Partnering with BMW and Epic Games, the design and CG crew at Mondlicht Studios in Germany put Unreal Engine thru its paces to add flashes of the surreal to this cinematic for the 2023 Game Developers Conference.

Zhanna Travkina, creative producer at Mondlicht Studios: “Our main objective was to push the boundaries of Unreal Engine 5 and explore the capabilities of Substrate, a revolutionary material authoring system. Substrate provided us with a versatile and modular framework, allowing for a wide range of surface appearances and a more extensive parameter space.

Stefan Evrard, head of Unreal Engine at Mondlicht Studios: “The main challenge was to work in a very tight deadline using experimental features. The BMW itself was from CAD data, and considering there was not enough time to optimize the entire car, we ended up animating the environment instead of the car. So, except for the wheels turning and spinning, the car itself is always static. That means we could move a few thousand polygons or so instead of the millions of polygons and thousands of objects within the car.
 

“Sometimes you have to learn new tools on the spot, and it’s important to keep an open mind to learn things without holding on too much to your usual tool set.”

 
“The video also represents a lot of experimenting with Substrate, Unreal Engine 5’s approach to authoring materials. While Substrate is undoubtedly more powerful, we did have to adapt to the new system, including all the new layering possibilities it opened, to be sure we exploited it to the maximum.”

David Schaefer, the CEO and co-founder of Mondlicht Studios: “Sometimes you have to learn new tools on the spot, and it’s important to keep an open mind to learn things without holding on too much to your usual tool set. Technology advances so fast, especially Unreal, that being flexible and ready to learn new things is a very important mindset to have.”
 
 

 
Client: Epic Games

Production: Mondlicht Studios
Director: Mondlicht Studios
Unreal Engine Lead: Stefan Evrard
Creative concept: Ilya Nodia, Stefan Evrard, David Schaefer
Producer: David Schaefer, Dmitriy Glazyrin
Animator: Stefan Evrard, Ilya Nodia
Modeler: David Schaefer, Sven Giera
Cloth simulation: Alexander Richter
Data prep/support: David Schaefer, Jonathan Braun
Graffiti/2D support: David Schaefer, Ilya Nodia, Basti Trescher
Grade/final edit: Stefan Evrard

Music/sound design: Stefan Evrard

Special thanks: Zhanna Travkina, Sergey Pantyushkov, Florian Dirmhirn, Stefan Wenz, Epic Games, BMW