People Can Fly, the studio behind titles such as Gears of War Judgment and Outriders, has revealed technical details of Project Maverick, a AAA shooter for Xbox Game Studios. The project bets on extreme graphical load, focused on total environment destruction and high-impact cinematic post-processing. The development is based on Unreal Engine 5, combined with simulation tools like Houdini and traditional Maya modeling.
Technical Pipeline: From Maya and Houdini to Real-Time Fracture 🛠️
The Project Maverick workflow is divided into two key branches. On one hand, Maya is used for creating hero assets and high-resolution sculptures that serve as the basis for materials. On the other, Houdini is the engine of procedural destruction. Technical artists generate predefined fracturing systems that are exported to Unreal Engine 5 as multi-mesh geometry. At runtime, the engine activates these fragments using the Chaos Physics system, combined with Niagara particles to simulate dust, debris, and sparks. The result is a demolition that respects physics and maintains stable performance thanks to the use of dynamic LODs and occlusion culling.
The Cost of Cinematic: Optimization on Xbox 🎬
The cinematic approach involves intensive use of post-processing: adaptive bloom, chromatic aberration, depth of field, and tonemapping with custom LUTs. To maintain 60 FPS on Xbox consoles, People Can Fly must balance dynamic resolution with the use of Virtual Shadow Maps and Nanite. The key is to limit the number of active fragments per explosion and pre-calculate the most complex destruction sequences in Houdini, preventing the CPU from becoming saturated. It is an exercise in balance between visual spectacle and technical fluidity.
How Project Maverick in Unreal Engine 5 manages performance and memory when simulating cinematic destruction without compromising real-time fluidity
(PS: 90% of development time is polishing, the other 90% is fixing bugs)