A Minecraft Movie: How the Virtual Art Department Enabled Real-Time Collaboration with Unreal Engine
Translating Minecraft’s instantly recognizable voxel world into a cinematic feature demanded a highly collaborative workflow across departments. In this session, Disguise’s Talia Finlayson breaks down the Virtual Art Department (VAD) pipeline on A Minecraft Movie and how Unreal Engine was used to drive real-time collaboration throughout the production.
The talk will unpack how the VAD team converted traditional Art Department assets into optimised, real-time environments that supported everything from scene layout and stunt previews to camera blocking and asset sharing with downstream VFX teams.
Talia will outline the end-to-end pipeline, including ingesting Rhino-based set designs into Blender, modular scene construction in Unreal, and the use of custom blueprints for camera overlays and lighting controls. The talk will explore creative challenges in adapting Minecraft’s iconic blocky style for cinematic storytelling and share specific strategies used to iterate quickly while maintaining visual fidelity.
In this session, you’ll gain insight into how this real-time, pre-production approach with a VAD empowered faster decision-making, clearer creative alignment, and smoother downstream execution across departments.
