How Unreal Engine visualizes weather - and shows storm surge is serious

Storm surges—like those from Hurricane Milton, which will hit Florida tonight—can be devastating. But it took 3D xR visualization to translate what that means in real terms before it’s too late. Here’s how that technology has arrived in recent years in another job for Unreal Engine (a tool you can use for free).

First, if you’re reading this in Florida, authorities recommend sheltering in place at this stage as I publish this. And to all my friends and family, I’ll be thinking of you through the night and in the morning. Stay safe.

Flashy as this is, this is also a good example of how the technology we use can cross over into science and hopefully impact people in a positive way. Special effects and motion graphics don’t have to be a gimmick; they can tell a story. Weather reports often tossed around “storm surge” and measurements in feet with color-coded maps, but that’s still pretty abstract. Then, a few years ago, we started seeing visualizations like this from The Weather Channel. I have to admit, I always took storm surge seriously, but even I didn’t really grok what this meant until seeing the visualization on a street.

The Weather Channel’s graphics department has even managed to get spoofed on Last Week Tonight:

Unreal Engine featured how this was done. As usual, it’s as much about design and set design and cinematography as much as just tech. The Weather Channel even has their own in-house designers and developers, who go through the process. It’s all Unreal Blueprint stuff – key for flexibility and reusability – and a whole lot of materials and weather systems. The virtual production work is all done with specialized house Zero Density.

But it’s impressive how much of this is running inside Unreal Engine itself – how much of the workflow is there. The big advantage of Unreal, of course, is combining real-time graphics and xR and broadcast tools with really flexible workflows.

Side note: come on, Apple. I know you have a beef with Epic, but maybe you two can kiss and make up and make more of this run on macOS already?

These xR visualizations are typically licensed tools inside Unreal Engine – though they also illustrate the kinds of custom tools you can build up with Epic’s toolset. Just last month, we got a teaser for more of these exhibitors at the International Signs & LED Exhibition, the largest such show in Asia, held in Guangzhou, China. (I’m not a big trade show fan, and I feel like I’d seriously nerd out to this one.)

And, of course, you can find third-party creations on the Unreal Marketplace, like this one from Dexsoft Games.

These videos need a 2024 update – US Americans, I’ll just let you turn on The Weather Channel and get it, while I watch our 90s-chic graphics packages here in Germany. But here’s Zero Density’s look at what they were doing for TWC a few years ago:

Since that was all catastrophic and Floridians are kind of getting a full reality-reality immersion in the next hours, here is something… a bit calmer. It’s also from The Weather Channel partner MYREZE, and of course it’s Unreal Engine 5.