In recent years, technologies such as Artificial Intelligence have garnered significant attention due to their remarkable capabilities and exponential growth. However, within the realm of Computer Science, there is a field that has often been overlooked: Computer Graphics (CG). CG, which encompasses everything from the images on our screens to the hyper-realistic CGI in films, plays a crucial role in our daily lives. As society continues to modernise, technology will become increasingly integrated into our lives, with CG bridging the gap between digital technology and the real world.

On 10th December 1993, the release of a single video game transformed the world of CG. “Doom,” published by id Software, was revolutionary for its advancements in real-time rendering and 3D graphics. Over 30 years later, games and graphical media have evolved dramatically, with some visuals now nearly indistinguishable from reality. The demand for more interactive and realistic games has led to significant advancements in both hardware and software.

A recent development in this field is Unreal Engine 5 (UE5), a state-of-the-art 3D engine developed by Epic Games. UE5’s cutting-edge advancements in rendering, animation, and procedural generation enable independent developers and small companies to produce films, art, and games of the same high quality as those produced by large corporations.

Developers are constantly pushed to create increasingly immersive and realistic projects, and UE5 has made this process more accessible than ever. This is particularly beneficial for those seeking to establish a presence in a competitive market dominated by large corporations. With UE5, independent developers can optimise their Computer Graphics workflow more efficiently. Software like UE5 will shape the future of the entertainment industry, where the quality of games and art will continue to improve at a rapid pace.

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Imagine, in a few decades, booting up your device to explore the world of “Ready Player One” or living in entirely new simulated worlds like “The Matrix.” What was once considered fantasy may soon become reality. Today, there are already remarkable examples demonstrating our progress. One such example is “Unrecord,” a shooting game by the game development studio DRAMA. The player navigates an abandoned building from the perspective of a body camera, with gameplay that is almost indistinguishable from reality. Another versatile use of UE5 is seen in the work of Greig Fraser, the cinematographer for “Dune: Part 2,” who used UE5 to pre-plan shots, speeding up production. These examples highlight the significant impact of software like UE5 on various industries that rely on CG, prompting us to consider the potential advancements in the next 10, 20, or 30 years.

Unreal Engine 5 is not just a magical piece of software; its groundbreaking mechanisms involve a wide array of fields within Computer Science, including graph theory, concurrent programming, processor hardware, and memory and disk usage compression. The inner workings of UE5 are as impressive as its capabilities.

One notable feature of UE5 is Nanite, its new virtual geometry system. Rendering an object requires defining its geometry, including shape, position, and interaction with other objects. This task falls to the virtual geometry system within an engine. For a single object, a mesh describes its geometry, and Nanite represents a mesh in terms of triangles. By using triangles, Nanite employs various algorithms to determine which objects are rendered and how. Depending on the distance between the camera and the object, Nanite can adjust the Level of Detail (LOD), increasing or decreasing the number of triangles per object. While this may seem straightforward, efficiently calculating the rendering of millions or even billions of triangles is resource-intensive, even for the fastest GPUs. Although a full explanation of Nanite’s workings would require much more detail, it is evident that UE5 has addressed the limitations of its predecessors in a complex and fascinating manner.

In addition to advances in virtual geometry, UE5 has introduced other innovations such as Lumen, a new lighting engine, and Metahuman Creator, a tool for creating lifelike human models for animation or acting. UE5 represents groundbreaking technology, with ongoing developments ensuring that we have not yet reached its limits.

Bibliography

[1] (No date a) Metahuman | realistic person creator - unreal engine. Available at: https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/metahuman

[2] Lumen global illumination and reflections in Unreal Engine: Unreal engine 5.0 documentation (no date a) Epic Developer Community. Available at: https://dev.epicgames.com/documentation/en-us/unreal-engine/lumen-global-illumination-and-reflections-in-unreal-engine?application_version=5.0

[3] Karis, B., Stubbe, R. and Wihlidal, G. (no date) Nanite - A Deep Dive. Available at: https://advances.realtimerendering.com/s2021/Karis_Nanite_SIGGRAPH_Advances_2021_final.pdf

[4] Unrecord (2024) Wikipedia. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unrecord

[5] Doom (1993 video game) (2024) Wikipedia. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doom_(1