When you think about how far CGI has come it’s rare for a breakthrough to come along that leaves you truly speechless.
Well we think we’ve found something that might just come close and it’s all thanks to the world of video games.
Unreal is a piece of software used to create video games but it turns out it can also be used for other things too.
When paired with say, Mill’s revolutionary Blackbird car, Unreal can transform the Blackbird into any car in the world, in real-time.
The Mill Blackbird then is essentially one giant QR code. A camera films the car and then Unreal’s software quite literally builds any car on top of it in real-time.
It’s the real-time element that makes this really impressive. Filmmakers would normally need to add all their CGI post-filming but with the Blackbird a director can actually see their car transform before their eyes.
They can change the type of car, the colour and even the effects around it all at the push of a button while still filming.
What makes the Blackbird even more impressive is how it handles lighting.
A 360-degree camera on top of the car captures the way lighting would drop down and then some unbelievable powerful processing then creates what it thinks is an accurate replica of how the light in reality would fall on the CGI car.
The developers at Unreal debuted this technology at GDC this week where they also gave a particularly impressive demonstration of the technology.