During my internship at Universal Pictures as part of the Creative Technologies group, I had the opportunity to build a western saloon interior from scratch in Unreal Engine 5. The objective was to create a real-time 3D environment that will act as an interior for the existing buildings of Western Street on the Universal Backlot, tailored for Universal’s LED volume.

I built custom 3D assets in Maya and also created and optimized textures in Substance Painter. The lighting was baked using GPU Lightmass with ray-tracing enabled, ensuring an accurate and cinematic atmosphere for the saloon. The scene also includes nDisplay configuration and a LiveLink camera setup with Optitrack for Virtual Production.

Throughout this project, I was able to refine my skills as both an artist and a technologist, gaining experience in different areas of Virtual Production and striking a balance between creativity and technical optimization.

VP of Creative Technologies: Annie Chang

Senior Director of Production: Horst Sarubin

Senior Stage Manager: Tim Ciancio