news • 4 June 2026
My Experience Learning Unreal Engine in Six Weeks
Written by Morgana Steele
FX Artist, Freelance Photographer and VFX Escapee
A few months ago, Escape Studios contacted me to ask whether I would be interested in trying their Unreal Engine for Film and TV (online-evening) short course.
By way of background, I’m a freelancer working across events, media and promotion. Before going independent in 2026, I worked full-time in content creation and social media for a startup music promoter and tech company. I have also recently launched a club night, Club Eigene, in collaboration with TalentBanQ and 21 Soho. My schedule is therefore the reverse of a typical Monday-to-Friday routine: I’m usually working all weekend filming, then spending the start of the week on post-production and client meetings.
The course ran on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 7:00pm to 10:00pm, giving us six hours of contact time each week. Although there were no formal assignments, we were encouraged to develop our own projects outside class. I found it easy to fit the course around my schedule because I’m used to working late, and because I travel often, the lack of any geographical commitment was a real advantage.
In terms of structure, all teaching took place on Teams. Sessions were recorded, so it was easy to revisit anything I had missed or wanted to review, and there was always room to ask questions during class. At the end of each session, a few minutes were set aside to discuss personal projects.
Resources were also provided, including a template map designed to demonstrate some of Unreal Engine’s core functions.
The first sessions focused on the essentials, introducing both the interface and the overall structure of the software. Having last used Unreal in the first year of my VFX BA, more than three years ago, I found this a very welcome refresher. We were also introduced to a larger scene and shown how the software’s different components and features work together.
The following week focused on materials and textures, covering useful nodes as well as good practice for organising materials in larger scenes.
Week three covered lighting and atmospherics, and this was where Unreal really impressed me. Coming from more conventional 3D software such as Maya, Cinema 4D, and Houdini, I was amazed by how fast and straightforward lighting and look development felt. Unreal’s speed is a huge part of what makes it so powerful within production pipelines. Even from the perspective of a traditional renderer, I was struck by how quickly it can produce high-quality results. This part of the course covered not only the theory behind lighting in Unreal, but also some useful cinematography fundamentals.
Next, we moved on to the Sequencer and animation, which I found quite intuitive. Unreal has a cinematographer-friendly approach to scene building, and I found the visual representation of cameras on rails both helpful and oddly charming. I also loved how extensive the camera settings are: in real time, you can adjust grading, lens dirt, artefacts, and much more. Because videography is a regular part of my day job, I found it deeply satisfying to experiment with different lens characteristics. I ended up spending a couple of hours in my own time trying to recreate some of my own lenses, including my 1.6x Sirui anamorphic and the Helios 44-2, and even experimenting to see whether I could replicate super-fast medium-format looks.
Week five focused on blueprints. Because I had studied Houdini at Escape during my VFX degree, this felt fairly intuitive. During the module, I found a custom tool online that could export signals from TouchDesigner into the Blueprint Editor. I have only scratched the surface of what is possible, but I could already see how powerful this could be for real-time concert visuals. We also touched on MetaHuman in this module, a powerful tool for creating digital doubles.
Finally, the last week covered Niagara, Unreal’s in-house FX system. Coming from a background where simulations can require long cache times, real-time FX felt like an especially exciting tool.
Overall, I would recommend this course to anyone with a 3D background who wants to explore Unreal Engine. It offers an excellent introduction to the software’s capabilities while also encouraging experimentation and creativity. I think it is always valuable to understand the fundamentals of a piece of software before developing a personal style, but it can be difficult to find the discipline to learn something new and complex alone. It’s all too easy to spend free time doomscrolling or clocking up hours in Tomodachi Life, which while a welcome distraction in the moment doesn’t do anything towards personal development. If I’ve learnt anything since graduating, the creative industries can be very competitive, so lifelong learning isn’t a luxury - it’s a requirement to stay relevant in a fast-changing industry.
That is what makes this course so effective: it provides structure, momentum, and a sense of shared learning. In 2026, it is all too easy to get distracted, even when you genuinely want to learn something new. For me, that is exactly why learning as part of a community can be such a powerful tool for creative development.
Morgana completed our Unreal Engine for Film and TV (evening-online) course, For more information on learning Unreal Engine at Escape, head to our subject hub for Unreal Engine.
