It has been over ten years since the release of the UE4 Elemental Demo, and in 2022, this tech demo doesn't look as impressive as it did in 2012. The demo, however, has been made somewhat relevant again thanks to a developer who remastered it in Unreal Engine 5.1, complete with Lumen and Volumetrics.
The remastered Elemental tech demo has been developed by Dylan Browne, who re-lighted most of the interior scenes for a better cinematic feel, as the original demo used static lighting. While the demo doesn't use ray traced Lumen, it still looks impressive, highlighting the huge technological leap for lighting since 2012.
Decided to do a fun 1 day project to convert the very old (10 years!) Elemental demo by Epic to UE5.1 (UE5-Main Branch), this isn't just a straight conversion as this demo was obviously lit with static lighting and fake bounce lights etc. So I went about re-lighting most of the interior scenes for a more cinematic look and to make use of Lumen as well as Volumetric Fog which didn't exist in engine when this was released originally.
All lighting is Dynamic using software Lumen only, no Ray Traced Lumen as it didn't add much to this particular scene, all the volumetric fog gets it indirect lighting from Lumen too.
If you never saw the original Unreal Engine 4 Elemental tech demo, you can check it out below.
The Unreal Engine 5 is the latest version of the game engine developed by Epic. More information on it and its features like Lumen can be found on its official website.
About the author: Francesco De Meo has been covering video games and technology since 2012, starting his career at small outlets like Gamersyndrome and GeekSnack. After joining Wccftech gaming section in 2015, he quickly expanded his video gaming coverage with in-depth reporting, interviews with iconic industry figures such as Grasshopper Manufacture founder and No More Heroes creator Goichi "Suda51" Suda, Resident Evil series creator Shinji Mikami, Team NINJA's president and Nioh series director Fumihiko Yasuda, and Silent Hill creator Keiichiro Toyama, reviews and on-the-ground coverage of major industry events such as Gamescom and E3. When he's not reporting or reviewing, Francesco can be found playing the genres he loves most, spending time with his six cats, reading, writing music, playing guitar and drumming for his progressive rock band.
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