RE Engine

Logo of the RE Engine.

The RE Engine is a gaming engine developed by Capcom. Initially built for Resident Evil 7: Biohazard, it has since appeared in several Capcom games, mainly those within the Resident Evil franchise.

The "RE" is the first two letters of the engine's full name, "Reach for the moon", which the logo appropriately shows.^[1]

Games[]

Resident Evil 7: Biohazard
Resident Evil 2
Devil May Cry 5
Resident Evil 3
Resident Evil Resistance
Capcom Arcade Stadium
Ghosts 'n Goblins Resurrection
Monster Hunter Rise
Resident Evil Village
Capcom Arcade 2nd Stadium
Resident Evil Re:Verse
Resident Evil 4
Street Fighter 6
Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective (Remaster)
Exoprimal
Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney Trilogy
Dragon's Dogma 2
Monster Hunter Wilds
Pragmata
Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess

Overview[]

Unlike its predecessor, the MT Framework, the RE Engine includes a variety of new graphical and rendering techniques such as Subsurface Scattering (a shader method used to produce highly realistic human skin), Dynamic shadows, FXAA + TAA, Shadow cache, moreover, rendering techniques include the ability to output 4K Resolution, HDR, a VR specific mode, among others.

DMC5 Dante 3D photoshoot — Dante's 3D photoshoot (body) for *Devil May Cry 5*. The costumes the characters wear in the game are crafted in real life then 3D scanned with the actor cast as the face model wearing it.^[2]^[3]

On the other hand, the RE Engine enabled the developers to have photorealistic rendering and realistic shading. Characters, clothing and objects are scanned via a 3D photoshoot. According to Capcom's 2018 Annual Report,^[2] the latest facial technology developed by the Serbian company called 3Lateral was used for the character expressions in Devil May Cry 5. Also in the same game, models were cast in England for the main characters and real costumes were created from scratch, after makeup is applied, the models cast for each character are scanned as 3D objects while wearing the costumes.

For Devil May Cry 5, the clothing in particular were created in London and scanned in Serbia. Making Nero's new jacket alone cost as much as a small car,^[4] however his accessories were not scanned.^[5] The Devil May Cry van in the game took more than a year to make, the developers would even joke at the van feeling like a character due to how much time they spent on it, additionally, the writing on the van is the artist's own handwriting, including the blue neon sign.^[5]

The engine itself differs from its predecessor in terms of file formats and the whole game data is packed into a .PAK archive, making modifications a bit less comfortable.