In crafting the cinematic trailer for The Witcher 4, our team set out to push Unreal Engine’s rendering system beyond its default capabilities, aiming to achieve a truly filmic look rooted in real-world cinematography. Our focus was on integrating anamorphic lens characteristics—such as realistic depth-of-field behavior, distinctive bokeh shapes, lens distortion, and optical flares—into a custom camera system.

This talk will dive into the technical challenges we encountered while developing this custom anamorphic camera setup. We’ll explore how Unreal Engine’s existing depth-of-field and lens distortion models needed refinement to properly replicate the optics of anamorphic lenses. From improving bokeh rendering to adding support for ST maps-driven lens distortion, we’ll walk through the key solutions that allowed us to elevate the trailer’s realism. Additionally, we’ll discuss how our approach balanced visual fidelity with real-time performance constraints, ensuring the camera system remained production-ready.

By bridging the gap between traditional filmmaking techniques and real-time rendering, we’ve expanded the creative possibilities for storytelling in Unreal Engine. This approach not only shaped the visual identity of The Witcher 4 trailer but also paved the way for future projects to achieve a more authentic and immersive cinematic experience.