For some years now, pre-visualization has been standard in Hollywood. Real-time technologies such as Unreal are often used for this purpose, as adjustments can be made immediately and without waiting time. Since Star Wars - The Mandalorian at the latest, the topic of virtual production has been on everyone's lips. Film sets are set up in a 360° LED panel environment: The Unreal Engine provides the extension of the physical set. Compared to classic filming in front of a green screen, this has the advantage that the self-luminous LEDs allow perfect reflections and natural lighting. Especially in the automotive sector, all reflections can be filmed directly with the camera, which saves a lot of time in post-production and provides an overall more realistic look in the image.

We are sure: Every industry can benefit from the use of real-time rendering. The Unreal Stuttgart team has already implemented projects in the fields of architecture, automotive, medical technology, e-mobility, sports, gamification, museums and trade fairs, and virtual events.

The Metahuman Toolkit was developed to create amazingly realistic virtual characters. These can be animated to act as brand ambassadors, for example, or used for high-quality storytelling. What's special about this is that the "uncanny valley" that often makes a virtual character seem comically robotic seems to have been overcome with this new technology. Resulting characters, combined with artificial intelligence (AI), are great to use as receptionists or virtual assistants, by the way.

Actually, the only way to answer this question is with a counter-question: When you buy a car, you have the choice between Smart and Lamborghini - which class should it be? Basically, it can be said that most projects are in the mid-five-figure range or higher on average: projects with a cultural or social focus or a very small scope, however, naturally also have outliers on the lower end.

One of the innovations in Unreal is the development with so-called Blueprints: Logic links that allow the developer to program visually. For smaller projects, logic operations can be developed very quickly and efficiently, and the end user will not notice any difference from "classically" written code. More complex applications, or applications that require extremely high optimization (e.g. in-car entertainment applications) are traditionally developed in C++, since the overhead in the program code can be kept smaller here.

The developed solutions are executable on all devices: Whether on desktop PC, Windows, Mac or mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets (Android and iOS apps). However, a suitable UI/UX design must be developed for each screen size to ensure usability for the end user. On older devices, a technology called Pixel Streaming allows the 3D content to be computed on a server in the cloud and then viewed as an interactive video stream on the device.

We would describe the metaverse as a virtual world where people can meet, exchange ideas and work collaboratively on topics or experience fantastic things. Unreal is considered to be the technology that makes the metaverse possible - games like "Fortnite" have long been much more than just games; through events like virtual pop or rock concerts, people meet friends there and experience virtual experiences.

The foundation for everything that is created is an extensive creation phase, where conceptual and design solutions to problems are developed through concept art and user-centered design. The 3D content can either be modeled and textured specifically for the project - allowing for highly customized visuals - or content can be acquired from databases, such as the Unreal Marketplace. 3D artists, designers and creative directors then implement the visual content in softwares such as Blender.

In the Stuttgart area, three universities, each with slightly different orientations, offer studies that include working with the Unreal Engine. The Hochschule der Medien (HdM) in Vaihingen takes a more technically oriented approach and offers versatile resources for students through its in-house Games Lab. The Macromedia University of Applied Sciences offers a wide-ranging course of study in the field of real-time applications and gamification with its Game Design program. And - for those who prefer to approach the topics from the creative and content side - the Film Academy in Ludwigsburg, which is one of the world's leading universities in the field of animation, entertainment and media, is certainly the best place to be.

Networking is the main focus of our Meetups. That's why there is only a short presentation at the beginning of the Meetup (anyone interested can submit and present topics for a presentation). Mostly case studies or specific developments made with Unreal are presented. Afterwards there will be cozy conversations with food and drinks.