Behind the scenes of Netflix’s ‘In Vaulted Halls Entombed’ | Spotlight | Unreal Engine

Cthulhu. Flesh-eating spiders. These soldiers are having a bad day!
Discover how the VFX team behind Spider-Man created an animated thriller for Love, Death + Robots season 3, using a new real-time animation pipeline and Unreal Engine.
Read more at: unrealengine.com/spotlights/h...

[@CinematographyDatabase]

Wow I had no idea this one was UE and MetaHumans, incredible

[@Jsfilmz]

hahah yea i had a hunch it was when i watched it. Been staring at unreal renders too long hahaha

[@Mythpathz]

Me too

[@RoyalDog214]

@@Jsfilmz I had a hunch they were using Unreal Engine ever since the Lucky 13 episode.

[@IOTADesignstudio]

i knew these are metahumans but i wasnt sure until i saw this... this is game changer

[@Argosh]

@@superkoopatrooper4879 very wrong. They use cinema grade engines that have nothing in common with game engines.

[@CrossMindStudio]

Finally some groundbreaking invention for cinematics and storytellers. Really loving the strong foundation being laid by Unreal for future of cinematography. Metahumans, Megascans, Realtime rendering, Whats next? Ai which can populate a scene layout based on written scripts :P, honestly its not too far from possible. Thank you for sharing this.

[@joech1065]

“Ai which can populate a scene layout based on written scripts” Yes, please.

[@Yvaelle]

Wow yea! Integrating a Text-to-Speech AI like Dall-E or Midjourney into Unreal would be a whole different degree of game changing because it probably could yoink assets from Megascans to fill a scene with essentially the same effort as it does for 2D. You would then need to build your environment out from that - refine it - etc - but you could probably enter "Dark Night, Spooky Forest, Wendigo Eating Child" and have it populate a 2D scene (already do-able), then have it match 3D assets to the 2D image (particularly because the best text-to-image AI's are already calculating depth layers to establish perspective). You could probably even improve iteration time by having the Text-to-Speech AI produce a variety of 2D options, and then choose which to convert to 3D (assuming this is taxing, but maybe it's not even that insane, apart from downloading new assets). Slap a VR headset on while you do this and that's essentially a Star-Trek holodeck (missing only the energy-matter converter now, save that for Unreal 6.0).

[@justins21482]

I've considered that one of the next major steps for a while now. I thought they already write programs that do that with environment artists coming back and adding the fine details and flourish's. but yes I agree, being able to sit down and type in something like "create a sleepy northeastern seaside town" it then pumps it out and you determine what needs tweaking

[@guily6669]

Definitely not my cup of tea and I wouldn't pay a single cent to watch something like a movie but that looks like a game. I mean this is so wasted potential that could have been a good game instead and for a movie that is supposed to look realistic it fails miserably too as it could only be compared to very old and cheap budget movies except even worse since the characters are not even persons but rather game level CGI which even make it worse than the stupid random low budget Sci-Fi TV channel movies or series which have stupid strange low end CGI but at least have real persons in them 😂

[@CjPetru]

@@guily6669 did you actually watch the episode?

[@TheDigiVault]

The future looks pretty amazing for small studios.

[@winsomehax]

And consider how this stuff is well within the budget reach of a motivated average young person - even the assets (textures etc) are available from Quixel Megascans. A few years ago you would have needed $10s of millions to do anything remotely like this. Now all you need is a couple of thousand dollars (and that's coming down fast), lots of talent and time. Expect some astonishing stuff in future.

[@pcguidelk]

When All other game engines were to be licensed! paid a hefty amount to use them, Unreal did the unthinkable with it! Happy to see how far it has come and left the competition in the dust!

[@renatosardinhalopes6073]

How long ago are we talking about? Which engines?

[@pcguidelk]

@@renatosardinhalopes6073 when unity was at version 3.5 - when cryengine was out but wanted a huge amount to start developing.

[@forcews]

This openness is best future model too, those who make big money pay little % to EPIC and everyone else & hobbyist can use UE free until they succeed. This is best way for Unreal to spread into every corner of world. Unity is filled with 3rd party proprietary garbage and uses ancient licensing model like it was common for all engines 20 years ago.

[@renatosardinhalopes6073]

@@forcews 5% is not "little" lol

[@renatosardinhalopes6073]

@@HuanLeVuong If you're EA or Ubisoft... yeah, lol.

[@DxBang3D]

One of the details (besides the amazing REALTIME graphic) was the IR laser which was only visual with NV goggles. Such a NICE detail to include there!

[@BlackEagle352]

Its visibility is paired to that specific camera in UE.

[@cosmicegg1283]

i wish they put the same amount of detail to the sound design. Those gunshot sounds take me out of the immersion.

[@DxBang3D]

@@cosmicegg1283 i guess they took the gunshot sounds from call of duty...

[@StylizedStation]

the future of cinematics is here guys!

[@madeofcastiron]

it was this episode that made me really doubt my own eyes and brain. like i know it's all cgi, but there are some points where my brain just refused to believe they were cgi. the characters just looked so realistic. the visual of this episode is absolutely stunning.

[@sigrid714]

Perhaps in the near future, when we have advanced VR headsets capable of facial tracking, the actors can just act out the whole scene IN the CG world, in the body of their CG characters, instead of having to pretend that a towel rack is a cave wall.

[@NikHem343]

That’s an incredible idea

[@joech1065]

That would be revolutionary.

[@DrTheRich]

Although I think there is the visual problem that you can't capture the face, and have vr googles on at the same time, because the goggles ar in front of the face, preventing you from tracking the skin around the eyes, which is vital for realistic face animation. Anything short of vr contact lenses is needed to deal with that...

[@sigrid714]

​@GambleSTARS Epic actually had a video of someone doing just that, in one of their demos showing their iPhone face capture app, but it wouldn't be necessary. There are more elegant ways to solve the problem, such as tracking cameras on the inside and bottom of the headset combined with software interpolation (which is what Meta/Oculus is developing), or custom head gear, not unlike what the actors are currently wearing to hold the face tracking camera in front of their face, that holds VR displays in front of the actor's face with minimal face contact.

[@DrTheRich]

@GambleSTARS you could, but that would be a lot harder for the actors to get correct every time, you need to match cues and stuff. Match head movements with face movements for example or it would look really uncanny. I think the limitation is humans there, not necessarily technology.

[@xOubax]

What an amazing job guys! This was a very entertaining look into what actually went into making the best animated short for season 3 and quite honestly it's one the very best animated shorts I've ever seen to date! ! Hope to see more like this project from you guys in the near future! Now a full length version would be even better! The sky is quite literally the limit now in terms of what you create digitally. I can only imagine what the next Avatar will bring!

[@lapinobel]

Still remember installing the first "Unreal"-game from 3.5" floppy discs onto my and being in awe when those lights in the tunnel turned off, or when you first stepped outside of the spaceship. Now we have this. Wow.

[@Anonymous-iw4hx]

the game was released on cd :)

[@lapinobel]

@@Anonymous-iw4hx was a pirated copy, downloaded from a BBS. I'm old. bought it later.

[@Panzer_the_Merganser]

@@lapinobelHaha wow, I can’t imagine the time it took to download, then transfer to floppies.

[@lrlconcepts1891]

Favorite line... Boss... "We are going to do this in the Unreal Engine... answer... "I don't know what that is.. but lets try it out..." lol!! Whoaaa... so awesome!!! I have never looked back ever since I learned how to use the Unreal Engine to create my short films and episodes

[@QuirkyAvik]

I ABSOLUTELY LOVE that show. Learning about it's purpose makes me extremely happy.

[@shmookins]

I don't understand the tech, but I am excited that the pros are happy, and I also see magnificent results exactly like the Love Death Robot series. That Matrix demo looks insane, too, and I played it myself! What a time to be alive.

[@slyace1301]

It's also amazing that human models don't look creepy

[@arung6532]

We need a season 4 I love this anthology series pure artwork!!!!

[@_gungrave_6802]

Its scary to see how powerful UE5 is so just imagine where we will be at with storytelling once Epic has finished tweaking UE5 and added more assets before they move on to develop UE6 in say 10 years time.

[@MrDaveVendetta]

I need more of this story please. It’s one of the best I’ve see with Cthulhu.

[@m3dia_offline]

I had a feeling that this was UE and metahumans but wasn't sure. So glad to find out from the pros that the very randomized workflow I am using in my 2nd UE short film being created from my home studio is very much along the lines of the work flow they are following, this is mad and revolutionary. Coming from video production I never would have thought I could create a project of the level I am doing now with real time tech.

[@pluckypanda9937]

Hey, can I see your first UE short film?

[@413Devin]

I had no idea they used Unreal for this, one of my favorite short movies!

[@Respected_Gentleman]

The most photo-realistic scenes ever. Only in tiny parts (ie: where the female actor hands out ammo whilst they sit on the cliff) did it seem poorly animated. Very VERY impressive!

[@mho...]

Its awesome to see how far Unreal engine has come! as someone who played the original Unreal back then as one of the first "shooter" games, its always incredible to see the evolution from back then to where we are now!

[@thefaithfulwisp6272]

Ngl, re watching the episode after seeing this im amazed of what they did. Like how they handled gore, Blood,visuals looks something made with maya or blender

[@VincentVangasbel]

Watching this video makes me rewatch that episode in particular and pay more attention to every detail

[@kjvelarde]

Yea... we need the full version of each episode from it 💪💪

[@Blearky]

There is nearly no better advertisement than sony pictures speaking so positively about UE. Keep it up with the awesome work you are doing.

[@EvanPoliquin]

"real time decision making" = "now that I don't have to wait 4 days to see my edits, I can make so many more of them!"

[@MrNagafen]

Sitting here jaw dropped..... totally blown away.

[@uilifecteau4841]

Wow, so exciting. Good work team!

[@fohhee]

One day, the people that in the behind the scenes will be reveal as metahuman at the end, and it will blow our mind.

[@Enzait]

This is phenomenal!

[@DJNAS454]

That is honestly amazing

[@activemotionpictures]

Hopefull when AI solvers for IK read the mocap, feet on the floor and darting eyeliner, the production pipeline will increase 10x for amazing stories yet to be edited. Great video @Unreal Engine!

[@MarcWeertsMusic]

Amazing little movie. Looks very realistic and works very good as a mini horror movie. There were definitely moments that I couldn’t tell whether the characters were cgi or real in a cgi environment.

[@martini668]

We need more of this

[@sivarbest1638]

i was watching that episode ,it´s amazing,well done👏👏👏👏.

[@Tezok19]

This episode was crazy!

[@KhayalJalilov]

This is insane 🤩

[@ArtismAnimation]

It's amazing how the tech has been grown

[@Gamesoldier68]

Thanks for the video. As much as I love, Love Death + Robots short stories, I would love it even more if animators would start making more full length feature films. Writers have come up with some amazing ideas in story telling and making more animated movies within this genre would be very appreciated. Thanks again for the video and all of your amazing work.

[@rikudouray]

The workflow with UE is God send...

[@MR3DDev]

I do hope that adult animation come back now that we have this tech. By adult I mean serious stories like LD+R

[@Danuxsy]

oh that's what you mean by adult...

[@DataMakesItWork]

Incredible!

[@terenceteb3020]

This didn't supreme me, because I knew it was possible watching it. Very inspiring.

[@CAHOP2401]

I saw this episode and could instantly recognize the actors in it. I thought it was one of the most realistic shorts of the season in terms of fidelity. Had no idea it was done in Unreal.

[@pmrd]

I thought the exact same thing. It was definitely one of the best looking shorts of the bunch. Finding out it was done in Unreal Engine is blowing my mind.

[@lizzam]

Whoa, this is Unreal

[@nirmalyasengupta9013]

outstanding..amazing...those CGI feels ultra realistic...UE5 rock

[@simpernchong]

Bloody amazing.. wow

[@spyder001]

Just the title hooked me, and had to share with a buddy. Cthulu

[@dropppitlikeitshott]

Wow! It's insane this quality of animated movies are being made inside UE. I guess it's evolving and becoming much more than a "game engine".

[@blahblahpocalyspe8323]

It was a predictable story but an absolutely gorgeous one!

[@ever6]

I totally forgot about this season I guess I'll binge this 4th of July weekend

[@tdreamgmail]

Can't wait to play this!

[@oshokeadomokai4529]

Incredible, men I so do love LDR.

[@tfrancesco70]

So I was watching the show and from the first shots I could't understand the media, I thought of a comp with live actors; then of course I realized it was all CGI, but never ever would occur to me it would be done in Unreal, I thought of some render engine as Vray, Arnold maybe or something proprietary as Hyperion. It's kind a shock to me, since by chance I'm gonna learn and start using it professionally from this very day. XD Wow, breathtaking!

[@XJoukov]

it is still rendered using unreal engine path tracing renderer so as to nothing that breathtaking in regards to real time graphics

[@re3370]

I hope they make a full feature from this one. Mindblowing how good UE is becomin' 😍💯

[@mrnickke]

Ue is game changer, since I came to learn about it, I have discovered amazing things.

[@unorthodox5171]

Well done, Unreal Engine. The time has pass the point where video game production companies struggle with game graphics engine, used up excessive budgets, and still ends up with unoptimized less impressive looking graphics engine. Now they can focus on storytelling, concept, gameplay, etc instead. What a time to live for people like me who loves playing video games with good graphics.

[@Coreymj91]

So excited for the future games in unreal 5

[@oWelpy]

Insane!!!

[@renxzkie]

you should have a continuation of this

[@KEOSOUNDS]

What an exciting time for animation! When I saw these episodes of Love, Death + Robots I was entirely sure that this was made with UE5.

[@pmrd]

Well.. you're wrong.. because it's UE4..

[@brettbradley2572]

This is very impressive

[@paulo.esteves]

I could swear the three last characters were Crixus and Varro from Spartacus and the girls was Rosita from walking dead

[@winstonhow3614]

it was freaking good !!!

[@HardcorePanda]

This is truly unreal. I thought these quality was only possible with Autodesk's suite pre rendered stuffs.

[@360.Tapestry]

all of the episodes are good this season

[@frankmills1917]

Well, we can say that this is, unreal.

[@majklnajt1772]

many thanks for video :)

[@ChrisBicourt1]

It's amazing how this is Unreal Engine 4 but it smashes anything done in Unreal Engine 5 so far

[@jhesustribuzi4279]

Yeah, man. I thought they used some kind of ~UE5 Beta~, but it was with UE4. Incredible.

[@fracturedreality88]

focus on the story telling...love that note

[@ElenaBG3]

This episode is fantastic...hope it's a game we can play

[@christopherlyndsay8611]

Huh?? It’s an episode from love death and robots lmao

[@rejophilipjose7763]

Seriously every episode should have a video on how it was created.

[@tj_nanda]

check on Netflix yt channel, they have it on playlist. it short though

[@jonteguy]

Unreal Engines takeover era has begun. Love UE, using it myself. But I'm not going to lie, I still want some studios to use inhouse engines because it's fascinating to see other type of tech. I just love tech.

[@gxrsky]

There's a big chance a lot of these movies will look the same. That's what I'm afraid of.

[@JeffersonDonald]

This answers a question I had about “Lucky 13 (LD+R S1),” which was also directed by Jerome Chen. I had assumed that it was created in UE, but am now aware that it was not.

[@syntaxed2]

They use UE for stage environment in the Mandalorian, by projecting the scene to a roomwide greenscreen with the actors in the middle of the room, they can see exactly what the scene environment is and get added bonuses like free environment lighting and ability to actually see VFX while acting.

[@AlessandroSchiassi]

It's a LED wall, not a greenscreen ;)

[@altongames1787]

Guess what? Unity was used for the lion king.

[@thefaithfulwisp6272]

@@altongames1787 well its mostly previs

[@altongames1787]

@@thefaithfulwisp6272 That doesn't change the fact that it was used

[@thefaithfulwisp6272]

@@altongames1787 indeed

[@jatigre1]

How far we've come from the days (or nights) of Unreal Tournament online. I miss Deck 16.

[@underakillingmoon]

You are wowed by this short film until you see the last one of LD&R.

[@angelabird85]

Such a cool episode. You dont see cosmic horror much

[@Jsfilmz]

HAHAHA I FREAKING KNEW IT WAS MADE IN UNREAL! I Called this on my channel when it came out! The future is here

[@PinkDolphin343]

Im your biggest fan, cant wait for you to produced an episode for LDR season 5

[@user-ds5jd5zy2d]

Awesome

[@carlosrivadulla8903]

wtf!!! this was unreal?! this was the most realistic one. U guys should say at the beginning or at the end of the short this was made in unreal because u deserve more aknowledge. Give some credit to the engine, people must know.

[@winsomehax]

Love, Death and Robots was hit and miss in S1 and S2 for the story - but even so, some of the FX work was astonishing and demonstrated that the cost of making TV/Movies is dramatically reducing in real terms. S3 seems to have hugely improved the quality of the storytelling AND gone even further in the FX. I'd say there is only 1 mediocre episode in S3... the rest are quality... and this episode was a good one.

[@o-wolf]

wth are u talking about?! 🤨 EVERY season of LDR has been stellar

[@AllStarHockey1331]

@@o-wolf seasons 1&3 were amazing..season 2 was hot garbage. Just my opinion obviously.

[@ToffepeerTH]

But is the final rendering also done in UE? How much compositing is involved, these are unanswered questions which I find usually where the magic step is made in realism and quality

[@pabloa4672]

No me van a creer, pero cuando vi ese capítulo me dije "esto tiene que haber sido hecho con MetaHuman, ¿Qué otra tecnología llega a ese nivel?" PD: Love, Death + Robots, Sony y Netflix, queremos los juegos! 😁

[@kyojin2455]

The fact that this is undoubtedly the best engine for game creation with cutting edge technology and AI and its all for free is crazy...

[@GoTeamScotch]

This video reminds me of how I feel when my dad shows me something his phone can do. "I can play music over bluetooth to the speaker but then route calls to my headset" That's great, dad. The future is indeed amazing.

[@Kinos141]

Was a fun episode.

[@face76]

Was that Joey was recognizable right away for me. The world looks amazing. But they have been pretty detailed for the last few years. While metahumans is mind blowing I can still easily tell they are computer created.

[@dylanfontaine591]

Don't know why they call the entity Cthulhu, when they more closely represented him has Kthanid, his almost identical good natured brother. Golden eyes, not imprisoned in R'lyeh instead imprisoned inside a crystal cave, as he is said to be in lore. And he also shows them a vision of him combating his brother, that eventually he will rise and destroy their world unintentionally driving them mad, except for the male soldier who tries to free him.

[@Mazda6B6]

Avatar workflow was similar. Pretty cool!

[@wokelion1573]

When will it be showing on Netflix?

[@SkegakisInc]

This story was one of the top 3 most memorable (to me) on the latest season of LD&R. However, I gotta say their facial expressions, body movement and the lighting felt weird in places. Regardless, seeing as most? of them had no experience with UE, and they only worked on this for a few months, imho they accomplished something good. Edit: They said they got help from Epic, something that most devs don't get, so I had to change awesome to good. afai've seen, most UE devs share info amongst themselves rather than getting it straight from Epic, which is arguably quicker and more accurate.

[@craigseaward990]

this is how full movies should be.

[@youngsandwich967]

unreal engine is great man and i cant wait to see what it brings in the coming years

[@kobi2643]

Anyone knows how they post processed the mocap animation, do unreal engine allow comfortable tools for animating ? or you should do it in other software ?

[@riskrunner-oy4ws]

Wow imagine also using AR for the actors which displays the environment

[@Tejay21]

I need that Metahuman Tool in editor!

[@joemarklin]

Environments looks great, faces still have that dead eye look that all computer game characters have.

[@cameronbrown9266]

How is he an animator and not know what unreal engine is???

[@DrTheRich]

If you work for years for the same company with the same software, just do your job, and never really keep up with the outside world beside work, you might have missed that. Especially since the animation tools in UE5 are kinda new

[@merlinwarage]

@@DrTheRich You are not a good professional then. In this profession as in the IT, law, etc, you have to follow the news, tech and trends.

[@DrTheRich]

@@merlinwarage debatable... I'd argue if you do your job, your boss or client is happy with your results and you get paid well enough, you're a good professional... If you're an animator, you learned to work with the software your company uses, and your animation looks amazing, because you mastered the fundamentals. And when the company changes to something new, you'll learn that when the time comes. No need to learn about some random game engine. That's your bosses job. Keeping up with the news, tech and trends takes lots of time which might keep your productivity down, leaving your boss/clients less happy... And requiring to keep up with these things outside of work, shouldn't be a requirement for a job. You might be a better professional if you did, doesn't mean you're not good if you don't.

[@ZalvaTionZ]

A good animator is a lot more valuable than a mediocre animator who knows a lot of softwares. Software is just a tool, your core skills are a lot more important than learning something that you can pick up in weeks or months compared to years or decades it takes to actually be great at your specialization.

[@user-eq6vs7tl7r]

меня всегда интересовал не результат а процесс сколько людей делало и в какой последовательности велась работа