01Case study
Superman
Superman over a whole city, built in Unreal Engine.
This is our own Superman fan game, made to see how good flight can feel in a real time 3D city. It runs on Unreal Engine 5, with the character and city prepared by our own Python tools. You walk the streets among traffic and people, crouch and launch, hover above the roofs, cruise and break the sound barrier, then dive back down for a landing. It is a private project and is not published anywhere, so every picture here is from the game running on our own machine.
01Why we built it
Flight is the hardest thing to get right in a hero game. It has to feel fast without losing the player, and the world has to hold up from the sidewalk and from a thousand meters up.
So the brief we set ourselves was one character who walks, runs, takes off, hovers, cruises and lands, over a city big enough that you never reach the edge.
02The city
A city with no edge
City blocks repeat around the player as he flies, turned and mirrored so the streets do not read as copies, with a far skyline ring and haze on the horizon.
Streets that move
Cars drive the avenues and people walk the sidewalks, so the street level feels lived in when he lands.
Water and air
Canals cut through the blocks with bridges over them and boats moving along them. Gulls scatter when he flies through a flock, and airliners cross high overhead.
Light
Hardware ray tracing and Lumen light the city, so the glass towers, wet streets and the suit pick up real reflections.
03Flight
Take off
He drops into a crouch and launches straight up, kicking dust off the street.
Hover
Stop anywhere in the air and he holds a hovering stance, drifting a little in the wind while the camera circles freely.
Cruise and boost
Fly with the body stretched out and one fist forward, bank into turns, and boost through the sound barrier with a vapor cone, a trail and a sonic boom.
Landing
Dive back to the street or a roof and land on his feet.
04Superman himself
A rigged hero
A fully rigged character model, converted by our own Python tools onto a clean skeleton with extra bones for the cape.
Poses from reference
Standing, walking, running, the take off crouch, hovering and flying are posed in code from film reference, with the pelvis, shoulders and arms moving together as he walks.
A cape that reacts
The cape is driven bone by bone from his speed and direction, hanging still when he stands and stretching out flat at full speed.
Sound
Take off, fly by and landing sounds, wind that rises with speed, and footsteps on the street.
A heads up display
A map in the corner with his shield as the marker, speed and altitude, and a pause menu.
05How it is built
Unreal Engine 5
Movement, flight, poses, the cape, traffic, people and the city around the player are written in C++ inside Unreal Engine 5.
Python tools
Scripts prepare the character and its materials, build the city, the canals and the street life in the editor, so a change is one rerun, not hand placement.
★The result
A hero you can fly anywhere, running in real time.
The game is playable on our machine today: walking, take off, hovering, flight, boosting and landing over a city with traffic, people, boats and planes.
It stays private, with no download or public link, and we keep adding to it.
Want a 3D world of your own?
If you have a game or an interactive 3D world in mind, we can build it in Unreal Engine or for the browser, from the models to the code. The first call is 15 minutes and costs nothing.