Unreal: real-time worlds, VR and cinematics
Emilie Thonat
Unreal: real-time worlds, VR and cinematics
A comprehensive overview of my work in Unreal Engine, featuring immersive VR experiences for the Meta Quest Pro, 360° landscapes, real-time cinematics, and advanced VFX tests.
This section also highlights a dedicated Unreal Engine workshop I taught.
🧩 The Stack & Workflow
Unreal Engine: Logic (Blueprints), Cinematics (Sequencer, Movie Render Queue), and VFX/Physics (Niagara, Chaos).
Asset Creation & 3D: Modeling in Cinema 4D, texturing with Substance Painter, and environment building with Quixel Megascans.
3D Scanning: Photogrammetry using Polycam.
Post-Production: Compositing with After Effects.
Bear Island
A VR experience on a forested island, played in PC VR on Meta Quest Pro: grab interactions, physics, destruction and buoyancy.
VR interaction patterns: navigation, a VR Grab component, physics.
Physics simulation: Chaos destruction, buoyancy on water.
Living environment: fire material, plants moving in the wind, Niagara particles.
Logic, lighting and sound: Blueprints for lights and animations, sound cues.
Assets: hand and asset modelling, texturing in Substance Painter.
Epic Games Animation Bootcamp
A real-time cinematic: worldbuilding, Sequencer cameras, lighting and color grading.
Worldbuilding: modelling, materials, landscape, foliage.
Animation: Blueprints and Sequencer.
Lighting and rendering: atmospheric lighting, post-process volumes, color grading.
Effects: Niagara particles, Chaos physics.
VR landscapes
Three versions of a relaxing 360° landscape in Unreal Engine 5.2: evening, daytime, and a painterly version made with a Kuwahara filter.
Landscape: hills and terrain built with node graphs in Unreal’s landscape tools.
Procedural foliage and trees: spread across the terrain.
Quixel Megascans: the scenes are built from Megascans elements.
Materials: on the terrain and the Megascans assets.
Lighting and colour mood: evening in purple tones, daytime in natural colours.
Kuwahara filter: a post-process material for the artistic version: flat, brush-like patches of colour with sharp edges.
360° export: of the videos for YouTube, edited in After Effects.
360° on YouTube: two of the videos are 360°. Open them on YouTube, then drag the image or move your phone or headset.
3D coworking
A playable coworking space built in a 2023 winter day with Quixel assets, set up for projection and a PS5 controller.
Sleepy Hollow’s abandoned city
An environment in progress: night mood, fog and lighting.
VFX
A short VFX simulation test with Chaos destruction and Niagara particles.
Physic interaction a real-time colored gas simulation
Teaching at ECV
A 5-day Unreal Engine 5 workshop I taught to first-year students who had never done 3D.
Real-time 3D basics, the Unreal interface, assets from the UE Marketplace and Quixel Bridge.
Lighting, worldbuilding (landscape, foliage, modelling tools) and materials.
Final render with cameras, Sequencer and Movie Render Queue.
Example footage provided to the students
Some 2024 Metahuman experiment
What I also built
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Posted Oct 12, 2026
Real-time 3D in Unreal Engine: a VR island, 360 landscapes, a playable space, a cinematic, VFX tests and a 5-day workshop I taught.
