I Really Hope UE5 Makes High Quality Movie Tie-in Games Possible

[Lozjam]

Movie Tie In games are really known as a relic of the past. They used to happen pretty much any time a hit movie came out, and with varying degrees of success. They were often cheap projects that sold relatively well. Kind of an easy way to "cash in". However, we have seen budgets absolutely balloon. It's in this way, that we had an end to the movie tie in game. It was way too much work and money, for relatively little gain. Developers had to pretty much an entire game, completely from scratch. They had to make the movies as close to realistic as possible, and that was a tall order.

But really, something about the UE5 demo put a spark in me. Being able to bring in film quality assets, with no optimization. That is absolutely incredible.

Nowadays, most films and series use a large amount of CGI for basically everything. Hell, even a series like the Mandalorian, uses Unreal Engine 4 to create many of the setpieces, aliens, and effects of the show. Could you imagine developers being able to just input Mandalorian assets, and having a huge basis for the game done already? You can basically input all of the assets, and have large chunks of your levels and worlds already pre-made. The only thing developers would have to do, is apply game design to it, and change the world to properly suite level design. This could really be a game changer for movie tie in games.

This could actually give movie tie in games a lower budget, and even higher quality. It's absolutely mind blowing if you think about that. I mean, so much work is put into virtual sets, models, and effects. This could really change a lot. So much so, that perhaps film makers and game makers could work together and share assets just across the board.

It really is amazing what this new technology could be possible of. And boy, am I now salivating for a Next-Gen Mandolorian game.

 

[Bjones]

its not the same type of assets. movie assets a usually not even polygons and use very complex rigging.

 

[Komo]

Nowadays, most films and series use a large amount of CGI for basically everything. Hell, even a series like the Mandalorian, uses Unreal Engine 4 to create many of the setpieces, aliens, and effects of the show. Could you imagine developers being able to just input Mandalorian assets, and having a huge basis for the game done already? You can basically input all of the assets, and have large chunks of your levels and worlds already pre-made. The only thing developers would have to do, is apply game design to it, and change the world to properly suite level design. This could really be a game changer for movie tie in games.

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Can't they do this already with Frostbite? I mean some of the maps look incredible already.

 

[Cosmic Voyager]

I don't ever want to see more movie tie-in games lol

 

[Chivalry]

This is not how any of this works and studios generally don't share assets.

 

[Deleted member 29682]

One of the highest quality movie tie-in games was Thor for the DS.

 

[nsilvias]

are we forgetting that tie in games were usually bad when they were big?

 

[ILikeFeet]

fuck that, I want movies made in Unreal Engine

 

[MadMod]

fuck that, I want movies made in Unreal Engine

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Yeah use game assets to create movies instead haha.

 

[Stone Ocean]

They'll just keep doing low budget, low effort mobile games, if anything at all.

 

[kadotsu]

fuck that, I want movies made in Unreal Engine

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May I suggest the Mandalorian for that.

 

[Mobius 1]

Movie tie-in games can disappear forever as far as I'm concerned.

 

[kiaaa]

They've been bad because of low budgets and tight deadlines, not because of tech.

 

[Nacery]

fuck that, I want movies made in Unreal Engine

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The Mandalorian already uses UE4 for a lot of their special effects.

 

[Lozjam]

I don't ever want to see more movie tie-in games lol

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Yeah a lot of them were awful. But some of them were really good, and have some of my fondest memories.
I mean, Spiderman 2 predated Spiderman PS4 in so many aspects. Spiderman PS4 was basically a spiritual successor of Spiderman 2, and Spiderman PS4 is one of my favorite games.

Plus you had very high quality Harry Potter games, and the great LOTR games too of that golden age of the ps2/GC Era. Which I l legitimately miss.

 

[Anth0ny]

soon, on the playstation 5:

 

[Jamesac68]

How on Earth would the graphics engine a game runs on be an indicator of its quality?

 

[NinjaScooter]

Technology wasn't the barrier to making movie tie-in games. I think the real issue is that major publishers and developers were re finding it tougher to justify dedicating the amount of money and resources necessary to produce modern AAA games to a license they don't own. That and being beholden to someone else's IP and the problems that might come with that (what if the movie ends up being a complete stinker? What if you need to delay the game but can't due to coinciding with a movie release date?)

 

[Deleted member 12790]

The Houston Rockets used standard OBJ formats for all their in-house production stuff. Thing is, none of that stuff is suitable for game development. They gave me a model of the toyota center, and I thought I had a beefy computer at the time, and it brought it to it's knees. They showed me a model of James Harden that was, in the most literal sense, photorealistic. As in, people quite literally don't know they're using models in many of the videos they produce.

It took me a long time to work everything down to a level of quality that could run in real time in a game, and by that point, it was no where near the stuff I had been shown prior:

So, to your point, to a degree, these kinds of things are already done, but it's not just plug and play. They require quite a bit of refactoring over everything else.

 

[Mariolee]

its not the same type of assets. movie assets a usually not even polygons and use very complex rigging.

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This is not how any of this works and studios generally don't share assets.

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Didn't they explicitly say in the interview today that this used to be true, but moving forward UE5 would be able to use the same assets for both movies and games and convert them accordingly?

 

[Deleted member 17388]

One of the highest quality movie tie-in games was Thor for the DS.

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This is true, also Captain America: Super Soldier for the Wii! Pretty fun, responsive controls, and stylized visuals.

 

[Khanimus]

Movie tie-ins aren't bad because of UE not being good enough. They're bad because developers have a tight-as-shit deadline, working with limited reference material of concept work and usually outdated scripts. All of this needing to be done with already strained budgets and resources.

 

[Lozjam]

How on Earth would the graphics engine a game runs on be an indicator of its quality?

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Basically, my argument is that UE5 can take film quality models, and allow them to run in game, with no/very little optimization. So, a vast majority of effects and sets nowadays, use CGI with models. So, being able to just input all of the models from the film, and all of the sets, takes away a lot of the time from having to do that stuff from scratch. Which could make movie tie in games possible again, while having film quality models

 

[JahIthBer]

Budgets are still going to skyrocket, besides movie tie in's are more mobile games these days, you get stuff like Terminator Resistance but it doesn't sell well enough to warrant not going mobile instead.

 

[Cosmic Voyager]

Yeah a lot of them were awful. But some of them were really good, and have some of my fondest memories.
I mean, Spiderman 2 predated Spiderman PS4 in so many aspects. Spiderman PS4 was basically a spiritual successor of Spiderman 2, and Spiderman PS4 is one of my favorite games.

Plus you had very high quality Harry Potter games, and the great LOTR games too of that golden age of the ps2/GC Era. Which I l legitimately miss.

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Quality aside, I just dislike the very premise of a tie-in game. Why would I want to play something that is just a rehash of something I just watched? Or if's a very loose tie-in, why not just let it completely be it's own thing instead instead of having to dance around designs, characters, etc. of the movie?

I just don't see any scenarios where it improves the game. Sure, games can end up good despite being a tie-in, but I'll take a standalone Spidey, Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, etc. game any day over one that is beholden to mimicking the designs, voice acting, etc. from a movie.

 

[Khanimus]

Basically, my argument is that UE5 can take film quality models, and allow them to run in game, with no/very little optimization. So, a vast majority of effects and sets nowadays, use CGI with models. So, being able to just input all of the models from the film, and all of the sets, takes away a lot of the time from having to do that stuff from scratch. Which could make movie tie in games possible again, while having film quality models

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They're not starting production of a game with all those assets dropped on their lap. That stuff is being worked on for the movie all the way up to the release.

 

[Lozjam]

The Houston Rockets used standard OBJ formats for all their in-house production stuff. Thing is, none of that stuff is suitable for game development. They gave me a model of the toyota center, and I thought I had a beefy computer at the time, and it brought it to it's knees. They showed me a model of James Harden that was, in the most literal sense, photorealistic. As in, people quite literally don't know they're using models in many of the videos they produce.

It took me a long time to work everything down to a level of quality that could run in real time in a game, and by that point, it was no where near the stuff I had been shown prior:

So, to your point, to a degree, these kinds of things are already done, but it's not just plug and play. They require quite a bit of refactoring over everything else.

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This is very helpful! Thank you. But the question
I have is, is that in the showcase for UE5 they stars, that using their Lumite tech can createl "Film-quality source art comprising hundreds of millions or billions of polygons can be imported directly into Unreal Engine — anything from ZBrush sculpts to photogrammetry scans to CAD data — and it just works,"; do you think this is possible with this new tech. Or is it merely stating the quality that can be optimized from it.

From the showcase it seemed like the former instead of the latter. But I could be wrong.

 

[Magnus]

Didn't they explicitly say in the interview today that this used to be true, but moving forward UE5 would be able to use the same assets for both movies and games and convert them accordingly?

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Yeah, that's what I heard. Totally get where OP is going with this.

 

[lupinko]

The best movie tie in game was Capcom's Alien Vs Predator. But that movie got canned and Capcom ended up releasing the game anyway.

 

[a916]

There's still a lot of logistical hurdles to run through. Game assets are also fully interactable and film can get away with facades because they know where the camera is pointed at all times.

Also why would you want this? Film FX studios are notoriously under crunch because of the whiplash in design changes asked by the studios... a game development studio should be able to do what they want in order to make the best game.

However they should share assets if they can (which they probably already do... but now the pipeline is probably more streamlined I imagine) and a game developer should take their time and make their own game. Similar to Spider-Man and Arkham.

 

[Deleted member 12790]

This is very helpful! Thank you. But the question
I have is, is that in the showcase for UE5 they stars, that using their Lumite tech can createl "Film-quality source art comprising hundreds of millions or billions of polygons can be imported directly into Unreal Engine — anything from ZBrush sculpts to photogrammetry scans to CAD data — and it just works,"; do you think this is possible with this new tech. Or is it merely stating the quality that can be optimized from it.

From the showcase it seemed like the former instead of the latter. But I could be wrong.

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It's pretty much hyperbole. I mean, you can import anything anywhere, but you can't really use those assets in real time. You'd have to bake lighting, even with modern raytracing cards, even with insanely powerful computers. Film assets can have the benefit of days in a renderfarm. Things like materials you'll be using for games are not the same as the materials you'd cover film assets in.

This is not to say that some studios won't do this, though. I know small independent film makers who do use UE4 and blender and things like that for film projects. It comes down to what you're doing and when. For some things, using UE4 is super useful because you can do really neat levels of compositing. These tools are already all over the place in production.

The thing is: video game tools, and film tools, are kind of the same these days. Maya and Blender are quite literally industry standard tools, for both film and games.

 

[-Tetsuo-]

What does an engine have to do with making movi tie ins good

 

[elenarie]

Movie tie in games do not have problems with tech or assets.

 

[Crossing Eden]

Movie tie-ins aren't bad because of UE not being good enough. They're bad because developers have a tight-as-shit deadline, working with limited reference material of concept work and usually outdated scripts. All of this needing to be done with already strained budgets and resources.

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☝

Didn't they explicitly say in the interview today that this used to be true, but moving forward UE5 would be able to use the same assets for both movies and games and convert them accordingly?

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It depends on the project. Like, yes some aspects of movies will be usable for games but other aspects will be completely unusable. Like, in KH3, the Frozen models are the ones from the film, but heavily heavily modified and paired down because of how many aspects weren't usable in realtime. You'll notice in today's demo that the hair still looked like video game hair, stuff like that isn't changing. IIRC even Spiderman PS4 started with the homecoming suit from the film as a basis for the ingame model. And with all that said, those assets don't appear out of thin air. It's not just "ok here's a movie model go nuts."

 

[ILikeFeet]

May I suggest the Mandalorian for that.

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The Mandalorian already uses UE4 for a lot of their special effects.

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oh I'm aware. I just wonder how long it'll be until we get feature films being made with real-time engines and not just something that's replaced by an offline render version of the scene

this is the only movie I know of that's made in a game engine

 

[KarmaCow]

Basically, my argument is that UE5 can take film quality models, and allow them to run in game, with no/very little optimization. So, a vast majority of effects and sets nowadays, use CGI with models. So, being able to just input all of the models from the film, and all of the sets, takes away a lot of the time from having to do that stuff from scratch. Which could make movie tie in games possible again, while having film quality models

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All those assets need to be made for the movie itself, they don't just exist months or years in advance. Consider that for Endgame they shot the actors in mocap gear so they could finalize the design for their time travel gear later. Not to mention there's also the real hurdle of studios not trusting game developers with assets for some farmed out licensed game.

 

[Mik2121]

The Houston Rockets used standard OBJ formats for all their in-house production stuff. Thing is, none of that stuff is suitable for game development. They gave me a model of the toyota center, and I thought I had a beefy computer at the time, and it brought it to it's knees. They showed me a model of James Harden that was, in the most literal sense, photorealistic. As in, people quite literally don't know they're using models in many of the videos they produce.

It took me a long time to work everything down to a level of quality that could run in real time in a game, and by that point, it was no where near the stuff I had been shown prior:

So, to your point, to a degree, these kinds of things are already done, but it's not just plug and play. They require quite a bit of refactoring over everything else.

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I want to believe that´s not the kind of reduction you had to do to get it to run on your machine... :P


Anyway, lots of misinformation here. Most movie art is reusable to an extent, but what isn´t, is not because it´s different files (well, many times yes, specially things like VFX, fluid simulations, etc..), but just because it's built for movies, so they are optimized for how they are going to be seen, unlike a game where you can just go around and see assets from far away or up close.
A better use would be an average full-body model of any character or creature. Those are built in the same way as hi-poly models for games but with more flair. It would be easier to bring those files to a game.

But like some people have also mentioned, the assets wouldn't be the problem in this scenario.

 

[Crossing Eden]

oh I'm aware. I just wonder how long it'll be until we get feature films being made with real-time engines and not just something that's replaced by an offline render version of the scene

this is the only movie I know of that's made in a game engine

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Not the same but it IS technically a movie made in a game engine. ;)

 

[Deleted member 12790]

I just wonder how long it'll be until we get feature films being made with real-time engines and not just something that's replaced by an offline render version of the scene

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Never. There's no real benefit of this. The nature of film is already to exploit the benefit of infinite offline time for touching up things. Everything they do in real time, they can go a step forward afterwards with a render farm. Films already use lower quality real-time components for much of their tech. This is, for example, James Cameron's camera tech in Avatar, which was really just a positionally tracked 3D mouse ala the HTC vive wand strapped to a camera. They still go through and use render farms after the initial on-site edit.

 

[Deleted member 12790]

I want to believe that´s not the kind of reduction you had to do to get it to run on your machine... :P

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It's not just about running on my machine, it's about being able to run on other people's machines.

 

[Poodlestrike]

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