Making of Meerkat: A Real-Time Animation Made in Unreal Engine 4.26

Weta Digital recently teamed up with Epic Games to help steer the development of a new real-time strand-based hair and fur system in Unreal Engine 4.26.  

We worked directly with Epic’s fur developers on the technology, bringing our knowledge of the properties of hair and how it reacts to light. What they produced is a new strand system able to handle simulating and rendering high-quality hair, fur, and feathers. 

To showcase the toolset and provide a testing ground for our continued explorations into real-time fur, we’ve produced a real-time animated short featuring a tussle between a meerkat and an eagle. The engine was able to handle the millions of fur strands and feathers our animation required with an extremely high production value. 

Keith Miller, Visual Effects Supervisor and Creative Director of the Weta Digital Special Projects Group said “With the advances of the strand-based rendering technology in Unreal, and with off-the-shelf tools, talented artists are able to create some really beautiful work”.

Take a look at how and why we made the short in this behind-the-scenes look at 'Meerkat'.