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ANIMATION

Just imagine

What if you could slash the time it takes to create high-quality animated content, and at the same time, gain the creative freedom to find the perfect way to tell your story? With Unreal Engine, you can.

01

Overview

From first pitch to final pixels

Image courtesy of DNEG and Howdybot Productions

Faster, better creative storytelling

When you can render frames in fractions of seconds, the ability to produce content much, much faster is not the only benefit; if you can change your mind without hours or days of rerendering, you can make creative decisions on the fly, and iterate to find the best version of your story.
Image courtesy of Chromosphere

Any look you want

With Unreal Engine's flexible node-based Material Editor, you can push the limits of your imagination and create any visual style from photoreal to classic CG, cel-shaded to anime, hand-drawn illustrative to hyperstylized, and more.
Image courtesy of ZAFARI Holdings Ltd

Complete toolset, out of the box

Unreal Engine comes fully loaded with everything you need to bring your characters and worlds to life, with built-in animation tools; a Landscape system for environments; particles and physics; a multi-track nonlinear editor; support for strand-based hair and fur; connections for performance capture tools; and much, much more.
Image courtesy of BRON Digital

Do more with your IP

Why restrict your content to a single medium when you can get more value from your assets? With Unreal Engine, you can create a transmedia pipeline that enables your IP to cross the boundaries from linear animated content to games, mobile, VR, and beyond.

Unreal Engine-powered animation production pipeline

02

Key Features

Everything you need, included

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  • Image courtesy of Engine House

    Control the narrative

    Built for collaboration, Sequencer is Unreal Engine's fully nonlinear, real-time cinematic editing and animation tool that enables you to define and modify lighting, camera blocking, characters, and set dressing on a per-shot basis. You can even create new animation by blending animation clips together. With Sequencer, teams of artists can work on entire sequences simultaneously to develop and refine your story throughout the production process. 
  • Image courtesy of Piranha Bar Ltd | Dear Will

    Craft the look

    From the flexible node-based Material Editor that enables you to layer materials and fine-tune values at the pixel level, to sophisticated lighting that includes an atmospheric Sun and Sky system Unreal Engine gives you the freedom to craft any look you want—then iterate to your heart's content. What's more, with support for strand-based hair and fur, your cast of characters can include everything from adorable animals to bearded baddiesーwithout waiting an eternity for renders!

  • Perfect your performances

    Whether you choose to animate your characters with keyframes or drive their performances with mocap data, Unreal Engine has the tools you need. Control Rig is a scriptable node-based rigging system designed to provide artists with tools to create flexible, dynamic, and procedural rigs with animator-friendly interfaces. And with Live Link, you can stream data from a variety of sources—even your iPhone—directly onto your characters in real time.
  • Image courtesy of 3rd World Studios

    Finish with polish

    Whatever look you're aiming for, from photorealism to highly stylized, Unreal Engine offers everything you need to produce stunning frames that will set your project apart, in a fraction of the time of offline rendering. There's a wide range of post-process effects; advanced particles, physics, and destruction; and even real-time ray tracing. And with Movie Render Queue, you can switch on settings incompatible with real-time performance for uncompromised quality. Final pixels—fast.
  • Image courtesy of ©Tasuku Karasuma | Shueisha, NGL PROJECT

    Slot it in, or make it your own

    With support for the most widely-used formats and protocols in animation production like FBX, Alembic, USD, C4D, OpenEXR, and OpenColorIO, Unreal Engine is a comfortable fit for industry-standard pipelines. But for anyone who wants to automate processes or extend capabilities, there's Python and Blueprint visual scripting, a robust API, and complete C++ source code access, so you can create the custom hooks, tools, and interfaces that will set you apart from the crowd.
Unreal Engine comes complete with all the tools you need to create gorgeous animated content. Craft the look you want with the flexible Material Editor; use the powerful Control Rig to drive animation; edit your story in Sequencer; and take your project to the next level with physics, effects, and strand-based hair and fur. It's all in the box.
03

case studies

Unreal Engine is powering animated content across the globe

Image courtesy of DNEG and Howdybot Productions

Sample project

Mold3D Studio takes Windwalker Echo on another adventure in Slay, a sample project for animated content

Go behind the scenes to find out about the making of Slay, a sample project created by Mold3D Studio and rendered entirely in Unreal Engine. The project was created to inspire and educate artists looking to use Unreal Engine for animated content creation, and is available to the community as a free download. You can also download just the piece's hero character, Windwalker Echo, for use in either Unreal Engine 4.27 or Unreal Engine 5.
Love, Death + Robots | Courtesy of Netflix

Case Study

Sony Pictures Imageworks creates a real-time thriller for Netflix’s Love, Death + Robots

Case Study

MetaHuman technology brings a 10,000⁠-year⁠-⁠old shaman back to life

Case Study

MetaHuman technology brings a 10,000⁠-year⁠-⁠old shaman back to life

Case Study

Sony Pictures Imageworks creates a real-time thriller for Netflix’s Love, Death + Robots

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Mush-Mush & the Mushables © 2022 – La Cabane Productions – Thuristar – Cake Entertainment – VRT-Ketnet – RTBF Télévision belge

Case Study

The path to sustainable animation with Mush‑Mush & the Mushables

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Get updates on industry innovations and the latest free assets for

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04

Resources

Learn how to use Unreal Engine

Whether you’re just getting started and need some basic guidance, or you’re a seasoned pro who’s pushing Unreal Engine to its limits, there’s a range of options to help you succeed.

Documentation

Artists' quick start

Learn how to get started as a content creator with Unreal Engine.

Online learning

Course

Your First Hour with Animation

1 hr, 14 mins
In this course, you’ll get an introduction to the basic systems and tools that are required for animation in Unreal Engine, starting off with a look at Skeletal Meshes and the Animation Blueprint.
Course

Stylize Renders with Post-Process Materials

1 hr, 43 mins
This course teaches strategies for non-technical animators and artists to achieve stylized renders with post-process materials. Learn the theory, methodology, and tools to experiment in your own projects.
Course

Animation for Virtual Production

1 hr, 6 mins
This intermediate course explores how to modify existing animation clips and create original keyframe character animation for film, animation, and virtual production applications using Unreal Engine.

Guides and white papers

The Animation Field Guide

Download The Animation Field Guide and find out why dozens of experts love the creative freedom they get from working with a real-time pipeline.

Grooming for Real-Time Realism: Hair and Fur with Unreal Engine

This white paper lays out the process of working with real-time hair and fur in Unreal Engine and offers solutions to artistic and technical challenges that artists might encounter.

Choosing a Real-Time Performance Capture System

Here, we explore the evolving field of performance capture, discussing everything from suits and gloves to cameras, and examine how different systems are best suited to different types of production.

Webinars

Motion Design with Unreal Engine and Cinema 4D

This webinar explores how to create motion graphics for broadcast using Unreal Engine and Cinema 4D. It covers C4D file import, look development for broadcast, GPU Lightmass Global Illumination, Control Rig set up, and more.
 

Animation in Unreal Engine: Adding Life to Your Story

In this webinar, we demonstrate how to use animation tools in Unreal Engine to tell a story and bring your projects to life. Learn how to populate city streets with animated crowds and add effects to people, birds, vehicles, and environmental objects.