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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.

Video content courtesy of Adam Valdez | Framestore | Metaverse Entertainment | The Walt Disney Company | Airborn Studios GmbH | 3rd World Studios | Half M.T Studios | Aaron Sims Creative 
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Hot & Happening

Raji: An Ancient Epic from Nodding Heads Games

Chapter 1 of the Virtual Production Visualization Guide is here!

Want to know how to set up and run a professional-level visualization shoot in Unreal Engine? This serialized step-by-step guide will provide a complete blueprint for previs, pitchvis, techvis, stuntvis, and postvis workflows. 

Annecy Festival 2023

Join us at the world's largest event dedicated to animation, in Annecy, France, June 11–17. We'll be taking part in panels, tech spotlights, and a whole slew of feature showcases. Plus, three studios that have transitioned to real-time pipelines with UE will share their learnings.

Shorts India Program 2023

Calling all India-based animators! Apply to take part in this year's Shorts India Program and, if you're chosen, you'll get the chance to learn Unreal Engine while being a part of something extraordinary. You could even win up to $20,000 in prize money. Don't miss it!
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Overview

From first pitch to final pixels

Courtesy of Vista Sur Films 'Dalia y el Libro Rojo'

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.
Courtesy of Half M.T Studios

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.
Courtesy of Sinking Ship Entertainment

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.
Courtesy of Sally Coleman & Big Sand, produced by CDW Animation

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

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Key Features

Everything you need, included

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  • Courtesy of ©Airborn Studios GmbH

    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. 
  • Courtesy of Adam Valdez

    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!
  • Courtesy of Cory Strassburger

    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.
  • Courtesy of Vista Sur Films 'Dalia y el Libro Rojo'

    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.
  • Courtesy of DNEG Animation and Howdybot Productions

    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.

Unreal Editor for Fortnite (UEFN)

Don’t just tell your story—build your world. UEFN empowers you to create playable experiences based on the world of your story using Unreal Editor tools, then publish them to Fortnite for your audience to explore.
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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

Getting started

Your First Hour in Unreal Engine 5.2

51 mins
This course will introduce you to the high-level basics of Unreal Engine 5 and the editor used to work within it. We’ll look at how to add assets, create lighting, make Blueprints, and even share your project.
Course

Build a Third-Person Character from Scratch

1 hr, 15 mins
In this course, you'll use the "Stack O Bot" project to build a third-person character that includes movement, cameras, animations, physics, and even a jetpack! You'll also learn to add movement mechanics and animations to an existing character.

More resources

The Animation Field Guide

Animation teams around the world are discovering the creative freedom of using Unreal Engine to produce episodic series and feature films, taking advantage of real⁠–⁠time rendering to actually see the project as it develops.

The Animation Field Guide explores the foundations of real-time animation pipelines with Unreal Engine, and features interviews with many creatives who are already producing with this workflow.
Courtesy of Mold3D Studio

Sample project

Slay

Slay is a sample project available to the community as a free download, created by Mold3D Studio and rendered entirely in Unreal Engine. You can also download just the piece's hero character, Windwalker Echo. Go behind the scenes and get the samples from our Spotlight.

Sample project

ML Deformer

Explore how Unreal Engine machine learning technology can be used to create a high-fidelity real-time character with deformations driven by full muscle, flesh, and cloth simulation, including muscles bulging and sliding under the skin, and folds forming on clothing.

White paper

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 look-development artists and animators might encounter.

White paper

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.

Webinar

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.

Need a helping hand? 

Authorized Service Partners

If you’re looking to deliver a cutting-edge Unreal Engine project on time, on budget, and with the greatest visual fidelity possible, we have a global team of Authorized Service Partners that can help you achieve just that. 

Unreal Connectors

Learn how to leverage state-of-the-art real-time technology with Unreal Connectors, a series of new, field-tested, short-format courses offered exclusively through Unreal Authorized Training Partners.

Epic Developer Community

Join our vibrant, friendly community of creators to ask and answer questions on the forums; show off your work and get inspiration from others; and access hundreds of hours of free online learning content.