Preface

Unreal Engine 5 (UE5) offers beginners and seasoned professionals the ability to create detailed movie scenes with realistic human characters using MetaHuman, combining them with custom props and environments, plus built-in industry-standard animation tools to create state-of-the-art movie scenes in a fraction of the time compared to old methods. This book takes you through the entire 3D movie production pipeline using free (open source) software. This book can also be used as a foundation course in 3D computer art in general – a strong foundation that can be built upon and serve as a springboard toward a career in the field.

By following the step-by-step, beginner-friendly tutorials in this book, you'll learn how to create your own custom 3D assets in Blender and texture these 3D assets in Quixel Mixer. Next, you'll import these completed 3D assets into UE5 and use them to build a virtual 3D movie set for your 3D movie. You'll also populate your 3D movie set by using Quixel Megascans assets and create and customize your own photorealistic human character, using MetaHuman Creator and UE5. As you advance, you'll discover how to rig, skin, and animate these 3D assets and characters using Blender and UE5's new Control Rig. Finally, you'll explore the process of setting up your movie cameras and animation sequences and find out how to render out your 3D movie using UE5's Sequencer.

By the end of this Unreal Engine book, you'll have learned to combine different elements in UE5 to make your own movies and cinematics.