A year ago I had never touched Unreal Engine. Then I took @SchoolOfMotion’s Unreal Engine for 3D Artists class with @JonathanWinbush. That started my Unreal Engine learning journey. 365 days later I’m making stuff like this.

USA. A Mexican restaurant. We had not yet ordered anything, and the food was already arriving. Chips. Salsa. Unrequested. Free. I stopped the waiter. "We have not earned these." "They just come with the table, man." They come with the TABLE. In my land, hospitality is a debt. Every gift creates an obligation, weighed carefully, returned in the proper season with interest of feeling. Here, the gift arrives before you have even proven you can pay for dinner. This is not an appetizer. This is a declaration: we trust you. Eat. I ate with the gravity the moment deserved. And then — I must report this calmly — the basket emptied, and a new one appeared. "Did we…?" "Refill," the waiter said. "It's bottomless." Bottomless. They have wells of salsa. The supply lines of this nation are beyond anything my ancestors imagined. My friend warned me. "Don't fill up on chips, dude." Too late. I had accepted three baskets. Honor demanded each one be finished — an unfinished gift is an insult. By the time my actual food arrived, I was a ruined man. I was not hungry. I was not comfortable. I had been defeated by a courtesy. Generosity that arrives before the request cannot be repaid. It can only be survived. I know the rule now. I have made my peace with the basket. One basket. Two at the most. Who am I deceiving. There is no number of baskets I would refuse. The trust of a nation is in that salsa, and I intend to honor all of it.

Today I overheard a 10-year-old tell a bunch of 7-year-olds “now don’t try this at home…“ and I got the hell out of there before whatever happened next became my responsibility to deal with.

When I pitched the Lord of the Rings crossover with Transformers, you all laughed and laughed. BUT WHO’S LAUGHING NOW?!

OK... take my money

Unreal Fest is next week! I wait all year for this party! What’s your top tips to new attendees? Uefn UE5 Indiegamedevs?! Mine is: Get your schedule set early, so you can spend as much time chatting and making connections as possible! Heck, do it today! And say hi to everyone!

When you show up to a fancy modern-orthodox synagogue.

Today is one of the biggest and most prominent Pride events in the world - and definitely the only one in the Middle East. It’s in Tel-Aviv, Israel. Happy pride month to my LGBTQ family and friends celebrating today.

I will be the first to tell you that I absolutely despise the randomness of generative AI, especially compared to the precision of 3D (outside of simulations). But on the other hand there are ways to mitigate that with character reference sheets and a strong understanding of how the models think. I really do believe the future is a hybrid of live action, 3D, and AI together - not AI alone. Its why I still spend time using all of the tools - not just AI. I am seeing more and more done with ComfyUI that convinces me of AI's long-term viability. So keep at it with those 3D skills.

MONDAY. FREE. If you ever use PBR materials in Unreal Engine, you'll want this free tool. It automates importing textures and builds them into PBR materials, and includes options for hex tiling, triplanar projection, and nanite displacement. Stay tuned to @SchoolOfMotion.

I have the day off work today, so putting in the hours with ZenDyn. The number one problem users report is having to press play or simulate in Editor to make ZenDyn function. Every solution I previously implemented would break packaged builds, so I did not pursue. until today...

Whatever you normally name a teenager, I guess.

Adam Myhill created the legendary Cinemachine plugin for Unity (then acquired & integrated), which powers The Last Night's unique cinematography. Unreal users, Adam cooked something even more powerful for you. It's a no-brainer.

Things I’m learning about AI filmmaking: 1. Interaction with the physical world is still hard. 2. Prop interaction is really hard. 3. Character consistency is basically solved. Maintaining the same character across shots is surprisingly easy now. 4. World geography is not solved. Keeping locations spatially consistent across shots is a real challenge. 5. Aging a character believably over time is very difficult. 6. Crowd shots are tricky. The model often struggles to invent believable background people and starts duplicating the main character. The tools are amazing, but they are brutally literal. You have to direct around their weaknesses.

Working on the shot today. Been fighting ue but it’s getting there! This is straight out of unreal Beautiful anim and rig by @KielFiggins

Live shot of me in my agent’s doorway begging for a widow’s bay audition.

AI doesn’t make bad films. Bad filmmakers make bad films. Also, good filmmakers sometimes make bad films when they make bad decisions.

The most enlightening part of posting about using AI is the responses telling that I should just learn 3D or VFX. It tells me that these guys view the tools they are using as the be-all end-all, and cannot adapt. They also probably do very little commercial work. As a 25-year veteran of pro 3D, animation and VFX, I don’t remember a time I wasn’t constantly evolving and learning/exploring new tools and methodologies.

Wild what can happen if you have the guts to speak up. You think there's a universe where this kind of ass-saving PR release & newfound generosity happens if the Art Director kept her mouth shut, like so many people said was the right thing to do? Hmmm...