The REAL Reason Unreal Engine VFX Looks FAKE

The Unreal Engine 5 cinema camera makes everything look fake. In this video I take a look at what we can do to get more photorealistic renders from Unreal Engine.

Download Virtual Lenses:

[TristanG.]

This reminds me so much of the guy who made a working camera in blender, I love the solution "build it as real life" and bam, you get realistic result, what a surprise :D

[olivetree]

I did the same in blender years ago. It really makes a difference even though it added tons of render time back then

[DanielLionArts]

Anamorphic lenses YES PLEASE!!👍🏼👍🏼
👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼 Bravo Joshua!!

[jeffbellune]

It's funny how the camera manufacturers spend loads of money on minimizing artifacts that prevent the captured image from looking like what our eyes naturally see, yet we race to saddle our "perfect" virtual cameras with those same artifacts. If we'd had the technology in the early 20th century to perfectly re-create in a camera system what our eyes actually see, we wouldn't be having this discussion. We're trying to re-create imperfections and technological limitations that we've been forced to endure for decades instead of fine-tuning the virtual lens to more closely match the human lens. Other than shot-matching CGI to in-camera footage, or creating abstract art, why would we do that?

[FrankJonen]

That is so cool. When I did that in Modo about 10 years ago it took forever to render and I didn't even have the lens dirt and grit. It wasn't manageable for anything but still shots.

[rizzo-films]

As a filmmaker / cinematographer, this is BRILLIANT. Such a smart, creative solution. If we're making virtual worlds, why not use a virtual camera with a truly virtual lens? Love it.

[timbabb]

Looks cool, but it's going to be hell for sampling! You'll get a much grainier image, or spend much more time rendering.

The best place to do this stuff is in a projection shader (or whatever name unreal uses for that step), so the bokeh and lens roughness can be importance sampled.

Also if the engine treats camera rays as special (many do), it would preserve that classification.

[OAa.qS.]

That's all great, but it just doesn't make sense. Using stouch glass won't help to calculate a scene in real-time in Unreal Engine, and since UE is only used for backdrops in movies, it doesn't really make sense either. In Blender, 3DS Max, Cinema 4D, Houdini, and others, there's a function to adjust the lens, as if the image passes through glass. It's not a post-effect; it's simply the lens emulation, and it works without an add-on. Another issue is whether you want to simulate a specific lens or glass with unique characteristics, but in that case, you can't be sure that your material settings in a 3D program will correspond to the physical properties of the real object 100%. So, again, the idea doesn't lead anywhere. What would really be useful and worth doing would be to create LUTs for old films, which could, if possible, not just reduce colors to the final result but also emulate chemical reactions in film, producing the "real color".

[SDRIFTERAbdlmounaim]

Got an Unreal Engine advertisment before this video talking about how *Real it looks* 😂

[liamarter]

This is awesome. Was curious if you were gonna make any anamorphics right before you said it. Super excited to try these out.

[HJ-ggju]

I don't understand? Why use a realtime rendering system just to make it no longer real time? Why not use a traditional renderer and get better results? This makes no sense

[tuenguyen]

this is gonna be the next step of virtual film making, good work Joshua !

[MichaelTavel]

Photographers spend tens of thousands of dollars getting great lenses that minimize these effects. This guy simulates the optics of a crappy disposable kit lens stored in a dust bin and is thrilled.

[jakecarvey]

Love - we've done this in the past in Lightwave, Blender Cycles, etc. So cool that Unreal can do it as well - and love the range of effects you're getting. Cant wait to have a look!

[offyourocker]

this is really cool. i dunno why it seems like so few people notice, but i can usually spot 3d animation or imaging at a glance because for some reason it looks "shiny" if you know what i mean. not quite plastic-y, nor glowing, but maybe comparable to having the object covered in a very thin sheet of oil or water?

[phantoslayer]

This is pretty cool! I thought for a sec that this issue would apply to games, but not really! Which is a good thing.

[LFPAnimations]

Hate to break this to you, but all these effects can be achieved a lot more efficiently in compositing. What would be really cool would be to figure out how to achieve them with a post process material that runs in realtime.

[godsofentropy]

Impressive work, although this product is not for me. I prefer to have the msot control until the end of production, so I do not want to bake these imperfections in engine. I also think that these shots are way too soft - I use vintage glass daily in my film work and I usually shoot with 50+ years old lenses and they still have less halation / blur and are much sharper than your examples, so I hope it is possible to regain some sharpness even with these virtual lenses. What makes lenses truly unique is not only imperfection part but color rendition and contrast. Some lenses are better than others in this field. Nonetheless - good work, hope you will continue to develop this. :)

[daviddayag]

Amazing! The next step is to make CMOS or CCD noise, and maybe even amp glow

[hideodaikoku]

i wonder how far you could control for this with just a post-process material and render targets. like others have said, it looks like this will affect render times by a lot and create a much grainier image