The Making of NEXUS – Building A Series in Unreal Engine by Aaron Sims

This is not a button-pushing tutorial. It’s a breakdown of how Aaron Sims Creative is actually building NEXUS — an eight-episode sci-fi series done 100% in Unreal Engine 5 — from story and worldbuilding to final pixels.

🎯 What you’ll learn

• How to structure and scope an episodic CG series for real-time production
• Building dystopian worlds and metaverse environments in Unreal Engine 5
• Working with MetaHuman Animator for facial performance and characters
• Using Lumen, Nanite and Substrate for cinematic lighting and materials
• Real-time pipeline thinking: from trailer to eight 15-20 min episodes

✅ Requirements

• Skills: Basic understanding of Unreal Engine UI and 3D workflow
• Tools: Unreal Engine 5 installed, MetaHuman Creator access
• Hardware: Dedicated RTX GPU, Minimum 32GB RAM

📝 Description

So what is NEXUS? Set in a future dystopia, it follows a female assassin working in the metaverse who gets outplayed by a mysterious enemy. That one job drags her past right into a political revolution in the real world. Aaron Sims Creative is producing it as eight 15-20 minute episodes, all rendered in Unreal Engine 5 with MetaHuman Animator.

No offline renderer safety net here. The team leans hard on Lumen for dynamic lighting, Nanite for crazy-dense geometry without the usual optimization pain, and Substrate for more physical materials. You get to see how those tools hold up when you have to ship minutes of footage, not just a still frame or a 30-second short.

If you care about series, virtual production, or just making UE5 do the heavy lifting, this is super practical. It’s about choices: what to build, what to reuse, where to spend performance, and how to keep the look consistent across episodes.

🧑‍🎓 Who this course is for

• Unreal artists and filmmakers who want to make episodic content in real-time
• Concept artists, 3D generalists and fans of sci-fi worldbuilding and virtual production

🧑‍🏫 About the Author

Aaron Sims runs Aaron Sims Creative, a studio known for creature and character work on Stranger Things, Planet of the Apes and Wonder Woman. He started as a concept designer and prosthetics guy, then built a team that now handles full design through previz and final production.

With NEXUS, he is putting that film background straight into Unreal Engine 5 series production — directing, designing, and problem-solving in real-time.

🏁 Final Result

• A clear understanding of how to plan and execute a real-time animated sci-fi series like NEXUS, from logline and art direction to MetaHuman performance and UE5 final rendering.