Epic Games Shows Tech for “Next-Gen Digital Humans” and Impressive DXR Raytracing Demo at GDC

Giuseppe Nelva March 21, 2018 2:08 PM EST

Epic Games showcased some really impressive performance capture tech alongside real-time raytracing applied to reflection at GDC in San Francisco.

Developers from all over the world are showing new tech at Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, and Epic Games just joined the party at its own panel, showcasing some rather impressive technology.

First of all, the developers of Unreal Engine showcased technology to create “next-generation digital human” in partnership with 3Lateral, Cubic Motion, Tencent, and Vicon. We get to see “Siren,” based on the likeness of Chinese actress Bingjie Jiang, and an extremely expressive performance by Andy Serkis.

This appears to be a step forward compared to the current performance capture tech.

On top of this, Epic is also dabbling in real-time raytracing using the recently-announced DXR framework by Microsoft and Nvidia’s RTX technology, showcasing an impressive Star Wars-themed demo focusing on real-time reflections. This is interesting especially because this kind of reflections are one of the most interesting features that Raytracing can bring to games in the not-too-far future.

You can check out the videos below, and see if you start feeling the next generation approaching.