This project started as a quick personal exercise to explore some of the newer workflows available in Unreal Engine while putting together a fast but polished car concept. The goal was to experiment with modern real-time rendering techniques and refine my cinematic workflow inside the engine.
The entire scene was built and rendered in Unreal Engine, with lighting driven by Lumen for real-time global illumination and reflections. Lumen allowed me to iterate quickly on lighting direction and mood while maintaining believable bounce lighting and environmental interaction across the scene.
A large part of the look development focused on experimenting with Substrate materials. This provided a more flexible and layered material workflow, which was especially useful for developing the car’s paint, reflections, and surface response. The shader setup was refined to create a convincing automotive finish while maintaining performance within a fully real-time pipeline.
For animation, the vehicle was set up using car rigging directly in Unreal Engine, allowing the car to move naturally within the environment. Motion and timing were captured using Take Recorder, which allowed me to record and refine the vehicle’s movement in-engine and integrate it seamlessly into the cinematic sequence.
From a cinematography standpoint, the piece was approached like a short automotive commercial. Using Sequencer, I focused on framing, camera motion, and lens choices to emphasize the vehicle’s form, reflections, and lighting interaction with the environment. The goal was to create dynamic shots that highlight the vehicle while maintaining a clean and cinematic visual language.
For the final video presentation, AI tools were used to assist with the voice-over and script generation, helping quickly develop a narrative structure to support the visuals and present the concept in a more polished cinematic format.
Overall, this project served as a quick concept piece but also as an opportunity to explore new Unreal Engine technologies and continue refining a real-time cinematic production workflow.
Special thanks to Robert Yau for the support.