NeRFs are getting Unreal
NeRFs in Unreal Engine have been repeatedly requested and seen as the natural progression as NeRF begins to disrupt the VFX and Video Game industries. Today we explore the progress thus far
After a crazy three months to begin the year, I expected a bit of a reprieve. I was wrong — very wrong. The last two weeks have pushed NeRFs into a new phase of their development and are beginning to make their way into Unreal Engine 5.
Today, we’ll take a look at the progression from concept to where we are today.
First, you might be wondering, how will NeRFs affect the Virtual Production and Video Game Industry. Volinga Co-Founder Fernando Rivas Manzaneque pens an article setting the stakes.
Revolutionizing Virtual Production: How Neural Radiance Fields will Supercharge Production Pipelines
Currently there are two ways to get a NeRF into Unreal Engine 5. Luma AI and Volinga (by way of NeRFstudio)
Volinga AI
Volinga AI was the first company to publicly announce an integration into Unreal Engine.
Not long after, they unveiled their file format, .NVOL, with the official Volinga Exporter from NeRFstudio coming a month later.
Volinga was then quick to create a partnership with virtual production studio, Studio Lab and we got to see the plugin in action!
Most recently, Volinga has finally started to admit people off their waitlist and shown more of its capabilities.
Luma AI
Luma announced their own method to export into Unreal Engine and announced Luma Fields.
Even more shocking, on the Build The Open Metaverse podcast, CEO Amit Jain revealed it only took two days!
What’s next for Luma is anyone’s guess, but given the warchest they can draw on, anything is possible.
NeRFs in the Wild
Ian Messina, Director of Virtual Production at Studio Lab, has posted a few videos of running NeRFs on a LED Wall in Unreal Engine. You might actually recognize a familiar face!
https://twitter.com/xsh_red/status/1646089220673667072
https://twitter.com/pedro_garlaschi/status/1647247693796851714
https://twitter.com/tasklong/status/1644693462430928896
It’s still very early days for NeRFs in the VFX and Video Game industry, but the rate of the progress has been inspiring. Every day something happens that pushes NeRF forwards and it’s difficult to project where we’ll be even a month from today; that said, stick around here for all the updates and coverage surrounding NeRFs.
If you think your industry could benefit from the adoption of NeRFs, drop me a line and I’d be happy to connect! Please share this with anyone that you think might find it interesting and let’s push the technology forwards!
After jumping head first into Nerf for possibly the first commercial to use the tech, I’ve been experimenting and following this very closely. This will completely revolutionize the industry.