Quick answer: Unreal Engine is free, renders film-quality scenes fast, and can react to your music.
- For a music video: build a scene, drop your track into Sequencer, animate to it, and render with Movie Render Queue.
- To make visuals follow the music: export a MIDI file from your DAW and drive the scene from its notes, or analyse the audio itself.
- For live shows: send MIDI or OSC from your DAW or controller into Unreal and output full screen to a projector or LED wall.
Why musicians pick Unreal
- It’s free for individuals and small studios. Check the royalties guide if you sell an app or game.
- Real-time rendering. You see the final look while you work, and a render takes minutes, not overnight.
- Huge free asset libraries for stages, cities, skies and effects (where to get them).
Music videos, step by step
- Build or download a scene. Start small: one stage, a few lights, a camera.
- Open a Level Sequence and add your song as an Audio track. Its waveform shows on the timeline, so you can key lights and cameras to the beat.
- Animate. Move cameras, lights and objects by hand, or let the music drive them (next section).
- Add text and lyrics with UMG widgets in the sequence (how).
- Render with Movie Render Queue, then put the audio back on in your video editor.
Making visuals follow the music
| Method | Good for | Watch out for |
|---|---|---|
| Keyframe by hand to the waveform | Camera cuts, big moments | Slow for every drum hit |
| Audio analysis (the built-in Audio Synesthesia plugin) | Pulsing to loudness and onsets | It hears the mix, not which instrument played |
| MIDI from your DAW | Exact notes: a piano key per note, a light per drum hit | Needs a plugin or Blueprint work to read MIDI files |
MIDI is the most precise, because you already have it: it is your arrangement. Every kick, chord and melody note becomes an event the scene can react to.
Live visuals
- Input: enable Unreal’s MIDI Device Support plugin to read a controller or a virtual MIDI port from your DAW (on Windows, loopMIDI makes one). The built-in OSC plugin works with apps like TouchOSC.
- Output: run the scene full screen on the projector or LED processor. For multi-screen walls, Unreal has nDisplay.
- Rehearse on the show machine. Frame drops are much more visible live than in a render.
The honest drawbacks
- You need a good GPU. See our PC guide.
- There is a learning curve. Expect a few weekends before your first video looks right.
- Other tools may fit better. TouchDesigner is the standard for live, generative visuals and has a gentler start for VJ work. Blender is great for a stylised video where render time doesn’t matter. Pick Unreal when you want real-time 3D worlds.
We play MIDI from a Sequencer track in our MIDI Engine 4 PRO plugin.
FAQ
Do I need to code?
No. Sequencer, materials and Blueprints cover music videos and most live setups.
Can I sync to a song with tempo changes?
Yes with MIDI, since the notes keep their real times. Hand keyframing and audio analysis don’t care about tempo either.
Can I stream the output to OBS?
Yes. Capture the Unreal window in OBS like any other app.