Unreal Part 3 : Architecture + Games [DXY Journal]
DesignXY Ltd Journal, looking in depth at how our architectural practice uses digital technologies to visualise projects to high standards, using software that is increasingly shared with the film and game industry [Part 3/4].
[6min Reading Time]
On 13th May 2020, Epic Games revealed its Unreal Engine 5 demo to the world. At that time, I was interested not as a game developer or even as an architect, but as a casual observer, keen to see what it was possible to render in real-time.
For anyone that’s ever spent any time trying to coerce a computer into producing anything resembling photo-realism of a building, scene or figure, I imagine the reaction is at least worthy of a raised eyebrow, but for me personally, the demo elicited a low whistle of admiration, excitement and slight disbelief that what I was seeing was possible.
I’m not going to review the demo, but if you’re interested and haven’t yet seen it, I’d encourage you to witness for yourself.
Flash back to Christmas 2019 and one of the items that was a late addition to my Christmas list, was Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order™. My wife (in no way an enthusiastic gamer) had reluctantly conveyed this request to Santa Clause and both Joseph (then 11yrs old) and I were delighted when I opened this gift on the morning of 25th December. Later in the day, when all of the inconvenient Christmas trappings of food and seeing people were out of the way, we got on with the real meaning of Christmas, which as everyone knows is Star Wars.
Cal Kestis looks out over the spacecraft graveyard, on Bracca.
Onboard the Stinger Mantis on Dathomir, the chromatic aberration effect is visible at the edges of the frame.
Navigating across the galaxy through Hyperspace at incredible speeds.
The Blu-Ray disc went into the PS4 Pro; after an eternity of installation (there’s a lot of data), the splash screen came up, accompanied by the rising orchestral swell – at some point, an animated image appeared on screen with the Unreal logo, blending into the sights and sounds of the build-up to the start of the game.
Over the coming nights, weeks and month or so, I saw the same image and thought little of it. I hadn’t seen The Mandalorian; I hadn’t had the conversation that sparked these investigations. I just knew that Unreal Engine was powering the look and feel of this game and both Joseph and I liked it a lot. I can’t remember the last time I played a game from beginning to end… twice.
As with Unreal Part 2 : Film and The Mandalorian, the specific title or content isn’t really the point – the fact that this is another Star Wars based Journal post is almost incidental, but it’s where the opportunity laid for Electronic Arts (EA Games) to make an engrossing game, just like The Mandalorian provided Epic Games with the opportunity to demonstrate what Unreal Engine was capable of, on a live action TV show.
Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order™ is a third-person action-adventure video game; you control the journey of Cal Kestis and his droid BD-1, through a number of worlds and landscapes, seeking to re-build forgotten memories and restore a lost legacy of galactic level importance. The graphics and in-game effects incorporate a level of artistry that I found to be absorbing; the narrative and gameplay itself is compelling. When I returned to older games after completing Fallen Order, I found the graphics to be underwhelming to the point where I lacked interest and ended up leaving them barely touched and most certainly, incomplete. In contrast, when I completed Fallen Order, I missed the exploration and challenge so much, I started it again on the toughest settings.
Cal looks out at the hostile world of Dathomir, planning the next phase of his mission.
Cal on the green and temperate world of Bogano.
Unable to find a way into his next objective, Cal scales an ice cliff on Ilum, seeking a way inside.
Cal, navigating his way back to the Stinger Mantis, on Dathomir.
Cal approaches the Tomb of Miktrull, on the planet Zeffo.
Making progress through the industrialised fringes of Zeffo.
Shortly after starting the first run-through of the game, the developers released an update patch that incorporated a Photo Mode. I can’t justifiably describe myself as a keen amateur when it comes to photography, because I don’t use my camera often enough, but I do enjoy photography and having this option in the game brought with it another dimension that made me want to explore more of the digital maps and set up the camera lens to record the journey.
This is certainly not the first game to offer this photo mode feature, in fact there are many commentators that took exception to the fact that this feature wasn’t included within the initial release of the game. I didn’t know that these features were central to the look and feel of Unreal Engine – in effect, the lens through which we see the world has as much impact on us as the world itself.
But this is an exploration of virtual worlds / landscapes; these images existed initially in an artist’s imagination and then in a developer’s computer. How’s that so different from what I do for a living? I take the idea further – the successful concept sketch becomes a manifestly physical form, in which people live, work, and occupy those ideas.
So what if Fallen Order, or similar games, did not involve lightsaber duels, or blaster fire, but were instead virtual brochures for something, perhaps a town, a city, or a civilisation that we wanted to build? Exploring it in this way allows us to see the good, the bad and the ugly elements of the vision, but then to do something about it before we commit to construction. Of course we’ve had virtual reality for years, in various forms and to varying degrees of success, allowing an increasing number of people to explore a vision, before it’s made physical.
Cal silently approaches another objective, in a hidden Imperial base.
Deep exploration of environments reveals additional layers of artistry.
The Photo Mode within the gaming engine has been activated by the developers in an update patch.
Equipped with a small rebreather, Cal infiltrates deeper into the semi-flooded Imperial base.
Cal approaches what must be another ancient tomb and more puzzles to solve.
Depth, scale and lighting are used to great impact in the gaming engine and associated assets.
What’s the difference between the presentation of the digital assets in the game, in VR and in the vast majority of building models produced by architectural practices? What impact should this have on my architectural workflow? It comes back to a word that I’ve mentioned a number of times now in this Journal series. To draw us in, it has to be immersive.
When we see something we can begin to appreciate it, but when we experience it, we begin to believe in it. That’s why humans love story-telling – through the power of our imagination, we begin to see through the eyes of others.
It’s also why we hate being interrupted when we’re absorbed in a story – our imagination has already taken us somewhere else, only for us to be wrenched back to reality, often at the whim of someone that wasn’t sharing in that moment, or hadn’t invested in that alternative narrative.
Good films are immersive. Good games are immersive. We can already see how the two mediums are converging, not just in terms of the way that the visuals are produced with very similar technology, but the increasing prevalence of A-List actors offering their appearance and performance to games. High profile screen-writers and musicians are also highly active in this merging of entertainment genres.
Whatever you may think of video games, the rise of the HD TV (with 8K resolutions and above), means that our homes increasingly provide a more credible environment for this mixed media approach to entertainment. The pixel count means that the quality of any visual media has to be much higher than it would have been a decade ago. The production pipelines that are used by the entertainment industry need to change to reflect this upscaling; for the first time, the resolution of the images that we see at home, is starting to overtake the resolution of images seen on a cinema screen.
With lightsabers ignited and humming in the rain, Cal faces off against the formidable Second Sister.
Aboard an Imperial Walker (AT-AT), Cal considers a ‘take-down’ with assistance from BD-1.
Deep into a refinery on Kashyyyk, a KX Series Security Droid rapidly closes the distance to Cal.
As an architect, knowing that my clients are regularly consuming media at very high resolutions, I want my outputs to reflect that. Whereas 2D line drawings were still produced by hand at the beginning of my architectural career, we quickly moved on to rudimentary 3D modelling, with materials, textures and lighting. In everyday practice, 3D models in greyscale are the standard output of my daily work, but that’s changing.
To practice, is to continually seek to improve. In Unreal Part 4 : Architecture, I’ll share how Unreal Engine is starting to redefine what we consider to be best practice at DesignXY Ltd.