Hello,
in the past days, I stumbled about an interesting topic on “Why the trailer for Amazons upcoming Lord of the Rings series looks cheap”.
[ Disclaimer: This is a topic that may go pretty in-depth on cinematography and camera effects in general. I may kindly suggest, before jumping into any discussion, to watch the linked videos and reading basics if there is no background knowledge about. It’s a slow burner, but one I think its worth looking into for the future <3 ]
Yeah, this is a hot start for an UE5/UE4 game and cinematics related topic, but something that goes deep down a rabbit hole the more I looked into it.
It is a common thing that there is a difference between modern digital and classic analog film look. When comparing both worlds, they differ on how a picture look and feel. Most digital productions get common color grading, LUT’s, and that’s it. But it still differs from analog film, due to very specific elements. And this might be one of the reasons that modern movies look different, feel different and at very special moments, feel more “cinematic”. Especially modern movies with CGI may appear less appealing than others that combined CGI footage with analog film. As straight comparison, take The Lord Of The Rings trilogy “versus” The Hobbit movies.
Coming straight to the point of the topic, a cinematographer named Steve Yedlin managed to build up a solution to emulate certain aspects of analog film on digital footage for “The Last Jedi”.
This includes things like a simulation of very interesting effects like “halation”, which occurs due to color and light range limitations of analog footage. *Halation is some sort of bloom effect, but much more complex and doesn’t only appear around light sources. Halation can make skin tones more attractive and natural.
Certain other artists followed the call on emulation and there are some quite impressive results to be seen online. Most emulation is being done after the capture of footage through color/film plugins in offline solutions like DaVinci Resolve.
Personally, coming with Post-FX related career background before I started games business, I would love to take a step forward and ask the question what could be done beyond UE’s standard grain and bloom tools, especially for upcoming games.
The main TL:DR question here: How to emulate different analog cameras, different camera formats, its grains and different effects like halation in real-time, for games and cinematics?
I know that this might become a very difficult journey, depending on how deep the whole process goes and how much Epic restrict us on altering post process code. I come to that point a little later, based on a comment from Artstation. This is just the beginning of the journey and more posts will follow up based on what I am being able to achieve in UE5, or what you guys may come up with.
First, I would love to link several videos, two interesting from Steve Yedlin to explain the differences between analog and digital, why to emulate and to explain what its all about.
# Camera Resolutions, Part 1 | Comparison Demo by Steve Yedlin, ASC
# Camera Resolutions, Part 2 | Comparison Demo by Steve Yedlin, ASC
Interesting companion text from Steve Yedlin about emulation
[Halation effect: What is it and why is it important for the film emulation?] (Halation effect: What is it and why is it important for the film emulation? - YouTube)
# New Halation Effect | DaVinci Resolve 17.4 Studio
On the last video, I found an interesting explanation on how the halation effect if being created manually, or better - what the key pillars of an halation effect might be:
Interesting approach in Unreal Engine, while effects being added in post, outside of UE:
# UE4 Saloon Film Emulation (2020)
Pointer in the comments on limitations of UE’s render buffers(?):
In the first steps, I would try to look what UE5 has to offer, what included tools could be used or could be created from scratch to:
a) emulate different analog cameras
b) different grains
c) halation effects
d) other additions, yet to be discovered
Let the journey begin. 