Friday, March 24th, 2023 Posted by Jim Thacker

MetaShoot puts a virtual photo studio in Unreal Engine


Vinzi – aka industrial designer and former Weta Workshop senior 3D modeller Jorge Valle Hurtado – has released MetaShoot, a new plugin that recreates a real-world photo studio inside Unreal Engine.

The add-on streamlines the process of rendering product visualisations or portfolio material in the game engine, making it easy to create ray traced renders of imported 3D models.

Recreate a real-world photo studio inside Unreal Engine
Although Unreal Engine is increasingly being used to render visualisations and portfolio material, many artists without a background in games find the process of preparing scenes for rendering offputting.

MetaShoot removes the need to create Level Sequences or adjust settings in the Movie Render Queue.

The plugin creates a virtual photo studio inside the game engine, complete with lights, softboxes and cyclorama backgrops, making it possible to recreate real-world studio lighting effects.

There are eight different readymade studio layouts, built up from 14 base assets.

Still images can be rendered in PNG, JPG or EXR formats, and video rendered using Apple’s ProRes codecs – the plugin includes a literal turntable asset for rendering product turntables.

There is also a 360-degree camera, making it possible to render the studio itself as a HDRI.

Price and system requirements
MetaShoot is compatible with Unreal Engine 5.0+ on Windows and macOS. It costs $249.99.

Read more about MetaShoot on the product website