India Today Gaming: 1v1 with Arvind Neelakantan, Evangelist for India and ASEAN, Epic Games

We welcome you back to a new episode of 1v1 with India Today Gaming, our in-house interview series that focuses on the latest announcements in the gaming space. Here, we got a chance to converse with Arvind Neelakantan, an Epic Games Evangelist for the India and ASEAN regions. Considering his position, we talked about Epic Games, the North Carolina-based video game developer and publisher. The conversation extended to its in-house game engine called Unreal Engine and the recent technologies that the company has showcased. 

During the conversation, we also discussed the journey from the latest version of Unreal Engine 4.26 to the upcoming version 5. For some context, the company first announced Unreal Engine 5.0 about a year back in May 2020. As part of the showcase, we saw all the new features coming to the game engine including Nanite, and Lumen. We also discussed the recently announced Metahuman Creator technology and its impact on game development. Neelakantan claimed that this is a “realization of decades of work”. He hopes that the ease of use will push the use of Metahuman Creator for digital avatars, virtual models on YouTube, and more.

Besides, the conversation also touched upon the use of Unreal Engine for flagship web shows like The Mandalorian. We talked about the possibilities of what comes to the next including trying to increase the adoption of the technology. Epic Games is also working on improving the quality of the output with the help of the “Movie Render Queue” system. Also, the company is working on improving the multi-user workflow in the software to improve collaboration.

Neelakantan stated that the Metahuman Creator will continue to evolve with time “for years to come”. In the meantime, the company is focusing on making a more diverse set of models with higher quality. Talking about the collaboration, the company also shared the work it is doing to provide hands-on training to TV and Movie production houses in India. Epic Games has also waved its share of the revenue for the first $1 million to ensure that Unreal Engine makes things easy for creators.

We went ahead to talk about the use of Unreal Engine during designing automotive products including in-vehicle entertainment systems and more. Finally, the company is also working with universities and colleges across the country to add Unreal Engine to the curriculum. It is worth noting that Neelakantan has worked with several notable companies in the past including Unity, The Walt Disney Company, Nickelodeon, and more.