Princess of Athirapally
Pipeline · Agent-operated Unreal production

Everything inside the engine

Every frame of Princess of Athirapally is rendered in Unreal Engine 5. Only base geometry is authored outside it. This page is the whole chain, capture to DCP, and the four things we do differently.

Capture to DCP

Seven stages. Select one.

Use the arrow keys to move between stages and Enter or Space to open one. Home and End jump to the first and last stage.

01 · Capture

Three systems, one shoot

OptiTrack captures the dialogue scenes. Vicon and Giant capture the stunt sequences. MetaHuman Animator captures the faces. Witness and face-reference cameras run on set. Every session ends in a report, and every report feeds the capture ledger. November 7–9, 2026.

Nov 7–9, 2026 Tools
OptiTrackViconGiantMetaHuman AnimatorWitness camerasFace-reference cameras
MCP skills
Ingest the capture takes.
Ledger
Session reports feed the capture ledger.
02 · MetaHuman

Scanned doubles, not stock

The characters are MetaHumans with fully scanned digital doubles of the cast. A PBR + video-projection lookdev workflow, developed on this production, carries skin and facial performance further than stock MetaHuman. Wardrobe is built in Marvelous Designer, textures in Substance Painter. Only base geometry is authored outside Unreal. Retargeting and all post-animation happen in-engine.

Tools
MetaHumanMetaHuman AnimatorMarvelous DesignerSubstance Painter
In-engine
Retargeting and all post-animation.

The character workflow, in detail

03 · Layout / VCAM

Cinematography shot live, against versioned layouts

Every beat is blocked as a versioned layout in the engine. All cinematography is shot live with VCAM against those layouts. A VCAM take is an immutable snapshot, ledgered against the layout version it was shot on, so any shot can be traced back to the layout it came from. Boards are generated from the same layouts, not from a blank prompt.

Tools
Unreal SequencerVCAMComfyUIClaude Code
MCP skills
Populate Sequencer. Version layouts.
Ledger
Each VCAM take is ledgered against the layout version it was shot on.

How the boards are made

04 · FX

Simulated outside, lit and rendered inside

The waterfall, the night-battle fire, the lightning-struck burning tree, blood and dust are simulated in Houdini and EmberGen. They are then lit and rendered in Unreal through Movie Render Queue. The waterfall itself appears at three scales: lookout, top and foothill.

Tools
HoudiniEmberGenMovie Render Queue
Simulated
Waterfall · night-battle fire · burning tree · blood · dust
05 · Render

Final pixel, in-engine

Every frame is rendered in Unreal Engine 5 through Movie Render Queue: final pixel, in-engine. Foliage runs on Nanite, with DLSS for environments and accessories. Lighting, render and comp sit together in the post-production schedule, December 2026 to February 2027.

Tools
Unreal Engine 5Movie Render QueueNaniteDLSS
Schedule
Lighting, render and comp: Dec 2026–Feb 2027.
06 · Editorial

Sequences become shots at edit lock

The edit runs in DaVinci Resolve. At edit lock, sequences are turned over into shots, a step the MCP skills perform, and from there each shot version is tracked in the ledgers. The Director's Cut is due December 15, 2026. The grade is done in Resolve as well.

Director's Cut Dec 15, 2026 Tools
DaVinci Resolve
MCP skills
Turn sequences over into shots at edit lock.
Ledger
Shot versions: the last link in the capture take → VCAM take → shot version trace.

One take, traced

07 · DCP

Score, mix, grade, master

The score and the Dolby Atmos mix are due March 15, 2027. The colour grade is done in DaVinci Resolve. The DCP master is due March 31, 2027. Then festival submissions, from April 2027, and the public release of the tools in Q2 2027.

DCP mastered Mar 31, 2027 Tools
DaVinci ResolveDolby AtmosDCP
Due
Score and Atmos mix Mar 15, 2027 · DCP Mar 31, 2027
Then
Festival circuit from Apr 2027 · tools released Q2 2027

Four things this production does differently

MCP skills that run the production

The production is operated by agentic skills, built with Vega Entertainment, that work on Unreal directly through MCP. They populate Sequencer, version layouts, ingest capture takes, update the ledgers and turn sequences over into shots. Because the ledgers they write to are append-only, nothing in them is overwritten: rows are added, never edited or deleted. Princess of Athirapally is intended as the flagship reference production for this way of working. On completion, the skill set is released with its documentation, so that another production can run the same way.

Boards generated from the scene, not a blank prompt

Storyboards on this production are not drawn from a prompt. A custom ComfyUI pipeline uses Claude Code to drive Unreal: it takes the blocked layout, extracts depth and colour passes, and feeds them to ControlNet as the constraint for the board image. The board is therefore a picture of the layout as it actually stands: same camera, same staging, same depth. Boards and layout never drift apart, because the boards are derived from the layout. The pipeline and its node graphs are released with the film.

Captured worlds

The Western Ghats are not modelled. They are captured. Gaussian splats scanned on location in the Athirapally forest and the surrounding Western Ghats replace hand-built environments. Hero foliage is captured individually. Procedural content generation dresses the village, the jungle and the British camp; Nanite carries the foliage; DLSS carries the environments and accessories. The forest the story is set in is the forest on screen. The methodology is part of the public release.

A character workflow beyond stock MetaHuman

The characters are MetaHumans, but not stock ones. They are built on fully scanned digital doubles of the cast. A PBR + video-projection lookdev workflow, developed on this production, drives skin and facial performance at a higher fidelity than the standard MetaHuman path. Facial capture comes from MetaHuman Animator; retargeting and all post-animation stay in-engine. Wardrobe is built in Marvelous Designer and textures in Substance Painter; only the base geometry is authored outside Unreal. The workflow is released with sample assets when the film is complete.

Data discipline

The Unreal project is managed in Perforce. Around it sits an exchange-layer folder structure organised by asset, beat and shot. Four append-only CSV ledgers record what happened: nothing in them is edited or deleted, only added.

Source control

Perforce-managed Unreal project

Exchange layer

Folders organised by asset, beat and shot

Ledgers

Four append-only CSV ledgers

Rows are added, never edited or deleted.

The folder structure, naming conventions and ledger system are part of the case study we release in Q2 2027.

One take, traced

Four append-only CSV ledgers sit beside the Perforce-managed Unreal project. Nothing in them is edited or deleted; rows are only added. Together they let us trace any frame backwards: the shot version it belongs to, the VCAM take that shot version was made from, the layout version that VCAM take was shot against, and the capture take that drove the performance in it. Read the other way, every capture take from the November stages can be followed forward to every shot it ends up in.

  1. Capture take take 012 Session report → capture ledger
  2. VCAM take vcam 031 shot against layout v4
  3. Shot version shot 0040 v3 turnover at edit lock
Illustrative ids. The real ledgers use the production's naming conventions, published with the case study.
RecordKeyWhat it recordsWhere the row comes from
capture taketakeA take from the November capture stagesSession report from the stage · feeds the capture ledger
layout versionlayout vnA versioned layout, the state VCAM was shot againstMCP skill: versioning layouts
VCAM takevcam takeAn immutable snapshot plus the layout version it was shot onVCAM shoot against a versioned layout
shot versionshot · versionA shot turned over from its sequence at edit lockMCP skill: sequences → shots turnover

The capture ledger is fed by the session reports. Which of the four ledgers holds each of the other records is documented in the case study.

Released to the community · target Q2 2027

When the film is done, the tools are released.

What we release

The MCP skill set, the board pipeline, the character workflow, the splat methodology and a full case study, target Q2 2027.

  1. The MCP skill set, with documentation

    Q2 2027

  2. The ComfyUI ↔ Unreal board pipeline and node graphs

    Q2 2027

  3. The PBR + video-projection MetaHuman workflow, with sample assets

    Q2 2027

  4. The Gaussian-splat environment methodology

    Q2 2027

  5. A full production case study

    Q2 2027

“The film is our deliverable. The pipeline, tools and documentation are the ecosystem's.”

What we release Where we are

The toolset

What each tool does on this production.

Unreal Engine 5
The engine. Every frame is rendered in it, final pixel; only base geometry is authored outside it.
Nanite
Foliage.
DLSS
Environments and accessories.
PCG
Procedural dressing of the village, the jungle and the British camp.
Gaussian splats
The environments: scanned on location in the Athirapally forest and the surrounding Western Ghats, hero foliage captured individually.
MetaHuman / MetaHuman Animator
The characters, built on fully scanned digital doubles of the cast; MetaHuman Animator for facial capture.
Marvelous Designer
Wardrobe.
Substance Painter
Textures.
OptiTrack
Motion capture for the dialogue scenes.
Vicon
Motion capture for the stunt sequences, with Giant.
Giant
Motion capture for the stunt sequences, with Vicon.
VCAM
All cinematography, shot live against versioned layouts.
Houdini
Simulation: the waterfall, the night-battle fire, the burning tree, blood and dust, with EmberGen.
EmberGen
Simulation, with Houdini.
Movie Render Queue
Rendering in Unreal. The simulated FX are lit and rendered through it.
ComfyUI
The board pipeline: depth and colour passes from blocked layouts as ControlNet inputs.
Claude Code
Drives Unreal for the ComfyUI board pipeline.
Perforce
Manages the Unreal project.
DaVinci Resolve
Edit and grade.
Dolby Atmos
The mix.

The MCP skills that operate the engine are built with Vega Entertainment. Team and partners