Within this post, I am going to look into Quixel as an industry and how they partnered up with Unreal, as well as their tools, which are connected to my exploration.

Epic Games and Quixel join forces to empower creators

Epic Games and Quixel have joined together, meaning that creators for Unreal have unlimited access to Quixel’s tools and the Megascans Library.

“Building photorealistic 3D content is an expensive endeavor in game development and film production. By coming together with Quixel to make Megascans free for all use in Unreal Engine, this level of artistry is now available to everyone from triple-A studios to indies,” said Epic Games Founder and CEO Tim Sweeney

QUIXEL JOINS FORCES WITH EPIC GAMES

“The Megascans library is now completely free for use with Unreal Engine.

That means that if you are using Megascans with UE4, you get free, unlimited, and instant access to all of Megascans through Bridge and Mixer, and a wealth of Megascans packs on the Unreal Engine Marketplace. Ten high-resolution packs have been shared today for free on the Unreal Engine Marketplace, with additional asset packs being made available for free on the Marketplace at a future date within the Unreal Engine 4.24 release timeframe. This way, you can access the content in whatever way you prefer.”

Creators will have access to Quixel Bridge, Megascans library and Quixel Mixer, free for students. This is very beneficial for my exploration of Unreal, as it means I have access to all these tools/ assets which will result in a positive impact on my learning journey and potential output.

The assets from the Megascans library are based on realistic assets, meaning that they are extremely realistic and HD which means that you can create super-realistic scenes using these assets. The potential and quality of these assets are illustrated in the “Rebirth” project.

I included the process and makings of the ‘Rebirth’ project so I could visualize and understand the project from a creator’s point of view, which should help me get into the mentality of creating a similar project, or one inspired from what I have seen.

BLENDING MEGASCANS ASSETS IN UE4

In this article, it explains the process of merging multiple textures together to create a terrain.

They decided to make a simple field that has been battered by artillery fire. For this scene, they used the ‘Damp Soil‘, ‘Cut Grass 2×2 M‘, and ‘Grass Clumps‘.

They use skills and processes such as, world aligned texturing, triplanar mapping, nodes in Unreal, pixel depth offset, distance field mesh blending, runtime virtual texturing to accomplish world align blending. This is shown in the video, and the article. Explaining the potential customization which you have access to with Quixel and UE4.  This is very beneficial as it allows me to create custom terrains for my landscapes/ scenes.

THE LION KING RETURNS WITH THE POWER OF MEGASCANS

Megascans is used in many personal and creative projects, but it is also used in big production projects such as ‘The Lion King’.

The Lion King shows extreme potential for Virtual Production, and the Megascans library has contributed to this.

“In terms of scale, this was the largest production of this kind we have taken on to date. The Megascans library helped us surface many miles of geometry based on the many disparate locations in and around Kenya that we used as reference for the environments in the movie.”

“The Megascans library allowed us to focus on art directing the surfacing of our rocks and terrain without spending time constructing the maps and UVs ourselves; the result is a more complex looking world and the production was more procedural and artist friendly which made it very easy to make changes and fine tune along the way.”

– Elliot Newman, VFX supervisor for The Lion King

GUILHERME RABELLO BUILDS TRUE TO LIFE BEAUTY IN REAL TIME

Quixel has a large range of assets, varying from forests, tropical beaches, urban streets, ruins, to modern architecture.

Guilherme Rabello created a beautiful modern house in real-time, using the Megascans library and Unreal engine. This just shows the potential for combining these two powerful tools, and how the industries colliding has had a positive impact on creatives.

PHOTOREALISTIC SCENE-BUILDING WITH DANIEL GIRON

Artist Daniel Giron created a realistic cave scene using Megascans and tools from Quixel and Epic Games. In the article, he explains the process behind it.

From this article, I can learn the process behind creating a photorealistic scene, using real-life images as references. I will also learn the process step by step, including setting up the scene, layout, preparing leaves and atlases, using Megascans for the riverbed, cave textures, scattering and v-ray proxies, lighting and rendering.

This will help me understand so that when I come to create my own projects, I can reference this process to create photorealistic scenes.

The final output is very impressive and shows high level of quality and skill, which I want to incorporate into my work and aspire to achieve an output of this standard, therefore understanding how to create this, is essential for my learning development.

SWOT ANALYSIS

Strengths:

There are many strengths with Quixel’s tools/ services. The Megascans library is packed with useful, realistic and HD assets, whether it is textures, 3D meshes, decals or materials. They can all be used for projects, and for free for creators using Unreal.  This means that anybody can use their assets for production projects, so the results are full of endless potential.

Quixel Bridge allows creators to download assets, export and organize their everything so that the process of using their products/ assets are easier and more convenient.

Quixel Mixer is a powerful tool as it allows creatives to customize assets, including meshes, decals, textures, etc. This means that they can create custom terrains and merge multiple assets together to create something unique for projects, resulting in diversity and unique designs.

Weaknesses:

Even though the Megascans library is very large, it does not have every asset you may need. This means that in order to get something extremely specific, you will either have to purchase it, or create it yourself. This results in having to spend money, or learn a new piece of software which will take time and skill.

Opportunities:

Through working with Epic Games, Quixel has massively increased their customer/ consumer ratings and popularity, as most people will not refuse a free offer, or product. This means that their name and reputation will be positively affected. Therefore, this means that more creatives will use their services, so they will have more project spotlights/ talented artists using their services, so Quixel are more likely to improve the quality/ quantity of their services and provide updates to keep their customers engaged and constantly create new assets. This will have a positive impact on creatives like me, who need assets to create projects, as well as creating a huge potential and endless possibilities for professional and industry level projects.

Threats:

One threat may be that due to popularity and the high-level customers and creators using Megascans and Quixel, it may mean that they start to charge Unreal creators for use of their assets/ tools, due to the high demand and large productions using their free services. This could negatively affect student artists, or beginners who can’t afford/ don’t want to pay a lot of money.