Unreal Engine for Architectural Animation

In the past few years, I’ve worked with architects to communicate the vision of a project—whether to the public or their clients. This has involved putting together videos, interviews, aerial imagery, before-and-afters, architectural renderings, and, occasionally, motion renderings. This last category requires the most resources to produce, and over the past 15 years, I’ve seen its use steadily rise. The first time I encountered it was in a proposed renovation project where motion rendering was used to convey the design vision and help secure funding.

As a visual communicator, my question is: how can I expand my service offerings to include industries that are growing? Observing growing regions, there’s no shortage of continual construction. There’s a demand for architectural and engineering services, and by extension, a need for visual communication—whether to clients in a residential or commercial setting, or to the public in public works—to illustrate the proposed design. Motion rendering requires animation, and much like drone videography, it involves a cinematic approach and a strong compositional sense. The skill set I use for video communications is very similar to animating architectural renderings.

After listening to an episode of My First Million featuring Nick Mowbray from ZURU Tech, I was particularly intrigued by their acquisition of an architectural company in Italy. What interested them wasn’t just the company itself but the technology stack it was built on. While traditional architecture software, whether CAD or BIM, is built on older frameworks, this company had looked toward innovative industries and found inspiration in video games. They built their architectural stack on Unreal Engine, the same platform used for game development. Unreal Engine is free to use until a product generates $1 million in revenue—a brilliant strategic play by Epic Games to expand its user base and increase the chances of breakout success.

Naturally, I’m drawn to innovation—that’s where progress happens. So I downloaded Unreal Engine and created an Epic Games account. It’s a large download, and on macOS, it also requires Xcode. After installing it, I had to add Xcode to my path from the terminal, which set it as the default interpreter for code on my Mac Studio. These steps could have been overwhelming if I hadn’t already built up technical experience, much of which I’ve documented here. Where learning comes to life is in recognizing the interconnectedness of all these subjects. I am a generalist, and as I continue learning software from new industries, I'm starting to see how they all connect.

Being self-employed means taking time off when I need it—not necessarily on pre-scheduled days or holidays. As the last workweek came to a close, I knew I needed to take a day for myself, and while I still came into the office, this time it was to work on my priorities. At the top of my to-do list was learning how to animate architectural renderings. I reached out to a few architects I know and received recommendations for various software: Lumion, Vectorworks, and Unreal Engine. After researching each, I gravitated toward Unreal Engine, drawn by its rapid innovation in VR/AR and video games on the Epic platform. Additionally, as someone with a background in video production, I look for cinematic elements—like 24 frames per second and motion blur—that set Unreal Engine apart.

Many architectural renderings I’ve seen in the past are done at 60 frames per second, which feels like a rendering when it's meant to bring to life the vision for the client. The natural motion blur is part of what makes a motion visual feel grounded. Compare a 24fps rendering with motion blur to a 60fps rendering without it. The results speak for themselves. Combine this with the ability to change the time of day, allowing for golden-hour lighting, and the difference becomes even more apparent. As a real-world photographer and videographer, achieving these moments usually requires waiting in the field or relying on artificial sky replacements, which rarely look natural. Motion rendering in Unreal Engine gives control over all these variables, ensuring the best possible end result.

In Unreal Engine, I generated a sequence, created a camera track, and keyframed the movement much like I would when flying a drone. Within a few hours, I had learned the process to create a simple flythrough animation of the demo architectural project. It’s not perfect—it’s a first attempt—but I’m documenting it here because I know my future work will reference this as a foundational starting point. What begins as a simple experiment could evolve into intricate, highly detailed motion renderings for architectural visualization. More to come.