It’s funny how there are so many great technologies inside Unreal Engine and they’re not mainstreamed or well-known among users. Just opening up the Engine Folder alone and looking into the files can help understand how big UE actually is, and why it’s +40GB when downloading it from Epic Games.
I’m a beginner in UE and every time I want to do something, the whole assets are right there in the Engine Folder and I can use them all.
I was fortunate to make the music video for the song "Romany Adventures " by DJ Diesel(Shaquille O’Neal) and Soltan from the Gorilla Warfare album.
DMX technology inside Unreal Engine made it possible for me to make a whole virtual scene according to the theme of the song and have the stage festival lighting inside that virtual scene. Everything from Pyro, moving head, lasers, etc was in the DMX folder with all the 3D assets and blueprints! There were even 3D models for creating the stage as well, and I didn’t even need to go out of the program and find and download those assets and then import them and material, texture and make blueprint…all that. It was all ready to use
This was while using Nanite for the huge landscape and assets imported from Quixel and Sketchfab to make the forest and having that big stage with all the DMX lights working in real-time inside the engine within the sequencer! That’s crazy.
Truly inspiring technology right there and free and I’m super grateful for it.
Thank you, Tim Sweeney and Unreal Engine team for making this all possible.
Hey there @zhixoworld !! First, let me welcome you to the forums here! We’re excited to see you and thrilled to see the projects you showcase.
It’s so fascinating that you discovered all this within the UE folders just by looking around. I’m sure it’ll be handy when other users wish to start and hope they can see your post while starting.
The camera movement and showcase fits in tune with the music I’m genuinely shocked how well it flows. About how long did this project take?
this project was a big project for me, and I didn’t know how to work with DMX, so while making this project I had to learn so many things as well. other than the music video there were multiple video loops and video shots that can be used for Soltan live shows. It took me around 1 and half months in total. I just spent about 1 week just gathering and downloading the assets(megascans collections etc) since I got a low-speed internet.
I might upload a walkthrough of the map scene in the future as well.
I used to download basic shapes or make the in blender and bring them into UE, while all basic 3D shapes are included in the Engine folder(such as arrows, hexagon, hollow tringle etc)
And many material functions and basic materials as well.
Nowadays I sometimes just go through the folders in the Engine Folder, or sometimes plugins folder, and just look through them to find something interesting.
I sometimes click on Engine folder and filter it as static mech, or texture, or materials or skeletal mesh etc and find great new things. I found the festival stage 3D assets the same way.
That’s actually an impressive amount of time. The slow internet is something I think many can empathize with for sure. I remember trying to complete my own projects with subpar network connection. However, even if you have the slower internet you still made something that looks wonderful even if it took a little longer. I personally advocate for taking your time on things so it’s nice to know you technically had a well spaced work time.
That’s actually super awesome! I’m going to be honest, I didn’t realize that the engine itself had some great gems like that. I’ve been sticking to the basic shapes as mentioned, haha.
I hope we can see the walk through of the stage whenever you decide to share! I like seeing all the little aspects that make scenes unique to their designer.
Very impressive music video and the scene is fantastic!
I want to ask you about performance… how resource intensive is the DMX system and how many light sources does it use with ease? In my scenes, I used spotlights manually manipulating them in the sequencer. But I had to turn off the shadows because the fps was falling, and the fog also greatly affects the performance.
I was getting around 10fps in the project when running the sequencer with a rtx 3090, however, most of my loss performance was because of the foliage and the megascans European trees, and even though I used the ‘Simple Wind’ meshes since the project and map was too big I was getting this performance.
I also had so many unnecessary assets in my scene and so much of the map was built and wasn’t used in any shot!
However when I turned the foliage off (hide) then I got much much better performance.
For the DMX system, I had another map with the stage and it was running very smooth, but I didn’t have the volumetric fog enabled as it greatly impacts the performance, but the shadows I think I turned on if I’m not mistaken.
DMX light is much less intensive on performance than a spotlight or any other lights, but you can turn on some properties to make it more accurate but at the cost of performance.
If you find the time, please have a look at the DMX template and you can understand how performance-intensive the DMX system really is.
Since I have no foliage in my project, this makes the task easier. I also noticed that I can use rectangular light instead of a spotlight where possible. It has less effect on performance. And I got the idea to use fog cards instead of volumetric fog. I think it will also improve the performance.
As for DMX, thanks for the link, I’ve had a quick look at a lot of useful tutorials and no matter how scary it is, I’ll have to dive into this topic, as it has a huge potential for my music videos.
another question, do you think it would be possible to control all the DMX lights in real-time with DMX controllers? so that a real stage-lighting guy can do this in real-time? that would be just amazing for Virtual concert visuals (the ones that were booming in covid era)
Yes, there is a program called MagicQ by ChamSys where you can connect it to Unreal Engine and it can control the lights (pyro, moving head etc.) and has many presets and keyframes in it that you can use too.
That can also be controlled with a MIDI controller as well.
Or you can also use a MIDI controller to connect it directly to a parameter within DMX.
there is a tutorial that shows how to connect MagicQ to UE:
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here’s my reply 
