Unreal Engine 5 lets artist create a short film that looks too good to be real

A clip made in Unreal Engine 5 shows a POV shot that viewers swear looks completely realistic, but it was created using a technique called photogrammetry.

With the recent trend of AI and hyper-realistic images, the skies are the limit for any creator looking to make their own movie, game, or other content from scratch.

Unreal Engine 5, the free-to-use linear content creation tool, has already become one of the most popular tools in this new landscape. Games like The Matrix Awakens, Tekken 8, and the Witcher remake are all being built on Unreal Engine 5.

But UE is also great for creating gorgeous movies, as one 3D artist showed in a film that’s almost indistinguishable from reality.

Unreal Engine 5 short film looks realistic

The film in question is a two-minute video on YouTube from artist 3Dystopia. The creator states, “Uploading real world to Unreal Engine 5 to create a super small metaverse. A short video but a long process based on 1500 pictures to recreate the alley. Full photogrammetry from 6k videos. I think that’s what the metaverse should look like a few years from now if a company decides to put the work into that challenge.”

At 14 seconds, viewers can see the Unreal Engine logo appear in the upper-righthand corner of the screen, but that is the only indication that the location is now being generated instead of recorded – that and the strange objects appearing and vanish on ledges.

“Bro, this is actually bonkers. If it wasn’t for the movement, I couldn’t’ve told the difference” one commenter replied, while another added, “This is way too real man damn”.

With Unreal Engine recreating real-world places in such stunning detail, the applications for film and gaming are incredible, especially with the advancements in VR technology.

More than one commenter expressed how a VR horror game, built in Unreal Engine with these graphics, could provide the ultimate horror gaming experience. While 3Dystopia was only able to generate a 19-second clip here, the future of gaming could be just as beautiful.