Instead of recreating a popular game in the new Unreal Engine 5, a Youtuber used a deepfake to grab a Hollywood star. The result is something to be proud of.
Virtual replicas of real people are getting closer and closer to their originals, as the example of commercials with Bruce Willis, which were created using deepfakes, shows. A Youtuber has now demonstrated that very real-looking results can also be achieved with the new Unreal Engine 5, using the example of Hollywood star Tom Cruise.
He uses a video from the (Metahuman-Framework), which belongs to the official UE5 library, as a basis. Using deepfake, a virtual Tom Cruise is created. Since you can hardly distinguish the virtual Tom Cruise from the real one, the whole thing has something frightening about it – just imagine yourself suddenly appearing in such a video. However, the UE5-based replica in the video below does not look completely natural.
According to our impression, this concerns, among other things, the winking eyes and the more pronounced facial expressions. Compared to most character models in games, this still looks very, very good. However, you do get the feeling that a robot has been told what to do instead of seeing completely natural movements. However, we already knew before watching the video that it showed a virtual Tom Cruise, which might have reinforced this impression.
If you want to experience Unreal Engine 5 in action even more, you can find suitable tech demos with similarly impressive results here:
Unreal Engine 5: These 15 tech demos show you the graphics power of the new version
It’s worth watching until the end
The video not only shows convincingly and quite independently of the deepfaked Tom Cruise what the Unreal Engine 5 can do in terms of character representation. At the end, it also briefly flexes its muscles in terms of lighting.
The virtual red lamp mounted above Tom Cruise illuminates his hair, his upper body and the whole scene very realistically at the touch of a button. Beyond the lumen technology, lighting in general plays an important role in the UE5, find out more in our UE5 release overview.
How convincing do you find the virtual replica of Tom Cruise in Unreal Engine 5? And how long do you think it will take for characters to look this good in games outside of cutscenes? Feel free to write it in the comments!
