Inhabited

This video was made as a side doodling project to see what could be possibly made by one persons only with the power of Unreal Engine and the tons of free assets on the marketplace (95% of the assets in the video from the free ones, few are purchased).

The people who knows me & been following here, knows that I’m a programmer who play with Unreal in my free time, so I’ve no real base for artistic vision or art skills, or cinematic sense or storytelling experience, which was a huge reason to invest several hours across my weekends to make this incomplete project. The target was playable with 2.5 minutes of cinematic, but I decided to stop it at this stage (1.13 min)

Seeing a lot of amazing work everyday shard on unreal engine hashtags and groups on Twitter & Facebook made me wondering, are those people really skilled? why everyone makes amazing work lately in the past few years? why all this suddenly show with Unreal engine only? why this only happened after the swamp of free assets started couple of years ago? why everyone put the magical word “megascans” makes great footage? why everyone using Unreal now considered an A class artist?

So I wanted to try and feel, and see what is the feeling that people get when they only mix and mash assets from the marketplace and come up with nice footage..and is it possible to make such a thing without being an artist at your core (as me)? how long it take to make something thing this way? or is it even worth it?

After making this project..

I’m glad to say, anyone with Unreal Engine and Epic account (free assets access and megascans) can make a AAA quality project alone. But keep in mind, it’s a lie to think they really were capable of making this, and it is silly of them if they believed that they really done something awesome, as what they done was basically taking the work of hundreds of people, and simply mash it together in a kitchen mixer and put some eyecandy that unreal have by default!

I didn’t continue in that project, because I knew the answers I was seeking and because I found there is “zero joy” or “zero magic” (at least for myself) in that process of: Purchase->Download->Add to Project->Make quick camera->Nice light->Some god rays->Pos-Processing->Render… you get a wow footage in no time!!

The real “joy” and real “magic” is in what relies under the hood..is in the code of that big machine that convert those dead hull 3d models into fabulous video..so I’m happy where I am..I’m happy at the IDE and text lines and this is where the time is worth wasting 🙂

Putting a single sphere in Unreal, would look pretty by default. So, don’t ever go “wow” when someone say “i made this epic scene” because they simply didn’t!

Now at least the next time I see someone posting a WOW video or even screenshots saying they done it alone. I won’t go wow easily..

P.S. The music credits goes to the long time love…Crysis

-m

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#Update:
I forgot to mention, I’m also not a big fan of large project size. And this type of assets swamp projects, are getting xxlarge super easy!