Author Topic: UNreal 5  (Read 7310 times)

2021-06-04, 16:39:31

JF

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I love Corona, but I hate 3ds max.
What are people's thoughts on Unreal 5 for Archviz vs Corona, bearing in mind that initial models come from Revit or Rhino?
If the import works without issue and the UV's work without issue, in my mind, this is becoming a bit of 3ds max / Render Plugin (no offense Corona I love you) killer. 
I'm wondering where the pipeline catch is?

I know unreal is not in the roadmap for Corona, but honestly, at this point, sticking to Autodesk products (yes I know you're there cinebench)  might be an issue. Autodesk has decided not to significantly update it's software for the past decade whereas unreal is being somewhat revolutionary.

2021-06-04, 18:17:13
Reply #1

Philip kelly

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Agree with you 100%
Dell Precision T7910

2021-06-04, 23:31:56
Reply #2

vblackrender.

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Sounds interesting, but I cant see this in the near future. I personally dont know anybody who would work in unreal for archviz. There are to many functions missing, plugins, also modeling is a whole different thing and all the 3d assets.

2021-06-07, 08:19:12
Reply #3

aaouviz

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Hey JF,

Be a pioneer. Lead the way.

If your theory hold up, we'll be following. You'll even have a head-start...
Nicolas Pratt
Another Angle 3D
https://www.instagram.com/anotherangle3d/

2021-06-07, 20:25:34
Reply #4

sebastian___

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I tried to find more informations on youtube videos and on their documentation, about their new real-time Lumen GI and lighting.
By default the quality is not high enough, you don't have proper contact shadows, the soft shadows seem only an approximation of the real thing. But maybe just like in cryengine, you can increase the quality with CVARS, even if you will get 1 frame per second, but from what I've looked so far, it seems it's not there.

Of course you can't see the problems if you have a heavy busy textured terrain, but with a white or gray interior, the lack of quality becomes visible.

2021-06-08, 07:45:28
Reply #5

aaouviz

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I tried to find more informations on youtube videos and on their documentation, about their new real-time Lumen GI and lighting.
By default the quality is not high enough, you don't have proper contact shadows, the soft shadows seem only an approximation of the real thing. But maybe just like in cryengine, you can increase the quality with CVARS, even if you will get 1 frame per second, but from what I've looked so far, it seems it's not there.

Of course you can't see the problems if you have a heavy busy textured terrain, but with a white or gray interior, the lack of quality becomes visible.

Agreed - I think it's amazing tech but it's definitely not a replacement for our beloved Corona (yet...). What we've seen has been heavily 'choreographed' (a bit of smoke + mirrors) and of course excluded all the behind-the-scenes hard work that goes into creating these nice example scenes.

If I were an existing real-time artist, and earning money off selling these types of services to clients, I'd be very excited. But my clients are still looking for still, photoreal images and Unreal cannot deliver this right now.
Nicolas Pratt
Another Angle 3D
https://www.instagram.com/anotherangle3d/

2021-06-08, 18:25:36
Reply #6

sebastian___

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But still, I think in theory the new Unreal 5 should be able to deliver a quality similar to a path-tracer, because how it is now it's like 90% there and delivered with 30 frames per sec. Surely if you would heavily increase the quality so it will render one frame in like a minute as opposed to in 0.033 seconds - the quality should be almost up there.
It's just that I couldn't find those console vars for that. Maybe someone else who knows Unreal could chime in.

The advantage would be that you could work in that 90% quality which would make the workflow very nice, being able to see the lighting, render, shadows in an almost final form, and you would increase the quality only for the final renders.

But I found even more drawbacks. The new Unreal with its "infinite" like polygons and nanite doesn't work for foliage and things that move, like leafs and plants. That's why they used that demo with only rocks and buildings. For a jungle and 95% foliage scene like it's in my thumbnail it would work, just without those optimizations.

2021-06-09, 02:50:35
Reply #7

JF

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I'm hoping for drawbacks at this point.

Foliage is one, certainly, but it will be fixed soon.
UV Mapping is the other - but there are plugins and archviz only requires basic UV capabilities. (Though most projects will have some finicky UVs here and there.)
Material Creation is arguably better overall in unreal though it does mix some key features.
Importing is not perfect, but neither is it in max.
Libraries and asset management is better in unreal thanks to megascans but not quite focused on archviz yet.

As for "choreographed" scenes, all the user videos I can find seem to unambiguously show a smooth interface and viewport performance.
Lumen may be 90% of the way there, but if I can play with materials in real -time and forgo the usual issues w 3ds then the final result might be better in the end, even for stills. 
I understand the sentiment though. I've always laughed when co-workers showed me Lumion renders, telling me how fast it all was, not understanding what they had in hand was garbage.
This seems different.


2021-06-09, 16:50:48
Reply #8

piotrus3333

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dxr will still be the way to go for archviz. quality is more important than 60fps in this case. lumen is made with performance in mind. dynamic geometry? not sure as in most archviz scenarios textures are the most expensive part I think.

so for now 5 is as good for archviz as 4. no time to lose, just dive in.
Marcin Piotrowski
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2021-06-10, 00:46:44
Reply #9

sebastian___

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so for now 5 is as good for archviz as 4. no time to lose, just dive in.

Yeah but unreal 5 has that "infinite" polygon technology.

There's also a very fast pathtracer you can activate from a menu, but from what I've read that is only a tool to establish the "ground truth" or how a scene is supposed to look, and you can't render a video with that, which I think it's stupid, since it's so fast.

Perhaps a good workflow would be to work with Lumen which is real-time but only an approximation and then to switch to raytrace for the final result. And it would be nice if you could easily switch back and forth between these without needing to restart the engine.
And it would be also nice if you could adjust Lumen and raytrace to be a close match - lighting wise.

2021-06-10, 10:18:38
Reply #10

piotrus3333

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unreal’s pathtracer only seems fast for people used to offline engines. for real timers it’s useless.

it is just a flick of a button, no restarts. lumen seemed like about half the cost of dxr in an interior scene. but if the scene is too slow dlss will be more beneficial. remember that UE5 targets 1080/2060 level hardware. this is a bit low for archviz on UE.
Marcin Piotrowski
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2021-06-10, 14:58:23
Reply #11

sebastian___

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I think if we are talking about a potential vray replacement, only an image like this would be acceptable. It would not need to be real-time. So far Lumen doesn't have these kind of contact sharp shadows if the area light is large.

Hopefully the raytrace solution has this kind of quality.


2021-06-10, 16:08:55
Reply #12

piotrus3333

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for „almost real time” there is Chaos Vantage. UE does not care for „almost”. hence Lumen.
Marcin Piotrowski
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2021-06-11, 00:46:54
Reply #13

sebastian___

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From what I studied, so far Chaos Vantage has some limitations for video rendering or production. But I did not installed it so maybe I'm not that well informed.

It also has graphical limitations like fog and vdb. I think.

2021-06-17, 17:02:03
Reply #14

sebastian___

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Material Creation is arguably better overall in unreal though it does mix some key features.

Maybe better as in a nicer interface with lots of options - compared to our aging Slate, but I tried to create a simple material double sided for a nice leaf shader, following multiple video tutorials, and after an hour of trying I couldn't do it. It just didn't work as it should. Maybe it doesn't work well in Unreal 5 ? The reflection or even specular did not work properly, same with translucency.
No to mention stupid parts like - needing to constantly press Apply or Save in order to show the changes on the model ? That's worse than in 3ds max or 2007 cryengine.

I also tried both Lumen and Raytracing, even though people said that ray tracing doesn't work in Unreal 5, I managed to make it work, after jumping through a lot of hoops. Real-time raytracing looks nice, with raytraced AO instead of of Screen-space AO but somehow it doesn't look correct. It looks better than a normal video game lighting solution, but not correct. Same with the Lumen.

Also for a much lauded program which aims at environment creation it seems it missing some basic things. For example in 3ds max and cryengine you can just select an object, go 1 kilometer away on that other mountain and press a key and the selected object will "teleport" and snap to where you clicked the mouse. Unreal seems it doesn't have this functionality.

You can probably get nice results with Unreal, but you will probably have to fight with the program a lot and have to learn a lot of new things.

2021-06-17, 17:26:15
Reply #15

CJRenders

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Have you ever tried c4d?

2021-06-18, 00:23:51
Reply #16

sebastian___

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What's that got to do with anything ?

I only know c4d from youtube tutorials, but it's a program like Maya and 3ds max. While we were talking about Unreal or so called "real-time" programs, or game editors. Right now they are still called game editors, but I suspect in the future they will become more generalized.

I also know c4d has a nice third-party real-time renderer. Maybe similar with Eevee from Blender ?

2021-06-18, 11:02:28
Reply #17

burnin

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I found out (so it's speculated) that UE5 uses Godot's GI model. Tested it some time ago and it did "Goood!"
Worth checking, if you're up for it. (I have other priorities for now...)

Also, have you tried or looked at CryEngine?

2021-06-18, 21:56:32
Reply #18

sebastian___

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Well, of course. I started with cryengine and back in 2010 I made the gifs attached as part of my research to achieve 3d motion blur, 3d (not post process) depth of field with bokeh, area shadows and other things in cryengine.
I'm still using the old cryengine from 2007. From time to time I check to see what's new in newer versions of cryengine, but it seems they still don't have what I need.
For me equally important would be not only the rendering but the workflow too, and it seems even though so incredibly old, cryengine 2007 had some very good tools built in for nature building and easy objects painting and management and dynamics. Plus it's similar with 3ds max.

But I think with a few more upgrades, the new Unreal will be hard to pass, and could be worth switching to as a new contender app for nature building.
........
old cryengine gifs and pics (some of them very low res - because they are animated)

3d motion blur,
you could have long distance objects drawing and shadows even in 2007,
nice dynamic vegetation and particles.














2021-07-02, 20:31:02
Reply #19

JF

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I don't know. I really don't want to learn a new software at this point. I'd love to stick with corona. But looking at the work that you can find online right now... you have 3d walkthroughs that look 90% as good as a full render. You can even let the viewer handle cloth colors etc...  I see this being massive for clients and for making material decisions. Honestly this is more Autodesk's fault than Corona's, but I'm doing my first project in unreal right now. No issues so far, the thing is more stable than max even in early release.  It's easier to drag and drop items and objects.

On the other hand c4d has added some great scene dressing tools and an up to date manager.  This is huge, so perhaps there's hope there for Archviz rendering. Even 2021 and with connecter, drag and drop is still rarely pain free in 3ds. Managing libraries of objects is also far from pain free. That unreal does this better than max w megascan is a massive advantage.