it looks my campfire same assets interesting so it actually is the same stuff really cool looking oh and i'm running now hold to walk all right we'll go cinematic sweeping shots look at that look at the detail this is so wait oh look at the feet look at the feet look at the feet the feet i'm looking at the ik right now look at where the feet placement is it knows exactly where the ground is and it adjusts like if i stop her on this rock will her foot go on the rock okay that one's a little weird wow look at that i can ever stand on this rock that's so cool look at that that's awesome shoot hold oh look at that hold up do you see that like rainbow chromatic aberration that's sick the effects on this are oh there oh i must have shot through the the loaded geometry oh that debris looked really cool i wish i could rewind so yeah if you haven't watched the demo like i haven't watched the talk on this there's a whole bunch of like technical stuff that goes into calculating like changing her animation procedurally based on the height of this object where she lands how much she rotates all these different things oh and look at this look at this the world building this is like a little bit of a preview as to what's about to happen it's like the world building of this scene we got anything else look at how cool this is look at how like nice that geometry looks all the detail what is that is that the shadow of the of the smoke on the ground we haven't talked about that look at all the fog hold up actually let me come out all the way back here because i don't know if you guys were i wasn't paying attention enough to like call it out look at all the smoke like across the ground the fog there's so much in here what is that is that an asset can i click it oh oh that's like the live smoke volume i think so good ah and there's our friend all right that's all hand keyed that is so cool that's amazing what happens if i don't move that's so cool all right now before i like beat this robot because we're about to beat this robot um make a mistake i want to eject oh that's soaked oh my god look the lighting oh the little sparks the particles bro look at that i love this look at that animation and there's that whole ik thing that we're talking about the whole that little that little lean right that whole little lean is procedural it targets the player's location at the beginning so all this hand keyed and then bam the keyframe animation stops and then all this body motion right there is driven i love the fingers like watch this like this little [Music] and it just stops that looks great whoever animated this let's pause right there actually let's get the impact let's get the impact that's so cool now all these little things they're not even sprites they're actual little pieces of geometry being individually lit yeah does she have facial expressions she does oh look at that all little molten pieces those are cool oh my god oh no ground is even like liquid oh whoa look at that you've got like liquid rock like molten rock right there and as it time goes on it looks like it it like hardens that oh my god look at the detail on this helmet this thing is so far away from the character and yet it looks this good i guess it's because we have the little cutscene so it actually is like you don't have to swap you don't need like a cut scene version and then like a it's all just an engine it's just just looks that good that's cool when you look at it it looks like it's inside i think it's all just shader magic it's the moment i enter yeah none of it's actually there that's really well done look how cool that i mean that really looks like there's depth i just want to i just want to see the wire wireframe can i see the wireframe i don't know how to do anything let me close that ancient content characters echo no that's that's the that's her animations oh that's cool all of our animations are in here oh that's cool ah oh no what did i do i hit escape oh no god dang it okay so trying this again this time i'm not gonna hit escape let's go back to my little portal now you can see how fast it is now that we've done it once see how quick it is the second time okay real time how fast are you now that we've loaded all the apps the assets in there we'll fade back when complete oh my gosh yeah that's world's better let's just blow this dude up now and because i don't want to do the whole thing all over eject yes look how cool that is oh the little pieces of geometry yeah i'm pausing okay there's little rocks on the music it's still going through the whole audio thing even though i pause it it'll probably get quieter for a minute look at that there's little bits of geometry actually bouncing off of him it's a real it's a real physics simulation oh my god did you see that these little rocks and these little pebbles now that might be like oh yeah it's a physics simulation like no big deal like do you realize like we're supposed to be in the camera right now i'm supposed to be looking at his feet this is what the camera sees i'm still looking at his feet and yet it's calculating like little pebbles bouncing off his back and falling to the ground we can't even see any of this okay so look at that that is like it looks like a 2d smoke asset i think it might be a 2d smoke acid but it's existing layered in 3d with other smoke assets that make it feel bigger but you can see as i move around it's sort of like a card there's like motion in here there's like different servos and stuff going on look at like on the side of them there's like something right there look at that one it's like hidden behind it we can't even see it hardly look at that look at that turning gears ready ready ready here we go here we go [Applause] come on there oh yes look at that that's crazy okay so we're gonna get all kinds of cool like camera effects they're gonna blow up the screen well that's i'm pretty sure we just went through a magnifying glass that's like how that feels it feels like we're going through a magnifying glass look at that you can see the sphere you can see the spherical area of effect of that blast and a spherical spherical this is looking sick look at those little distortion distortion spikes with live active refraction this is happening on these little tiny spikes among everything else like with all this other geometry in the world with like all this other stuff happening down here is animation like this is all happening at once that's a cool frame grab that for a screenshot fantastic because you go a few frames let's go ahead and play well that was cool did you see that that little animation of the like he was like oh my hand no he like closed it all right so that opens up this thing so let's go ahead and shoot that now same thing oh little streaks little streaks of things they've got such cool variety of effects in here there's like plasma spilling out of his like stomach cavity these little diamond shaped molten things or sparks these little flaming smoke pieces little sparkly bits well since you can all watch the actual like demo from the camera view let's go ahead and just finish them off not in the camera view oh that was cool all right here we go here we go ready right there so that gives us the moment of impact i'm gonna eject from him big ol explosion so my camera is like i'll leave the camera over here and then we'll hit play yeah a couple frames you can see the glass exploding out little pieces of glass wow is there a fraction in these little pieces of glass there is i think there is b i can't tell let's go ahead and play let's just watch it oh that was cool it like shot with the velocity back i feel like i've made this variant like i've taken this epic moment and i'm just like frame by frame i wonder if they this no why would they that's funny oh yeah so there's like no ground under him because you can't see it his feet are still his feet are still like stuck on the ground because of course like they're ik feet why would you why would you animate the feet you're not gonna see them once his knees come down you'll never see the feet again so in case anyone's ever wondering like do i have to animate everything if it's off camera this is one of the big differences there's been like big differences with movies and games is in movies you only have to animate what you can see or anything that will like affect what you have on the screen so like if you can only see your characters like top half you don't have to animate the legs and the hips but you might still need to animate the hips a little bit to get like the lower part of the body because it's still affected you know but you don't have to defeat games you generally kind of have to do everything because you can look at the character from all angles so you can't really get away with anything here but with this make an exception i do not understand how everything we just saw was happening in real time completely like lit looking like perfectly rendered there was no noise there were effects there was lighting cloth dynamics there's hair i think she has hair right mr shift hair things going on kind of she has realistic hair i don't know how that works though if that's like simmed or not all this geometry loaded and running smoothly like remind me why we have to render frame by frame uh effects can i just drop nfx oh portal explosion whoa how do i trigger it how do i have it like loop can i do that i don't know what you're supposed to do like how you can affect the thing look at the dust you really get to make a decision now like do you want to dive into houdini make some cool scent which like there's a reason for all of that you know but like actually that's probably in that's probably from houdini well no this is from epic this is their demo maybe it's not because you can make that kind of stuff in houdini and then bring it into unreal and then have it run but you could probably also make it in unreal i wonder i have no idea how this works okay here's what we're gonna do oh my god it works oh my god do you see what i'm seeing do you see what's happening okay so what we're looking at right now is to the right of the rock on the ground you see how the shadows change so here's the thing that is what global illumination is all about when i worked at dreamworks the first thing i got assigned to the first like project i was working on was torch it was dreamworks is proprietary lighting package that they developed and as far as i'm aware they don't use it anymore we were i was teaching lighting that was like my first thing and it was a pbr renderer a points based or pvr point based rendering stuff i don't explain it very well but basically just think that like you had to generate points for everything you wanted to do like you'd have to generate if you wanted to render the fusion render specular render bounce lighting things like that you had to specifically render and generate lighting points for that thing this wasn't compositing this wasn't like making a a diffuse pass and a specular pass what an ambidexclusion pass it was like a weird point based lighting compositing that eventually would lead to like the real compositing it was weird i don't know how to explain it i tried all kinds of different workflows i did this for months and months i worked on trolls and i did a lot of stuff like that and one of the things that i noticed at the time was that every combination of of rendering that i could do looked really cg it looked really like computery and like it looks like a cg movie there was one thing that i did every time that was the key to making lighting look realistic that took it from looking like a cg computer generated world and took it to making it look real and that was bounce lighting indirect lighting the global illumination that i've been talking about here this is how to test to see if this has global illumination as far as i'm aware this is how i'm going to do it anyway all right so we can tell that this purple light is emitting light down onto this rock down the ground below and onto her easy that's direct lighting is this casting a purple light down onto this rock and then bouncing that purple light back up off the rock and you know tinted with this orange color is that casting to the bottom of this other thing that we've added to the scene i don't know if this is the best way to test this out it's bouncing down bouncing back up and we're getting the bottom that is our global illumination that is our direct or what do you call it indirect lighting i didn't realize i could keep this like live and active when i was doing all this look at that if i move the rock it'll live adapt her foot placement now here's the big question what happens if i leave it there oh my god it's just there it's just there what happens if i go into the dark world with this here the disappear no no it's still there that's cool so my little rock would be there too huh oh yeah there's my little rock can i shoot it what wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait can i duplicate can i take whatever this is and duplicate it this is supposed to be destroyable right control w i feel like i might be doing something i'm not supposed to do i wonder if i'm gonna crash unreal it's like frozen right now we still got the music but i can't do anything okay well i have i have frozen the scene and that seems like a good place as any to wrap this up unreal is ridiculously cool i have no idea how to do anything really want to learn this there are a ton of resources i know they have available they have an entire online like learning course thing with a bunch of free tutorials so i'm definitely gonna have to dig into this the one thing i want to try right off the bat is i want to animate some stuff and put it through the engine and just see if it looks good rendered if that's even like doable because i know that i'd probably have to export as alembic and i don't know if alembic is nearly as fast as the fbx stuff that i think goes into here no idea if you enjoyed this please let me know in the comments of what you'd like to see me do in unreal or other software you want me to try i want to do more just like exploring software trying things and just learning videos so if you found this interesting if you want to check it out links to unreal and all the stuff below let me know your thoughts what i should do next and if you did enjoy it please hit this button and subscribe if you haven't already helps a ton with this you know youtube sending my video out to more people so thank you for that and uh thanks for watching i hope you enjoyed it i'll see you in the next one [Music] you

Channel: Sir Wade Neistadt

Views: 78,899

Rating: 4.890697 out of 5

Keywords: unreal, unreal engine, ue5, learning unreal, ue4, maya to unreal, first time in unreal, unreal engine reaction, ue5 reaction, ue5 demo, valley of the ancients, maya artist tries unreal, ue5 animator, maya artist unreal, maya ue5, maya ue4, unreal for maya artists, unreal for animators, maya artist tries, artist tries, trying unreal engine, how to learn unreal engine, unreal engine tutorial, ue5 tutorial, ue4 tutorial, epic games, unreal engine 5

Id: -MypPX9QzT0

Length: 21min 23sec (1283 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 16 2021