Rogue One’s K-2SO Was Rendered in Real-Time With Unreal Engine

The hit film outside of the Star Wars saga has several points to be lauded for. However, a personal favorite is K-2SO, voiced by Alan Tudyk and the biggest funny yet kind-of-a-jerk droid that made everyone's life a little less dark in Rogue One.

Speaking at the Game Developers Conference, Rogue One visual effects supervisor John Knoll shared how the Unreal Engine 4 from Epic has enable them to execute the rendering of K-2SO in a new way that allowed them to skip pre-rendering altogether.

According to Polygon, this was done by letting the team already see K-2SO on the screen when shooting a scene instead of rendering and editing him in afterwards. More than the convenience of the technology, it had marked the first time that CGI was used in real-time.

"We want these renders to be as fast as they can be, but if they don't look good enough for John, they're not in the film. One of the strengths of the Unreal Engine is that with access to the source code, we could extend its capabilities to meet our exacting requirements."

Epic Games' technology has seen quite a lot of improvements, with more features expected to arrive. And while Unreal Engine has been used time and again for games, Industrial Light & Magic's method has allowed the engine to further its cause and use in another industry.

Rogue One is be released on Digital HD on March 24, while its Blu-ray and DVD version will be out on April 4.

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