How Unreal 5.4 Changes Filmmaking

Unreal 5.4 has huge updates for VFX artists and Filmmakers! I've had a week to play around and start testing it out on real projects, these are my first impressions and how to start using them!
My 3 favorite updates in Unreal 5.4 that we'll cover...
- Learn about the new Motion Graphics toolset (Motion Design + Material Designer)
- How to detail your environments with Nanite Displacement
- My take on the new Movie Render Graph
I've included a quick-start guide for each to start applying them when you upgrade!
For those new to Unreal, just a heads up that you don't need to update your engine and project every time, just upgrade if it's got the tools you need for your project.
Excited to see all of the new support going to VFX and Filmmaking, props to the Epic Team for continuing to listen to the community and add new meaningful updates!
P.S. Are you busy this Thursday? Join my FREE Godzilla Masterclass if you want to learn some Hollywood VFX applied to Unreal Engine 5. Sign up now at unrealforvfx.com/godzilla
We'll go in-depth, showing you how to use Sequencer for Cinematics and create renders, animation, previs. In just 90 minutes you'll learn my whole filmmaking workflow step-by-step! If you're new or advanced in Unreal Engine, I promise you'll learn something new you can start applying immediately!
QUICK LINKS
FREE Unreal 5 Crash Course - www.unrealforvfx.com/crashcourse
Join our 21 Day Unreal Bootcamp - www.unrealforvfx.com/fundamentals
Unreal to Nuke Masterclass - www.unrealforvfx.com/nuke
www.joshuatoonen.com
www.imdb.com/name/nm7930214/
/ @joshtoonen
/ joshtoonen
/ @toonenjosh
Edited by the talented David Carmichael
/ fablesd20
Chapters
0:00 - What's inside Unreal 5.4?
0:50 - C4D in Unreal 5 - The Motion Design plug-in
2:40 - How Material Designer works
3:30 - Update to Nanite (Add Displacement in your Material!)
4:55 - Other Exciting Updates in UE5.4
5:45 - Movie Render Graph
7:35 - Make Custom Menus in MRG
9:00 - Overall First Impressions and Final Thoughts
#unrealengine #ue5 #filmmaking #vfx #vfxbreakdown
How Unreal 5.4 Changes Filmmaking Forever
UPDATE - What Unreal 5.4 Means to Filmmakers

[@JoshToonen]

Epic has made a bunch of great in-depth tutorials written by the staff members who created each new feature! Check out the page below to dive deeper dev.epicgames.com/community/unreal-engine/learning Are you busy this Thursday 8pm EST? You should join me in my live Godzilla Masterclass! It's free to sign-up so enroll here 👉 unrealforvfx.com/godzilla

[@MoorishMade]

Thank you for this. I'm still enjoying your courses on unreal and nuke.

[@PodcastTimeHack]

do you have both version installed at same time? for easy back and forth, I've never tried to have two versions.

[@Tuebewanna]

I got a question what is the difference between unreal engine 5 and uefn like can i still make movies in uefn? Or would you prefer unreal engine 5 for that kinda stuff

[@jazzman7320]

Absolutely mindblown. By making it work in a way that’s so familiar to 2D artists, they’ve just onboarded millions of people onto Unreal in an instant. Bring it on!

[@faustoprieto9497]

SO great to know all these new features. You are amazing Josh, keep it up.

[@begalooloo]

lets go josh fully excited ...

[@visartema]

Thanks Josh for the info. You're great.

[@Praudas]

TOP video! Thank you so much, such an amazing tool!

[@user-ev4ud5xs2j]

Looking forward to more comprehensive tutorials related to motion design

[@PhilEdwardsInc]

i really love your unreal experiments and would love a guide to help ae people convert to unreal motion. i have a lot of trouble figuring out how to adapt a motion graphics workflow beyond some templatized options

[@agnesslovehealz]

Oh yay ita like u read my mind haha was researching all this Oh I so happy you and I'm in for your master class what a blessing we ask and receive

[@BearTechNation]

Mind Blown! 🤯

[@JC-ov8ko]

Awesome stuff!🎉

[@EdVizenor]

Please more tutorials on Motion Desiger! Thank you!

[@Zulushi]

Best Unreal teacher🔥

[@davidgomes4727]

I want to see tutorials on material designer and movie render graph.

[@estate0007]

I would really love to see some Motion Design tutorials from you. Haven't seen any tuts about integrating actual video footage and combine it with 2D and 3D elements like in AE. Is this even possible yet?

[@ThinkerYT]

I love this

[@goldenmikytlgp3484]

To be fair..ue5’s features are interesting, but I may need some time to learn them to properly start cinematic production. I mean there’s a lot of new things. Procidural texturing in-engine, custom rigs and weight painting systems..

[@DimaSO_81]

I’d really like to learn more from you about motion design)))

[@dadisuperman3472]

UE is a proof of the power of C++

[@AR-nr2ix]

Pretty awesome

[@agnesslovehealz]

Oh yay ita like u read my mind haha was researching all this Oh I so happy

[@kevinhebert3597]

awsome

[@IasonasKlapakis]

So I installed Unreal the best time.... Right?

[@estate0007]

I would say the time window will be 5 Years, before AI takes over completely and can create consistent Films. In opposition to photography, illustration (Midjourney) and music (Udio), complex cinematics cannot be done yet. *So yes, this is the golden time in which we can use the traditional 3D modeling/texturing/animation pipeline plus all kinds of AI content and put it all together in realtime in UE5!*

[@Mr.Mirage_YT]

@@estate0007So you saying in 5 yrs ai will do auto rotoscopy auto custom sculpted models? creatures etc… & everything which is in vfx department nd 3D

[@goldenmikytlgp3484]

You sure did buddy!! ^^

[@thedomesticoperator]

It has been the best time since 2013... it's getting out of hand. I'm gonna need AI just to make sure I use all the features.

[@martin231181]

@@estate0007But don’t you also think that ai will be implemented into Unreal when time comes?

[@1edber]

will nanite tessellation work if your running 5.4 on a Mac with the M3 Chip? (supposedly normal Nanite works with the M3 but I'm not sure about tessellation... thanks! (btw, I just subscribed, love the info and the energy of your channel!)

[@tapikoBlends]

cool!

[@Kelticfury]

Time to tune-in to Toonen.

[@qweeze3d816]

What about new retarget options, they are really interesting. Greate video as always!

[@SantanuProductions]

So far we have been doing all these in other software and bringing it into the game engine. I am not sure if motion in UE replaces after effects that has a huge legacy, library templates and support system. Moreover Adobe has successfully positioned its 2.5D graphics being cooler compared to 3D. Whenever we made 3D motion graphics, our clients always felt it was dated. So, its the mindset of customers that need to change. The designers always want something like UE 5.4 The bigger demand would be the ease of making custom assets something like in Reallusion iClone. (Though iClone is also limited). So that we can focus in our storytelling.

[@kgdllc]

Unreal Has OFFICIALLY taken over!

[@spaceexpireaudio666]

trying to finish some Blender stuff and hoping to do the next music video with Unreal someday

[@mayanksrivastava885]

I dont know if you know this but you sent an email about your Godzilla course to Stripe. I work for Stripe hence got a solve because of you. Thanks!

[@merunyt4254]

Want some motion graphics tutorials in UE 5.4

[@hermanmern]

can you talk about what pc specs are best for unreal? thanks

[@faithaloneinchristalone5824]

cant find your Godzilla masterclasses on your youtube page anymore is there away you will put them back up

[@VisualistAyush07]

Hey josh,My pc is not that good My pc only have 16 gb ram and a potato gpu nvidia GeForce GT 730,I currently using blender and I am pretty good in it but I am thinking to use blender with ue for more photorealism So which ue should I use ?

[@MangaGamified]

as long as it doesn't involve thousands of dynamic trees, cause nanite doesn't work as expected on those tho

[@armondtanz]

What happens when sora drops this year. ?

[@PP3D]

👍👍👍

[@ytubeanon]

I'm so sad, I switched to UE from Unity, but there's a bug where like 90% of plugins can't be updated for 5.4 - using RunUAT they return 'Error:... can't be empty'. Bunch of forum threads about it saying the bug's been around for over half a year, startimg with 5.3

[@NastyKnox]

Well good thing is you can always rollback to earlier versions of Unreal, but that sucks

[@agnesslovehealz]

Quick question what labtop would be best specs getting nvidia rtx so can level up

[@shamaiahellis8810]

Get a rtx 3070 or higher if your gonna do anything with raytracing 4090 recommended. That's my answer though.

[@agnesslovehealz]

Heck yes exactly what was lookong it the 4060 rtx thank u yay​@shamaiahellis8810

[@calebkeller7694]

does anyone know if 5.4 has performance improvements for Mac? Also does Mac even support the new Nanite update?

[@giovannycastillocarvajal721]

Anyone else's crash course link says that video doesn't exit?

[@metatech2008]

Can you please recommend a laptop that can run unreal 5.4? Pls

[@dejuanballard3367]

This! I have a regular laptop not gaming or anything and I really want to learn unreal.

[@benlukas9462]

Links in emails are not opening

[@arshifarooq9199]

That all are incredible features but only for experts. I am being using unreal since 1 year and the worst problem I face is environment designing. I designed several environment to make what I want and which fits perfectly with my animation and story but nothing works.😢😢

[@benlukas9462]

a strange site opens klik

[@Spectre_2030]

wait ur telling me sport news and stuff useing Unreal Engine😭

[@smepable]

Whats the Problem?

[@KillerRobotz]

unreal developers :who is our competition unreal staff: EVERYONE!!!!! 😡😠😡😡😡🤬🤬🤬😠😈 Adobe cinema4d maya

[@MainYotubeacct]

I get the artists have skill but what about the software developers on the program 😱😱😱

[@masricoqueelchocolate.]

WHAT? Well need a 64 gb ram for this?

[@jtstudios9443]

the movie render graph looks unfortunate

[@alirezakangavari5699]

Hello, thank you for your good training, I have one belief from you.... Many of your audience are non-English speakers and your fast speaking confuses the audience. Please speak more slowly if possible. We have a proverb that says that so-and-so's urine is spicy

[@zdenekburian1366]

Am I the only one, after seeing sora etc shots, who finds all of these ue/max/maya/houdini/etc features - while being innovative - outdated and poorly interesting?

[@kamazooliy]

Hahaha so clueless.

[@zdenekburian1366]

​@@kamazooliy Thanks for answering me, mine was a provocation, however I read that financial analysts for example are betting on Autodesk for its plans to integrate AI into all products, so I believe that sooner or later most of the features will be governed by artificial agents within programs and 90% of the commands and pipelines that are so enormously complicated and layered today will be useless. I left the archviz industry in 2004, as soon as I understood that global illumination algorithms would have supplanted my artistic manual skills, but today if I were a beginner I would think carefully before embarking on a career almost entirely subjected to very difficult and specialized technicalities but so highly automatable