Book of the Dead
Unity’s award-winning Demo Team, creators of “Adam”, is excited to announce Book of the Dead, a first-person interactive demo showcasing the capabilities of Unity 2018 for powering high-end visuals for game productions.
Get startedA powerful new rendering pipeline
Book of the Dead demonstrates what is possible when using Unity 2018’s new Scriptable Render Pipeline, which provides enhanced customizability of Unity’s rendering architecture, putting more control in the hands of the developers.
The project is built on the new High-Definition Render Pipeline template which ships with Unity 2018 and various powerful customizations enabled by the SRP.
Download Unity 2018.1
Watch the teaser
Making of blog series
Book of the Dead: Heijmans covers Megascans usage, wind system, scene building and content optimization tricks in Book of the Dead.
A behind-the-scenes look at the Unity Demo Team, who are exploring and pushing the limits of what is possible to achieve with the Unity engine.
Georgi Simeonov goes behind the scenes of Book of the Dead. Explore the concept art and thought processes that the Unity Demo team went through when bringing this world to life.
Learn about the design and inspiration of ‘Screwie’ characters in Book of the Dead from Unity Demo team Character/Environment artist Plamen Tamnev.
CG and VFX artist Zdravko Pavlov digs into creating the photogrammetry assets, trees, and the VFX used in Book of the Dead. Take a look at the thought process and workflow that went into creating such a stunning environment.
Book of the Dead: Environment project is now available on the Asset Store
Enhanced version of the environment shown in the Book of the Dead trailer, available now for free.
The project runs 30 fps in 1080p on PS4 Pro, Xbox One X and Windows/DX11 (mid-range gaming system). It is also supported on macOS/Metal, Windows/Vulkan/DX12 as well as on PS4, Xbox One and Xbox One S.
Download Book of the Dead: Environment
GDC 2018: Book of the Dead and Unity’s new HD Render pipeline - in-Editor demo at Unity’s Keynote.
Book of the Dead is an interactive demo that combines elements from both film and games. The trailer is representative of the actual gameplay experience. The environments are built in a way that allows the player to move around and explore.
Running in real-time on the MacBook and eGPU on the massive keynote stage screen at WWDC 2018.
Real-world environment assets
All of the natural environment assets in the demo are photogrammetry-scanned real-world objects and textures. The majority of them come from Quixel Megascans, a publicly available library of high-quality scanned assets, which is used widely by high-end game production and film VFX professionals alike.
For creating its own photogrammetry assets, the Demo team used the experimental Delighting Tool developed by Unity Labs in its workflow.
Download Quixel Megascans
Pushing the envelope
Unity’s Demo productions drive advanced use of the Unity engine through autonomous creative projects. The team consists of experienced game professionals led by Creative Director Veselin Efremov, who writes and directs the demos and is responsible for their final look.
Focusing on graphics, the team explores and pushes the limits of what is possible to achieve with the Unity engine. The unique position of an internal team is that it is willing and able to take the risk — and pain — of basing entire productions at the bleeding edge of technological innovation.
See all projects by the team
Demo Team
Written, Directed and Art Directed by
Veselin Efremov
Produced by
Silvia Rasheva
Technical Director
Torbjorn Laedre
Concept Art Director
Georgi Simeonov
Animation Director
Krasimir Nechevski
Sr. Graphics Programmer
Robert Cupisz
Character Art
Plamen ‘Paco’ Tamnev
Environment Art
Veselin Efremov
Zdravko Pavlov
Julien Heijmans
VFX Art
Zdravko Pavlov
Systems Programmer
Malte Hildingsson
Junior Programmer
Dominykas Kiauleikis
Cast
Karen
Louise Ryme
Interviewer
Joshua Lenn
The Bishop
Stephen Rappaport
Screwies
Leonid Yovchev
Additional Art
Sound Design and Music
Aleksander Karshikoff
Additional Environment Art
Tihomir Nyagolov
Tinko Wiezorrek
Scanned Natural Assets
Quixel
Additional Character Art
Alexander Ponomarev
Audio Production
Pole Position
Motion Capture & Additional Animation
Aneta Spasova
Special Thanks: Nikolay Toshev, Mihail Moskov
Music
Requiem in D minor, K.626 (Lacrimosa)
Composed by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Arranged and Performed by Aleksander Karshikoff
Unity Technologies R&D
Sebastien Lagarde, Tim Cooper, Kuba Cupisz, Jesper Mortensen, Thomas Hourdel, Yibing Jiang, Julien Ignace, Morten Mikkelsen, Ionut Nedelcu, Xiao Ling Yao, Yuanxing Cai, Vlad Andreev, Evgenii Golubev, Uygar Kalem, John Elliott, Tobias Alexander Franke, Kasper Engelstoft, Mikko Strandborg, Felipe Lira, Arnaud Carré
Natalya Tatarchuk
© 2019 Unity Technologies ApS