Random42 Release Unreal Engine Animation On COVID-19 Infection And Vaccine Development

Towards the end of 2020 Random42 received an Epic MegaGrant, which was used to enhance our medical animation and interactive capabilities utilising Epic Games’ Unreal Engine; the world’s most open and advanced real-time 3D creation tool.

With this rare opportunity, our team could develop a new real-time approach to our animations that has expanded the possibilities of what we can achieve creatively. The MegaGrant was used to create an educational animation on the use of vaccines for COVID-19. This new project is a follow-up to our hugely successful Coronavirus Outbreak Animation, which received close to 2 million views and has been featured in various news programmes and documentaries around the world.

The majority of the project was produced with our team working remotely from home due to COVID-19 restrictions here in the UK, utilising version control to allow the team to work simultaneously on the same project.

As to be expected, working with new software required the team to rethink our entire approach to animations, enabling us to work with the engine’s strengths and capitalise on them. This added great energy to the project, as we experimented with new concepts that we hope to incorporate back into our pipeline. The project has influenced and inspired many ideas to expand on and explore in future projects.

One of the most noticeable visual improvements was the use of Epic’s MetaHumans to create high-fidelity, photorealistic digital humans, something that can be time-consuming in traditional DCC apps.

As a world leader in the scientific animation space, we felt we had a responsibility to convey the science behind the COVID-19 global pandemic in a way that is both engaging and easy to understand. We wanted to enable people of all backgrounds to understand the mechanisms of this disease, how to stop it from spreading and the importance of vaccines. After the success of our first video, we are very excited to release the sequel.

We would like to say a huge thank you to the team at Epic Games, firstly for the MegaGrant that made this project possible, but also for their support, guidance, and expertise throughout. As a company, we are incredibly excited about the possibilities that Unreal Engine 4 (and soon-to-be-released Unreal Engine 5) has given to us in terms of workflow and overall capabilities.

*Please note that facts may change over time as the outbreak is ongoing. Updates can be found at: https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019

If you would like to use this video or any of the scientific imagery shown, for media and/or other purposes, please contact us at [email protected].