Felix Jorge

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A man with curly hair and a nose ring stands against a dark blue wall with graffiti. He is wearing a white dress shirt, a patterned tie, and a black leather jacket with white contrast stitching.
A man with curly shoulder-length hair poses against a solid dark brown background. He is wearing a formal black suit with a white shirt and patterned tie, layered under an oversized black leather jacket featuring white stitching. He has several rings on his fingers and an ornamental belt buckle.
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Felix Jorge

0%

0%

A man with curly hair and a nose ring stands against a dark blue wall with graffiti. He is wearing a white dress shirt, a patterned tie, and a black leather jacket with white contrast stitching.
A man with curly shoulder-length hair poses against a solid dark brown background. He is wearing a formal black suit with a white shirt and patterned tie, layered under an oversized black leather jacket featuring white stitching. He has several rings on his fingers and an ornamental belt buckle.
A low-angle shot of a man with curly hair looking off to the side while leaning against a dark maroon wall. He is dressed in a white shirt, a black tie, a black suit jacket, and a black leather jacket with visible white stitching.

Why are production designers using game engines to create their films?

Article

Production Designer, Virtual Art Department

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Overview

I recently production designed a film for Kevin Hart’s Hartbeat Productions, and used Unreal Engine through pre-production and production, delivering over 700 shots. Most of what I know about this process I learned from art departments and visualization. Since the start of my career I’ve been the Unreal operator and set designer for dozens of filmmakers, and I got to watch how each of them worked. Here’s what I’ve picked up, and what they’re getting out of this process.

Why are production designers using game engines? The short answer: more bang for your buck.

The way I was taught it, design is about understanding your limitations and making the most of the constraints you’ve been handed. The thing a game engine seems to help with most is letting a production designer bring the cinematographer in earlier. Instead of waiting on a physical scout (expensive, slow, hard to schedule), you can start with quick and dirty digital sketches. The real-time lighting tools have gotten good enough for that early conversation, and the fidelity is usually high enough that the information carries into the other departments.

You also get a lot more visual output. You block the location, map the action in 3D space, and hand it off - to the storyboard and concept artists to draw over, to visualization so they have the cameras the cinematographer already picked inside the actual set, to producers and art directors so they can push back on things that don’t fit the budget as things come through. Less guesswork, and more problems solved while it’s cheap to act on it.

On a VFX show, the assets, layouts and lighting can go to the vendors as a starting point. One that’s already been critiqued by the key creatives. In my experience, this early alignment is how you get the best bang for your buck.

Ahsoka Virtual Storyboards primed for a review.

Ahsoka Virtual Storyboards primed for a review.

What are art departments delivering when adopting a Virtual Art Department workflow? A lot more looks, a lot earlier.

We pull still frames of the locations out of Unreal and send them to the concept and storyboard artists. They paint over them. Their paintings change our sets, and our sets change their paintings.

Still frames for the director, lit and framed with the cinematographer, and story beats hashed out together. The set decorator dresses the digital version too, whether it gets built physically or not, that eye raises the quality of the set.

Environments and assets get handed off to set designers, VFX, or virtual production. A lot of that responsibility is asset management, which needs to be meticulously tracked for legal reasons - one database that ingests from every team: previs, art department, VFX, virtual production, or online marketplaces. We use those assets to build the virtual locations. The filmmakers critique them in Unreal Engine, looking through a lens, and we kick frames and assets back to the team. Every week.

Producers get budgets that refine as the design evolves, because everyone is looking at the same problem at the same time.

I’m a life-long learner with a passion for education. I hope what I’ve learned so far is useful to someone else.

Every post here is a question somebody actually asked me; about design, process, or the business of it. If you have any questions, send them my way! Have a lovely day.

felixjorgecreative.com

Source

Felix Jorge

Date

2026

Screenshot from a Virtual Location Scout with Key Creatives on Ahsoka
Virtual Location Scouts, don't need to be in VR.
Weekly budget and schedules aligned through shared visuals, help surface any issues before it's too late.
DP Greig Fraiser on The Mandalorian Season 01. This was the first time he was using Unreal, our very first review on the production, where we created a proof of concept. I gave a presentation, and then we just let them play with it themselves.