Unreal Environment Library

MR Environment Art - Supernatural 2023

Last year, Jordan had the opportunity to collaborate with Supernatural, a cutting-edge VR fitness company. The goal was to bring their stunning, real-world environments and gameplay elements to life in Unreal Engine, providing a powerful tool for their Mixed Reality (MR) and Virtual Production pipeline. He was also asked to build out a suite of artist utilities to quicly bring together imagery of athletes within these environments. The culmination of this project was showcased in Supernatural Together launch video (above). The MR pipeline, coupled with the Unreal environments, demonstrated their full potential, efficiently delivering a high quality and engaging video.

Capturing the essence of immersive VR fitness is no easy feat. To overcome the challenges of showcasing VR experiences, Jordan was tasked with creating 23 photorealistic environments that mirrored the company’s existing 360-degree references, as well as recreating their gameplay elements for cinematics. By meticulously replicating these environments in Unreal Engine, Jordan provided a fully CG library of assets and environments that could be seamlessly integrated into their newly formed MR blue screen production process.

I conjunction with the evironments and gameplay assets, Jordan also developed tools within Unreal Engine that made the creation static composited imagery (like above) a swift an easy process. These tools automatically created camera sequences, included presets, and artist friendly UI’s to add targets, bats, and dodge elements into the shots. It then provided quick easy rendering of all elements into separate layers for final retouching if needed.

These high-quality environments empowered the Supernatural MR team to previsualize content shoots with precision. By planning camera moves and lighting setups in advance, they optimized production efficiency and delivered stunning visuals.

Credits:

Jordan Ariel
Rayne Chapman
Gonzalo Bustamante
Jerry Sells
Albert Cook
Russell Morgan
Simon Kern
Chi-Wan Cheung
April Kandel
Logan Lemmon