Author Topic: Unreal Engine 4 for ArchViz - Thoughts?  (Read 292408 times)

2014-10-06, 11:30:21

tomislavn

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Hey guys, I have just bought a subscription to Unreal Engine 4 to check it out. Is anyone here using it for Arch-Viz? What are your thoughts about it? Feel free to shoot here :)

EDIT: Added youtube video previews of the technology
« Last Edit: 2014-10-06, 15:24:22 by tomislavn »
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2014-10-06, 22:17:46
Reply #1

Juraj

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I am using it for fun :- )
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2014-10-06, 23:10:00
Reply #2

Stan_But

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2014-10-07, 06:55:55
Reply #3

xt13r

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After i've seen those videos, I've planned to start teaching UDK. Only what i need now is free time)
I think it's a future)
Also i've read that octane was built in unreal engine. Don't now exactly how and why, but if they make intercative realtime physicall correct renderings - it's amazing!

2014-10-07, 08:08:45
Reply #4

tomislavn

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I am using it for fun :- )

Hey Juraj, yeah I have seen that you were actively participating in discussions about it over at cgarchitect. I am also trying to fiddle with it simply for fun and that is when I get some free time (which is quite rare nowadays unfortunately). Anyway, it looks very decent and it would be relatively quick to use if it wasn't for that UVW unwrap and shader tree that takes ages to setup properly :)

I was already imagining my visualizations in full hd / 60 fps heh
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2014-10-07, 11:27:46
Reply #5

Juraj

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The shader tree is not complicated :- ) You don't need to setup such flexible and robust shaders as they have in demos, you can do your materials just like in Corona or Vray. Just input Diffuse, Roughness, Bump, and you're ready to go :- ).
The material editor is beautiful thing and so is the shader system, it's just amazing.

But same thing you and Headoff said: There is no time. For anything.
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2014-10-07, 13:58:42
Reply #6

Rhodesy

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I've been looking into it too. Did a project with unreal2 (I think) years ago for uni. Baking everything in c4d and exporting into it, it was a massive faff.

Just to confirm it is possible to generate a user exe file that you can distribute to clients right? Previously you had to have the unreal game installed to run it.

2014-10-07, 14:46:18
Reply #7

Juraj

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Just to confirm it is possible to generate a user exe file that you can distribute to clients right? Previously you had to have the unreal game installed to run it.

Absolutely, and very easy to do.
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2014-10-07, 14:59:36
Reply #8

borisquezadaa

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UD4 is an amazing piece of tech, but its hard enough to do some decent modelling  to later create good texturing and materials working in projects  needed for "yesterday", adding the  extra baking and unwrapping (and optimize everything from polycount, texture resolutions and all that is involved), in some cases just.... scares a little.
Dont get me wrong, i'm quite capably to do that but is a lot of work, besides some clients does not have the power machines we use to work so if its not optimized it simply wont run.

There is copious amount of work involved in unwraping a simple wall with custom details. Not even start about a whole lot of small assets.
But actually if you manage to avoid the unwrapping  aplying some wild "white or solid" color palette to almost all, i think it worth the shot, more like a toy and if you really have the time why not get serious and create some 3d walktroughs using some like Oculus Rift?.
Maybe there is someone around who can pay for that and have the time to wait for it.
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2014-10-07, 15:08:30
Reply #9

Rhodesy

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Yeah I was thinking of offering it more as a working/white model for my clients to show their clients the volumes and spaces of the design. I can imagine doing an all singing and dancing model would be a pain. Just need to find the time!

2014-10-07, 17:53:25
Reply #10

Chakib

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Nice software for fast presentations and some nice realism, the first video is really great but why using a low poly models like in the kitchen side? that kills everything when he gets near this area...


2014-10-13, 12:51:35
Reply #12

CiroC

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I am also exploring the possibility to use Unreal 4 for architectural work. Maybe I am wrong, but Lumion will have to change his game.

2014-10-13, 14:04:36
Reply #13

Juraj

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I am also exploring the possibility to use Unreal 4 for architectural work. Maybe I am wrong, but Lumion will have to change his game.

World is not black and white, they're not even targeting the same group of users at all. They don't compete against each other.
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2014-10-13, 14:28:43
Reply #14

CiroC

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I am not saying that and even remotely compare the two. What I am saying is that Unreal 4 is starting to become a great alternative and hopefully that will force Lumion to change for better the product and the price tag.

2014-10-13, 14:55:39
Reply #15

Juraj

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I am not saying that and even remotely compare the two. What I am saying is that Unreal 4 is starting to become a great alternative and hopefully that will force Lumion to change for better the product and the price tag.

Oh yeah, just checked the price. What the hell :- O When did that... ?
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2014-10-13, 15:29:29
Reply #16

CiroC

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A little bit off topic, but I still remember that the first version of Lumion had an affordable price and then when they introduce Lumion 2  the price went to thousands of euros\pounds\dollars. This was something that happened maybe 3/4 years ago. Yes, Lumion has some nice trees, 3d models and visual effects, but sometimes it feels like driving a car using just one gear. You cannot tweak geometry individually and you can only use very simple animations (move, rotate and scale)

I know that Unreal's team is not promoting themselves as the next big thing for architectural visualization, but when I compare the Unreal and Lumion Pro, I want to take some time to understand the workflow and start exploring Unreal's potential. And I hope that Unreal this creates at least some pressure to make them to improve substantially the application or drop the price.

2014-10-16, 09:33:11
Reply #17

tomislavn

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Unreal Engine 4.5 released :) Gotta check it out today!
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2014-10-16, 10:57:36
Reply #18

CiroC

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Unreal Engine 4.5 released :) Gotta check it out today!

Have a look at the interior scene (simple two rooms and a tree). Beautiful light

2014-10-16, 20:27:52
Reply #19

Juraj

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Anyone played with yet... ?

I love the new raytraced shadows, unexpected but nice feature !
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2014-10-16, 21:39:46
Reply #20

racoonart

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I'm currently working on a (non-archviz) scene for UE. The big problem is: it's so much more work to do it right (or even acceptable) ... You must make sure everything has good non-overlapping UVs for baking and as soon as something moves (especially interior) everything gets a lot more complicated. You can't simply take the models you use for your normal renderings, it won't work that way. Screen-space reflections and reflection spheres have both pros and cons but it's nothing compared to raytraced reflections - you will always have to fight against ugly side effects.
Another thing is that some features are just not really ready yet. It's also very easy to run into limitations (max texture size, limited amount of dynamic lights, distance field shadows and the geometry you use etc...)

I'm not a game artist (and I probably will never be ;) ) but I doubt that this will revolutionize the Archviz industry anywhere soon.
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2014-10-16, 21:56:28
Reply #21

Juraj

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Absolutely, I am repeating this to everyone :- )

I have Unreal4 for 6 months by now I think and CE3 for far longer (I used CE in school before I knew 3dsMax, I imported by Sketchup models and created environment from Crysis Assets) and I knew it's useless for regular Archviz, the work amount is simply not worth it unless budget and time don't matter anymore. And that's the practicality of the output..well.

But I am just having fun, creating small game assets for personal pleasure and watching others daydream of the "revolution" around corner...
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2014-10-16, 22:05:55
Reply #22

racoonart

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But I am just having fun, creating small game assets for personal pleasure and watching others daydream of the "revolution" around corner...

That's a very healthy way to see it ;)
Unfortunately I had some very long talks with clients why those archviz UE4 demos are not just "realtime" versions of what people normally do in max with vray or corona.
"It looks good, is realtime and you can even change things on the fly in the editor..."  yeah.. no... :D
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2014-10-16, 22:13:13
Reply #23

Juraj

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I can see the pain of that :- ).

I had such discussion with Ronen in Venice, it does seem far too easy to most.
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2014-10-16, 22:26:32
Reply #24

borisquezadaa

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C'mon... i'm starting to feel curious about.  And since Corona has make my life less complicated i think maybe i have the time to do some unreal architecture levels to demolish interactively.
Corona render to texture (Cof!... cof!)---
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2014-10-16, 22:31:06
Reply #25

Juraj

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Corona render to texture (Cof!... cof!)---

You would have to "hard-bake" it as overlay for each object's diffuse texture (and create unique variation of the same shader thus) because at the moment Unreal doesn't support importing of lightmaps.
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2014-10-17, 00:07:53
Reply #26

borisquezadaa

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Exactly!... thats the only way i can think of using a full render solution from corona. That way i only use Unreal engine as a realtime walktrough generator.
Sadly the amounts of unwrapping to make a level is insane, it remembers my time doing modeling and rendering for games. Very fun times.
AFAIK Corona can output diffuse, reflection, refraction, translucency and emission channels using shading components both direct and indirect and  I guess is fairly enough for now for a  game engine (also AO pass) that way we can use unreal's own ligth system, but for really stand out needs a pbr material like output.
But almost every renderer can. So the main idea of using Corona as a map generator is useless.
Maybe is time to let aside my obsession with animated dispersive caustics and start doing some unwrapping.
So... corona is about materials... unreal is about unwraping.
I will try to find a interior scene with minimum unwrapping required... is there a problem if i try with sample scene?--- lets hands on.
« Last Edit: 2014-10-17, 00:54:26 by borisquezadaa »
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2014-10-17, 10:15:00
Reply #27

CiroC

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The thing with Unreal 4 is that it still is a game engine. Before start it pays off having some basic knowledge of how game engines work. The things that DeadClown mentioned are part of the process to create games and in this case to create arch viz.

2014-10-17, 11:25:01
Reply #28

Ondra

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I was always curious, why do you need to unwrap everything? There are automatic ways to do that...
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2014-10-17, 11:25:44
Reply #29

tomislavn

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I was always curious, why do you need to unwrap everything? There are automatic ways to do that...

I am also interested in that, it really puts me off from using it :)
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2014-10-17, 11:43:07
Reply #30

racoonart

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Because automatic sucks. Most of the time it will create way too many UV-shells which then will produce ugly seams somewhere clearly visible in your mesh. It's better to have a continuous unwrap with specific seams somewhere hidden (corners, on the bottom, etc).
Another example: Since the lightmaps are usually very small in resolution (e.g 64x64 ) it's is highly probably that little grooves (the gap between a car door and the rest of the car) which normally would be darker only get hit by a couple of samples, so you get ugly "jaggy" dark pixels/lines in your baking. It's better to plan your unwrapping accordingly.

Don't get me wrong, I would be extremely happy if there was an automatic solution ;)
Any sufficiently advanced bug is indistinguishable from a feature.

2014-10-17, 11:56:12
Reply #31

johan belmans

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Hi

we are exploring Unreal aswell, and untill now we came to the same conclusions as Deadclown and Juraj.
But we are not giving up :-) [I do not mean that Deadclown and Juraj are doing this]

About unwrapping; Bertrand has an interesting post on his blog http://bertrand-benoit.com/blog/2014/09/17/unwrap-help/


2014-10-17, 12:03:08
Reply #32

tomislavn

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Hi

we are exploring Unreal aswell, and untill now we came to the same conclusions as Deadclown and Juraj.
But we are not giving up :-) [I do not mean that Deadclown and Juraj are doing this]

About unwrapping; Bertrand has an interesting post on his blog http://bertrand-benoit.com/blog/2014/09/17/unwrap-help/

Yeah, I have seen that blog post about X-Ray Unwrap update. It is quite cheap and obviously it does the work done pretty good (considering the reviews)... but I simply haven't had enough time to give it a try.. yet :)
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2014-10-17, 12:25:38
Reply #33

Juraj

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I was always curious, why do you need to unwrap everything? There are automatic ways to do that...

Because it won't look good. Even with best automatic unwrap you will be stitching isles together to avoid seams, divisions and other artifacts.
Sometimes the amount of work to clean-up is bigger than to simply unwrap it manually from start.

The GI is photon mapping + final gather. Every artifacts shows heavily and can break the Archviz look.

Edit: Oh...Deadclown answered, I had no idea there was 3rd page, I don't know why it opens on previous for me always.
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2014-10-17, 14:42:46
Reply #34

borisquezadaa

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Best is an automatic by hand method  using some tools (like the one from bertrands forum) best of both worlds.
But you must first start with a good mesh and known some basics about topology .
I have seen some assets came out like a bunch of triangles. Its a pain in the ass to unwrap those unless you do some retopo.
Not even talk about starting with those mesh generated by photogrametry, those are the worst.

So workflow by now: mesh->retopo->create new UV and unwrapp->reproyection->optimize texture size->asset (more or less).
Lots of work...
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2014-10-20, 22:36:01
Reply #35

CiroC

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2014-10-23, 12:33:01
Reply #36

NielsH

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Coming from a game art background this thread is awesome to read as I had pretty much the reverse experience when I learned visualisation. Imagine always having to unwrap everything by hand thinking about seam placement, overlapping, padding, wasted uv space etc. and then find out that a simple box unwrap with some small edits will be enough in 90% of the cases.

I'm currently working on a product visualisation which I'm going to do in UE4, it's a lot of fun to create PBR materials using the Quixel suite. It's not possible to get completely photorealistic results in real time yet but if you can accept a bit of a stylished look you can get some really nice results.


If anyone ever needs some help with "game art" related issues feel free to send me a message.

2014-12-31, 19:21:28
Reply #37

artmaknev

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I am also interested in Unreal, just signed up and tried the demo scene from Xoio, had some trouble for some reason at first to open the scene (it was stuck at %29 and then at %74 loading for like 20 min, is it typical?).

I am curious about this, because I if you can combine this experience with Oculus, then clients could go wild for something like that and it already looks like some are willing to pay top dollar for this experience:

http://www.fastcoexist.com/3037425/a-95000-oculus-rift-ride-will-give-you-a-tour-of-the-worlds-most-expensive-real-estaste

I wonder how they did this, did they bake it in vray or corona and then compiled it in unreal or unity as .exe file?  Baking requires so much work that I have given up that practice couple of years ago when I tried one project with that technique, it just too much work when some element changes in the scene... Is Unreal 100% capable of producing its own GI and baking? So you can import just the model and bring it to photoreal level?


2015-01-01, 01:09:02
Reply #38

Juraj

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Quote
I quickly tug the Oculus Rift off my head, ending my virtual trip into a luxury apartment—a trip that costs $95,000.

What the.. I am moving to Miami to make this shit right now.


Is Unreal 100% capable of producing its own GI and baking? So you can import just the model and bring it to photoreal level?

Yes and No. Yes you can import just geometry with textures, because Unreal does in fact, not allow bringing custom shadow maps (unlike Unity), it can only generate it by itself through:

1)Baking- Using Lightmass (which is Final Gathering + Photon Maps, basically simplified and ugly MentalRay). Photoreal ? Perhaps...if great care is taken. Lots of work.
2)Dynamic GI (Currently only Light Propagation Volumes)- Easy, looks bad. Not suitable for architecture (you can only choose big...or small detail, but whatever you choose, rest is ignored).
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2015-01-01, 16:03:49
Reply #40

artmaknev

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I know right! $95,000 for 1 project virtual tour! you can make one tour like that and take the rest of the year off!

But how do you think they've done it, it looks like Vray to me with baked textures brought into Unity or Unreal, and then added some particles like water and fire, maybe real-time reflections? 

If it takes so much time to bring something to photoreal level in Unreal, then maybe its better to go with the proven path (vray / corona bake from max and import to real-time). 

Anyway, looks like year 2015 is going real-time!

Happy New Year!

2015-01-01, 16:23:05
Reply #41

CiroC

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If it takes so much time to bring something to photoreal level in Unreal, then maybe its better to go with the proven path (vray / corona bake from max and import to real-time). 

See the link that headoff posted.

2015-01-01, 22:45:36
Reply #42

borisquezadaa

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This is why Corona needs textue baking so urgent. Archviz related. Do not think off it as a game developer stuff... the lines between both are turning very dimm.
And there is market for that kind of visualization work so if Corona introduces texture baking, people can work on projects that really pays off. Everyones happy.
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2015-01-06, 13:42:42
Reply #43

chrisis

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Those are, in fact, just vray renders. Their actual product looks very very different... ;)

2015-01-07, 08:59:38
Reply #44

CiroC

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Another visualization using Unreal:


I had the opportunity to use Unreal for at least two visualizations and is not that difficult once you understand the correct workflow.

2015-01-07, 12:58:55
Reply #45

tomislavn

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Another visualization using Unreal:


I had the opportunity to use Unreal for at least two visualizations and is not that difficult once you understand the correct workflow.

This on is really amazing. Love the mood so much!
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2015-02-10, 10:47:12
Reply #46

philippelamoureux

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The chalet scene is very cool! Makes me want to buy it (the chalet)! I've finished my New Tamayo museum scene with Corona and I'm going to bring it to ue4 and see if I can get something cool out of it. Congrats XOIO.

2015-02-10, 15:08:38
Reply #47

fellazb

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This one is also showing some good potentional:



2015-02-11, 02:41:41
Reply #48

philippelamoureux

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Yea nice find man! I was thinking about doing an art gallery. I think Ue4 is well suited for this type of stuff!

Concerning the UVw unwrapping, I found this maya 2015 video one of the best to learn about the subject. I might even add Maya 2015 to my workflow just to do my lightmaps.
http://www.evermotion.org/tutorials/show/9258/uv-mapping-made-easy

Anyone have experience with 3ds max vs maya for uvw unwrapping? I heard quite a few times that Maya was better.
« Last Edit: 2015-02-11, 04:53:56 by philippelamoureux »

2015-02-11, 09:02:41
Reply #49

fellazb

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In the 4.5 version there's no need to unwrap anymore for lightmap UV's. At least that's what I've been reading

http://viscorbel.com/ue4-realtime-archviz/

So far I've been messing with Unity alot but the lack of making good lighting and shading is too limited and I sincerely hope that the 5.0 version will solve alot of those issues (If they ever release it...). I'll be giving Unreal 4.5 a go since alot of nice footage is coming out the last months.
If anyone has more footage or workflows for Unreal  I'd like to see those.

2015-02-11, 10:51:17
Reply #50

philippelamoureux

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Yes but apparently the auto-generate lightmap sucks. I want to test 2 new features this week, distance field AO and distance field soft shadows!

By the way we are on 4.6.x and 4.7 is coming soon, they previewed it earlier this month. 2-3 weeks I think until it's out.


2015-02-13, 06:00:04
Reply #51

philippelamoureux

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Recent Koola's environment tests are pretty good. Not sure if he use the 2 new features of ue 4.6 and 4.7 preview which are : really improved foliage instancing and Precomputed lighting and shadows are now supported on foliage objects and instanced meshes! This allows for very efficient rendering in scenes with stationary or static lights.

He made a gorgeous winter forest scene too, https://forums.unrealengine.com/showthread.php?58385-Koola-s-stuff

On a side note, I'm getting quite decent results with auto-generate uv lightmaps tonight. I've decided to break my asset into multiple parts in 3ds max, save in fbx, import fbx...in Ue4, cranked lighting settings, high res lighmaps (512-2048), 100 indirect light bounces, etc. This test is with a 12k polygon design connected chair, divided into 8 pieces. As you can see no artifacts or weird shadows



This second test using the auto-generate uv lightmaps, is a 67k triangle wall. lighting quality high for speed (instead of epic), lightmap only 1024! Ground is a brush.

« Last Edit: 2015-02-13, 10:40:02 by philippelamoureux »

2015-02-13, 11:16:36
Reply #52

Juraj

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. I want to test 2 new features this week, distance field AO and distance field soft shadows!

You missunderstand these features, the important part is not soft shadows, but distance field ;- ) They are absolutely unsuitable for anything archviz oriented. It just sounds good on paper but when you study the examples a bit better,
you will see where this is actually applicable.

The forest scene looks so bad, like worse then CryEngine1 from 6 years. I don't get this, don't have time to test, but as great as interiors look, the foliage is abysmal.
« Last Edit: 2015-02-13, 11:20:19 by Juraj_Talcik »
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2015-02-13, 12:13:40
Reply #53

philippelamoureux

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I tested the features with LPV (yea I know, I gave it another try). Everything was bad like you said. Concerning the vegetation I think the main problem is speedtree...the quality isn't that great. I Wonder if it would be possible to use far better trees in 4.7 since they apparently improved the instancing and foliage performance!

On Stream they said ue4 is going to have a built-in grass feature...probably going to look too ''gamey'' but we'll see. But if I'm correct it's not going to be instances of grass patches but more like you'll be able to ''grow'' grass out of a selected surface.

Juraj, one day, if you find time, you should try to remake your Icelandic coastal house project in ue4. It could look very nice!!!
« Last Edit: 2015-02-13, 12:23:16 by philippelamoureux »

2015-02-13, 12:24:18
Reply #54

Juraj

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Juraj, one day, if you find time, you should try to remake your Icelandic coastal house project in ue4. It could look very nice!!!

In summer I started to make the Kogan house (https://www.facebook.com/jurajtalcik.visualizations/photos/pb.167322623372220.-2207520000.1423826626./580794602025018/?type=1&theater )
in UE4, but the sheer amount of work and little time stopped me :- ) I will finish it though.....some day....
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2015-02-15, 05:17:06
Reply #55

philippelamoureux

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I'd like to see that Juraj, it's a nice scene!!!

Recent winter scene by koola is kinda cool tho...Here's the gif he posted on ue4 forums. I think he nailed it with the falling snow! :-)

2015-02-15, 11:03:25
Reply #56

romullus

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That looks gorgeous. Would love to see it in full HD.
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2015-02-15, 12:44:12
Reply #57

Juraj

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wow yeah, that one is totally different. The snow on trees and the effect....god that is beautiful. Reminds me of old rpg (MM-6) game where I first saw snowing in first person, it looked horrible by today standards but it left me deeply fascinated.
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2015-02-19, 03:26:52
Reply #58

philippelamoureux

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Neat little feature coming in 4.7 : Automatic Asset Importing!

Importing meshes, sounds and textures has never been easier. Simply save your source art files under your project’s Content folder, and the editor will automatically import the new files, ready to be used in UE4!
If you update these files from an external application, the editor will detect that and automatically reimport your content! This makes iterating on game content much faster.



Also, new dynamic G.I method that could come with 4.8 (currently experimental feature on github master branch). Here's a gif and the link to the discussion about it : https://forums.unrealengine.com/showthread.php?2421-Global-Illumination-alternatives/page6



Finally, on stream tomorrow... Tim Sweeney, co-founder of Epic Games (He has never shown is face on stream yet) will make  a big announcement!!! Can't wait to see the boss!
« Last Edit: 2015-02-19, 05:29:26 by philippelamoureux »

2015-02-19, 08:14:08
Reply #59

tomislavn

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Holy smoke!!!! That falling snow, damn, that is something truly amazing :O
My 3d stock portfolio - http://3docean.net/user/tomislavn

2015-02-24, 05:49:30
Reply #60

philippelamoureux

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Hopefully I'm not too annoying with my UE4 posts. I like to keep myself motivated and maybe motivate some of you guys too.

Here's a pretty good interactive viz. Made by the guys of Ue4arch.com

And this is another forest scene, with a nice mood, made by koola again.

2015-02-24, 09:33:07
Reply #61

CiroC

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philippelamoureux keep posting these videos. They are amazing. My initial experience with Unreal 4 was very pleasant I have been using it for small arch viz works.
« Last Edit: 2015-02-24, 11:06:52 by Cyrus3v »

2015-02-24, 10:07:52
Reply #62

Ondra

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I would love to see this tech in a game ;)
Rendering is magic.How to get minidumps for crashed/frozen 3ds Max | Sorry for short replies, brief responses = more time to develop Corona ;)

2015-02-24, 11:59:36
Reply #63

Juraj

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So was someone able to get the identity of this Koola :- ) ?
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2015-02-24, 12:17:38
Reply #64

philippelamoureux

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I would love to see this tech in a game ;)

Not for tomorrow hehe! These guys don't optmize anything as far as I know. A guy on ue4 forums told me his biggest build time took 3 whole days for his lightmass computation (baking of lightmaps). 3 days on his i7 32gig of ram is insane! Haven't seen his work tho. Wish I had more PCs to test their swarm agent to acelerate that process!

All I know is that Koola is French hehe!

Also, tonight I did some recording tests with ue4 matinee on the XOIO berlin flat scene demo. I was able to remake their movie at 1920x1080 resolution, highest quality @ 60 fps with shadowplay on my gtx 670. Tried 4k but I only had like 10-20 fps. Imagine what a gtx 980 could do! Shadowplay record with almost 0 impact on framerate, it's amazing.
« Last Edit: 2015-02-24, 12:24:23 by philippelamoureux »

2015-02-26, 17:09:19
Reply #65

BlessOd

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First project is done :)
SCANDINAVIAN | VIRTUAL TOUR | Unreal Engine 4

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2015-02-26, 17:32:37
Reply #66

tomislavn

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Very nice work :) I love the presentation. Looking great as well!
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2015-02-26, 23:49:35
Reply #67

philippelamoureux

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very nice scene man. I also found this one. The lighting is pretty good even tho the scene is a bit basic!

On a side note, I've just ordered a evga gtx 980 superclocked. Can't wait to test it out in ue4!!!


2015-02-28, 02:52:21
Reply #68

Stan_But

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2015-03-02, 18:30:56
Reply #69

cecofuli

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And, now, UE4 is FREE!!! No $19 subscription ;-)

LINK


When you ship a game or application, you pay a 5% royalty on gross revenue after the first $3,000 per product, per quarter.


2015-03-02, 18:49:29
Reply #70

borisquezadaa

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NO SHIT!!!.... awesome. Now i have no excuse at all...
« Last Edit: 2015-03-02, 19:00:26 by borisquezadaa »
What i do with Corona My Corona post of random stuff rendering
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2015-03-02, 19:55:50
Reply #71

romullus

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I like how more and more companies are realising that they can make more profit with low priced or even free software than with ridiculously overpriced ones. And i hope that greedy companies like Autodesk will draw some conclusions or else they risk to learn some lessons very hard.

Incredible move  from Epic Games, nevertheless.
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2015-03-02, 20:20:32
Reply #72

fellazb

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Wow, what a game changer this'll be. This will surely be a stab in the back for the release of Unity 5 which seems to come out in a nearby future. I'm really curious to see what their reaction will be to this.

Totday I saw some first "serious" footage for Unity 5: http://www.cgarchitect.com/2015/02/divine-unity-5-real-time-tech-demo-3

To me it looks like the lightbaking is internally being improved alot in these packages and it looks like lightbaking in MAX with Vray for example isn't that necessary anymore. Or am I missing something here?

2015-03-02, 22:10:52
Reply #73

Ondra

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I like how more and more companies are realising that they can make more profit with low priced or even free software than with ridiculously overpriced ones. And i hope that greedy companies like Autodesk will draw some conclusions or else they risk to learn some lessons very hard.

Price is not the problem in Autodesk case. The fact that you are not getting adequate service in return is.
Rendering is magic.How to get minidumps for crashed/frozen 3ds Max | Sorry for short replies, brief responses = more time to develop Corona ;)

2015-03-02, 23:30:08
Reply #74

BlessOd

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This is just a simple scene with minimal interaction (changing the walls color). Would be glad if you walk around and leave your opinion.

The project is done for learning, so optimization wasn't the main goal here.

The build archive can be downloaded from my website:
LINK
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2015-03-03, 00:33:33
Reply #75

Juraj

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Since Autodesk was mentioned.... this has surfaced recently:


LOLZ
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2015-03-03, 00:42:03
Reply #76

racoonart

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Once again, a very "interesting" move by autodesk. Doing a shitty teaser which doesn't say anything , doesn't show anything and looks like a 13 year old got an after effects copy into his hands.

*rolleyes*
Any sufficiently advanced bug is indistinguishable from a feature.

2015-03-03, 00:57:02
Reply #77

Ondra

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almost look like those fake teasers for half life 3 ;)
Rendering is magic.How to get minidumps for crashed/frozen 3ds Max | Sorry for short replies, brief responses = more time to develop Corona ;)

2015-03-03, 03:37:23
Reply #78

borisquezadaa

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At least half life 3 has more chance than this. XD. (I hope)
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2015-03-03, 05:45:11
Reply #79

philippelamoureux

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Epic is Epic! So now it's absolutely free for everything arch viz. :-)

2015-03-03, 10:36:54
Reply #80

lacilaci

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2015-03-03, 13:26:32
Reply #81

philippelamoureux

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I bet they're going to sell that 4000$ for a box licence lol.

2015-03-03, 14:09:48
Reply #82

philippelamoureux

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Epic finished their 1st map for the new unreal tournament. not arch viz but it's impressive what their artists can do with ue4.


2015-03-03, 14:18:16
Reply #83

Juraj

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I had to watch it twice when I saw it earlier today. I am lazy to download it, but how is that waterfall made ? It's amazing all-around.
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2015-03-03, 14:37:31
Reply #84

racoonart

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*screaming like a little girl in disney land* I'm more amazed by the fact that we'll get a new UT than by getting a great engine for free :D A new fast arena shooter with up-to-date graphics!
Any sufficiently advanced bug is indistinguishable from a feature.

2015-03-03, 14:39:57
Reply #85

philippelamoureux

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It's amazing how a good lighting makes a huge difference. I don't know for the water fall but since it's all open-source, I'm sure it won't be hard to find :-)

Mark Rein just re-confirmed what we already knew, but still important to know. https://twitter.com/MarkRein/status/572736393677565952 Ue4 is still royalty-free for arch-viz!

2015-03-03, 15:11:53
Reply #86

blank...

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I never used any game engine, i don't even play games, so i excuse noob questions :)

Could i please get a ELI5 (explain like i'm five) workflow with UE.

If i got it correctly you model and unwrap in max (or other) then import that in UE and set up materials and lighting there . Right?
Another question, all this talk about unwrapping, if i'm satisfied with how something looks with a box mapping in max, why wouldn't it look the same in UE? Does UE work differently with UVW mapping, why is it necessary to unwrap everything in UE that you didn't unwrap in max?
Last question, a lot of talk about low poly models. Is the engine actually capable of handling scenes with tons of foliage and high res maps. Is creating archviz exterior stills with UE possible?
(Also, would there be any reason to do so?)

Thanks in advance!

2015-03-03, 15:26:24
Reply #87

Juraj

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UE is perfectly capable of high-poly scenes, and using high-poly meshes. It doesn't even have the 60k poly limit that used to be norm for most engines per mesh. Your only limit is capacity of video card memory, just like in gp-gpu rendering. You buy an 6-8gb card,
and you're on good path to create scenes just as complicated as your regular raytraced offline ones.

You can use box-mapping (or any other over-lapping UV technique) perfectly fine for texture mapping, but lighting needs unwrapped mesh because each part of mesh will get 'unique' light baked-in. Obviously the mesh part in shadow can't share UV-island with part that will be hit with light. Therefore the unwrapping needs to be decently strict to avoid issues, coupled with fact the GI baking is done using very crude Final Gathering (Irradiance map)/Photon combo. So not only overlapping, but also seams placement is important.
You can use different UV mapping for your channels. Keep box for Channel 0 used for textures, and unique unwrap for Channel 1 used to light-baking.
That is perfectly fine for all these super-simple apartment demos that are popping up, but really, do this for serious commercial project with set deadline, with tons of unique meshes and small props.
It can be decently automated up to point though, with lot of cave-eats here and there.

The reason is whether you need interaction, and if it can be somehow useful for your clients. Imho, in 95perc. it would be more than counter-productive. Not everything that is fascinating, is also useful and helpful towards every goal.

I love real-time and UE a lot, and did so for past 5 years. But I still chuckle at the naive/kiddish fascination if this is the next big thing that will revolution everything. Of course not.
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2015-03-03, 18:58:11
Reply #88

blank...

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Your only limit is capacity of video card memory, just like in gp-gpu rendering. You buy an 6-8gb card...

Interest lost :D

Thanks!

2015-03-03, 19:39:38
Reply #89

philippelamoureux

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I received my gtx 980 superclocked...it's only 4gb but I don't want to wait another 6 months before they release a 8gb version. Too bad! Can't wait to test it! Unreal engine doesn't perform better with nvidia vs amd so I guess there are some radeons with 8gb out already! good stuff


2015-03-05, 19:54:03
Reply #91

lacilaci

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This is just a simple scene with minimal interaction (changing the walls color). Would be glad if you walk around and leave your opinion.

The project is done for learning, so optimization wasn't the main goal here.

The build archive can be downloaded from my website:
LINK

I think it is amazing, really the best quality I've seen so far (personal opinion).

I finally learned how to make the material/object switching interactivity in UE4 via blueprints and menus..

What is really bothering me is the "look but don't touch" fell those virtual tours give. I mean, yes, if you do a still image or an animation it is the same but since it is interactive it is so frustrating not being able to do anything but switching materials or some crap....

Some "archviz" gameplay mechanics needs to be invented :D

2015-03-05, 21:09:14
Reply #92

borisquezadaa

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Now i want to take a scene and test interactive demolition. XD. It uses physx  so it would be not hard to make... there is an excellent plugin from nvidia for 3dsmax (Apex) for all kind of physics stuff. Is not hard to use. Physx is all kinds of fun.

« Last Edit: 2015-03-05, 21:19:29 by borisquezadaa »
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2015-03-06, 07:01:06
Reply #93

philippelamoureux

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I watched the Tim Sweeney's GDC talk and it's nice that he talked quite a bit about arch-viz, Vr and experiences forged with ue4. They even showed some stuff and it's in their engine demo trailer.

I've heard that Enlighten is very expensive. But epic is coming with their own solution for dynamic G.I. It's still at an early stage right now tho. It's called DFGI. It can't be worst than LPV (which was made a Lionhead studios).

I also started to check out the blueprint system and it's so fun to play with it. Hopefully we can do cool stuff in the future with it. The maya museum VR UE4 app was a pretty clever use of it imo.

2015-03-06, 09:58:52
Reply #94

lacilaci

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I watched the Tim Sweeney's GDC talk and it's nice that he talked quite a bit about arch-viz, Vr and experiences forged with ue4. They even showed some stuff and it's in their engine demo trailer.

I've heard that Enlighten is very expensive. But epic is coming with their own solution for dynamic G.I. It's still at an early stage right now tho. It's called DFGI. It can't be worst than LPV (which was made a Lionhead studios).

I also started to check out the blueprint system and it's so fun to play with it. Hopefully we can do cool stuff in the future with it. The maya museum VR UE4 app was a pretty clever use of it imo.

It's pretty awesome, I would like to know how is the on screen object menu done..

Anyways, isn't DFGI limited to only one light bounce? I think these realtime GI solutions could be nice in open spaces but don't think that it will be useful in interiors. I doubt we will see realtime GI matching offline rendering GI quality or precomputed lightmass in case of UE4 anytime soon.

2015-03-06, 10:17:39
Reply #95

philippelamoureux

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He uses UMG that comes with UE4 (unreal motion graphics). He talks more in details on ue4 forums iirc.

I agree with you for G.I. I think all solutions are pretty much 1 bounce. I think the closest thing I've seen for real good dynamic G.I is Brigade 3.0 from otoy...But it's not out yet. For a game engine it's another story I guess.


2015-03-06, 10:29:52
Reply #96

fellazb

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I've heard that Enlighten is very expensive.

But Enlighten is available in Unity 5.0 which is now also free to use, well at least the personal edition. 

2015-03-06, 11:32:33
Reply #97

philippelamoureux

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Maybe but I doubt it's THAT good for Arch viz. It's only 1 bounce and apparently require a lot of pre-processing, etc... Maybe it's good for games but for arch viz I doubt it. I've never seen an example anywhere either...

2015-03-06, 12:01:35
Reply #98

Juraj

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Well it goes like this:

VXGI by nVidia Gameworks > Geomerics Enlighten > Lionhead's LPV (eventually to be in UE4) >   DFGI > Current generic UE4 LPV shit

All of them are...ugly, and incapable of interiors or combination of interiors and exterior. That one is pretty much impossible due to grid size difference necessary for these frameworks to function.
But for games atleast the VXGI is pretty boss.
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2015-03-07, 02:02:05
Reply #99

philippelamoureux

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Yea better start learning uvw unwrapping for real!!!

Have you guys noticed how the demos for dynamic G.I (like the new kite open world demo from epic at GDC) are always open, empty, nature scenes lol? This isn't what arch viz is about...

One little downside is lightmass can take quite a while to bake lightmaps. I've have scenes where it takes 6-7-8+ hours and it's not even the ultimate quality settings!

2015-03-07, 02:10:20
Reply #100

Juraj

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Where can I hire my own unwrapping slave ? Can I advertise such position ; ) ?

"Prop-processing artist"
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2015-03-07, 05:36:15
Reply #101

philippelamoureux

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haha! I have a new workflow...

I only use the auto-unwrap on import in UE4...I break the model in so many pieces that it ends up working fine! simple kitchen chair? 8 pieces, 8 lightmaps, bang. LOL I can break up models all day long...anything as long as I don't have to sew and stitche uvs!!!!

I have my Tamayo museum scene....I think I have 200 lightmaps total...I haven't unwrapped a single thing. Sure it's long as hell to bake but I just have 8gb of ram!!!

Juraj, you have a render farm, I envy you...with the swarm agent I'm sure you could bake incredible scenes VERY fast.

2015-03-07, 11:08:39
Reply #102

lacilaci

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I don't get this, what is wrong with unwrapping. The map doesn't need to be perfect.

2015-03-07, 11:12:04
Reply #103

philippelamoureux

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It can be a tedious task...something we don't have to do at all with offline renderers (or rarely). That means we have to spend quite some time on that boring task instead of working on more important stuff.

2015-03-07, 12:59:22
Reply #104

Juraj

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I don't get this, what is wrong with unwrapping. The map doesn't need to be perfect.

Are you being realistic ? Try unwrapping already "baked-down" high-poly meshes like sofas or complicated chairs. Plugin or manually, it's tedious process, and every mistake shows as ugly black seam, lowering substantially visual quality.
And yes, quite to contrary of texture maps, lightmaps unwraps need to be as close to perfect for the GI as possible.

Yes, everyone can unwrap few box walls, that's not where we're getting at. Big scene with thousand of assets, lot of the high-poly hero assets, not so much.
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2015-03-07, 20:15:33
Reply #105

Stan_But

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I don't get this, what is wrong with unwrapping. The map doesn't need to be perfect.

But it need. So that Juraj very rightly said about slaves for unwrap (;

2015-03-07, 20:46:02
Reply #106

lacilaci

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I don't get this, what is wrong with unwrapping. The map doesn't need to be perfect.

Are you being realistic ? Try unwrapping already "baked-down" high-poly meshes like sofas or complicated chairs. Plugin or manually, it's tedious process, and every mistake shows as ugly black seam, lowering substantially visual quality.
And yes, quite to contrary of texture maps, lightmaps unwraps need to be as close to perfect for the GI as possible.

Yes, everyone can unwrap few box walls, that's not where we're getting at. Big scene with thousand of assets, lot of the high-poly hero assets, not so much.

Well.. If you'd expect it to be done in the same ammount of time as when doing regular archviz then yes.. it is a problem.. other than that it's just a bit more work.. It all depends if it's gonna be worth the time spent..

But now that you mention it, I'm gonna try and bake a lighting on a high poly sofa to see if I'm just not imagining things to be simple..

2015-03-08, 03:26:54
Reply #107

borisquezadaa

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He he he... gladly i begin my path in 3d using the game asset ready way of the warrior... now i'm on the photorealistic path of the samurai.. No issues unwrapping here.
What i do with Corona My Corona post of random stuff rendering
WARNING: English.dll still loading...

2015-03-08, 05:27:02
Reply #108

philippelamoureux

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It's not that it's an impossible job, it's because visualizers don't have the time for that. Ask Juraj about deadlines and changes clients request all the time. With Corona, most time is spent doing materials/lighting/compo and then you let your pc do the tedious task of the rendering. With unreal, YOU have to spend hours manually doing boring work and then your pc doesn't even have to work...render times are inexistant (mostly). Would you prefer a machine to work for you or vice versa lol?

More time spent unwrapping is less time spent doing composition, fine tuning materials, tuning lighting..and if a client wants a last minute change...you have to go back to uvw unwrapping. hopefully one day there will be a solution...there wil be one but it's not coming fast enough hehe!

But I still have a lot more fun building a scene in Ue4 than in 3dsmax /vray/corona...because how interactive and fast it is. Material editor is awsome and I'm starting to have a lot of fun with blueprints. Kinda like a merge of architecture and video games!

2015-03-08, 05:46:03
Reply #109

borisquezadaa

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Have you seen this last one?... environment... the last frontier.
What i do with Corona My Corona post of random stuff rendering
WARNING: English.dll still loading...

2015-03-08, 08:17:01
Reply #110

philippelamoureux

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Another nice clean interactive viz.

« Last Edit: 2015-03-14, 04:27:07 by philippelamoureux »

2015-03-17, 20:27:50
Reply #111

borisquezadaa

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THIS!...
What i do with Corona My Corona post of random stuff rendering
WARNING: English.dll still loading...

2015-03-18, 04:14:15
Reply #112

philippelamoureux

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new features of upcoming Octane Render 3.

''Advanced live texture baking: A feature that’s most beneficial for use in real-time game engines, OctaneRender 3 supports unbiased GPU texture baking (UV or volumetric) of global illumination, spherical harmonics and 8D light fields in Unreal Engine 4 and Unity plugins.''

source : http://home.otoy.com/otoy-unveils-oc...-gpu-renderer/

Is it going to be the end of UVW unwrapping lightmaps and longggg lightmass baking? Don't hold your breathe tho, when Otoy says 2nd half of 2015 they probably mean 2019...but anyway.
« Last Edit: 2015-03-18, 04:21:12 by philippelamoureux »

2015-03-18, 12:11:11
Reply #113

Juraj

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Noticed that, and now I am curious how that workflow would look.
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2015-03-18, 16:06:54
Reply #114

philippelamoureux

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We can talk about it next year, or the one after...lol

I like how otoy tease these ''dream'' solutions we can never get our hands on.

2015-03-18, 18:48:49
Reply #115

Juraj

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Is it that far away :- ) ?

I had Octane licence since first alpha. Would be interesting to see what changed.
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2015-03-19, 00:43:55
Reply #116

philippelamoureux

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The announcement said Octane Render 3 beta this summer and release later this year...the Ue4 plugin we don't know tho. And also, 3ds max and other software plugins usually lag behind the standalone version, which isn't nice!

2015-03-19, 10:05:30
Reply #117

racoonart

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I had Octane licence since first alpha. Would be interesting to see what changed.

After reading this I installed the octane 2 demo (I too bought the alpha years ago) and I now know why they call themselfs otoy instead of otool. No fanboy talking here, just the results of my tests. I was disappointed of 1.0, 2.0 isn't much better. Imho, all the stuff they are promising now (the Lightfield VR stuff and lightbaking) is very likely to be as much hot air as their other promises - I have no trust in Otoy as a company anymore.
Any sufficiently advanced bug is indistinguishable from a feature.

2015-03-19, 23:50:37
Reply #118

cecofuli

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I bought the Octane beta too. the price was, 49 euro if I remember correctly, with Radiance as unique programmer (Before he worked for Indigo).
BTH, thanks DeadClown for the review =) You saved me time to test it ;-)

2015-03-20, 00:22:02
Reply #119

Juraj

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I think it was 99, I paid 49 because I got student discount or maybe later everyone got the 49 offer ?. Yeah, Radiance answered those emails personally :- ), it took good time until he hired first person, and then those kept cycling on and off.

It was lot of fun using brothers GTX285 I think it was, compared to MentalRay which we were briefly shown to use in school. Eventually very annoying salesperson started pushing FryRender, for which school got free licences as reward, that was super annoying, slow and strange and the marketing speech was downright retarded, appealing only to those of slowest mind... "It is spectral, so it's fully like real world"....yeah. But Octane very cool, made rendering fun.
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2015-03-20, 00:41:54
Reply #120

Ondra

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"It is spectral, so it's fully like real world"....yeah. But Octane very cool, made rendering fun.

More and more when I read stuff like this, I feel that I need to kick Alex, the guy from Charles university doing the real "physical rendering" stuff, to write some nice articles on popular myths ;)
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2015-03-20, 01:23:46
Reply #121

philippelamoureux

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New Brigade demo is impressive to watch...but I wonder how many GPU are needed for that kind of real time path tracing fluidity. Hopefully not a 50k$ VCA lol.

Update : From a Otoy team member, ''To get the quality we showed at GTC you will need roughly 80 amazon GPUs, so it is not cheap or for everyone, and is cloud only.'' It's suddently less impressive lol. This is the video shown at GTC.

« Last Edit: 2015-03-20, 06:32:15 by philippelamoureux »

2015-03-20, 08:49:03
Reply #122

tomislavn

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New Brigade demo is impressive to watch...but I wonder how many GPU are needed for that kind of real time path tracing fluidity. Hopefully not a 50k$ VCA lol.

Update : From a Otoy team member, ''To get the quality we showed at GTC you will need roughly 80 amazon GPUs, so it is not cheap or for everyone, and is cloud only.'' It's suddently less impressive lol. This is the video shown at GTC.


Somehow, I don't really find it impressive at all :/ ..knowing that you need "a house of cards" for it doesn't really help as well :D (pun intended)
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2015-03-20, 13:57:04
Reply #124

Juraj

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Checked email, bought mine on April 24th, so month before they announced the discount for everyone. Ok, that marks 5 years of doing CGI next month for me.
Email answered by Terrence Vergauwen :- ). Is he still a boss ?
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2015-03-20, 19:12:37
Reply #125

cecofuli

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I.. I don't know Juraj. I bought my license, just for fun. The price was very low and Octane was the first GPU rendering (5 years ago) on market.
I used Octane ONLY for test my GPU. The same 560 that I use now!! O my gosh, is it so old (O_O)' ???
The funny thing is that, also NOW, they are using my scene for benchmark ^___^


2015-03-21, 06:04:37
Reply #126

philippelamoureux

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Tonight I downloaded the VXGI ue4 branch to test it out. A UE forum member, Galaxyman2015, merged UE4.7.3 with nvidia's gameworks VXGI (and some other of their plugins). Besides the shader compilation taking long (+-2 mins per shader, sigh) it's pretty cool. I'm doing tests but converting a scene is taking long because of the shader compilation. I've heard VXGI can do 2 bounces...or they're working on getting more than 1, not 100% sure. Anyway, it's cool to have everything dynamic, no lightmaps and no black faces because of the usual 0 bounce. I may try to make a project from scratch with it, we'll see.

Here's Galaxyman2015's ''merged'' branch https://github.com/GalaxyMan2015/UnrealEngine/tree/Merged, here's the thread if you need help https://forums.unrealengine.com/showthread.php?53735-NVIDIA-GameWorks-Integration

My super-duper test : both are fully dynamic, no baking, no lightmaps...

Only dynamic direct light + skylight (vxgi off)


dynamic direct light + skylight (vxgi on)

« Last Edit: 2015-03-23, 05:30:57 by philippelamoureux »

2015-03-28, 04:54:31
Reply #127

philippelamoureux

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A little more infos about Octane render 3 UE4 plugin. It's meant to replace Lightmass to bake lightmaps for scenes in UE4.
Source : GTC 2015, starts around 12:10 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mHKmqWwEGxQ

I really want to know more about that feature...but that doesn't solve the fact that a good dynamic G.I would be cooler than static lighting (for timelapse, etc). If at least we can get rid of the uvw unwrapping, that's that.

2015-03-31, 01:06:20
Reply #128

philippelamoureux

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Diving into layered materials and vertex painting for leaks and dirt...so much win!

2015-04-06, 06:15:21
Reply #129

philippelamoureux

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New free content from Epic. It's the assets from their GDC 2015 open world demo. Free to use for your projects.

https://www.unrealengine.com/content/1c3ff01e749c4e48a7e8c24a7128ce24

Seems to contain nice high res textures and assets, like rocks, vegetation, etc.

Download on UE4 marketplace!

2015-04-07, 05:15:48
Reply #130

philippelamoureux

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Found this new video explaining really well what is VXGI, how it works, etc. It's from GTC 2015

http://on-demand.gputechconf.com/gtc/2015/video/S5670.html

2015-04-26, 23:23:43
Reply #131

2kemon

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..could this new app and unreal 4 be a match made in heaven?
Or maybe something similiar will be inside UE4 at some point?

http://store.steampowered.com/app/363020/

2015-04-27, 11:19:36
Reply #132

Juraj

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..could this new app and unreal 4 be a match made in heaven?
Or maybe something similiar will be inside UE4 at some point?

http://store.steampowered.com/app/363020/


That's UV Packing, not Unwrapping. What we need, is genial unwrapping tool, that's fully automatic. There are few, but they are nowhere near smart to work on complex objects or architecture stuff to make quality lightmaps.

Unreal can also unwrap and pack UI automatically during import. If it's sufficient for you.

Lightmaps are very picky...
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2015-04-27, 21:21:12
Reply #133

2kemon

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...aha, okay. My mistake

2015-05-07, 16:38:38
Reply #134

philippelamoureux

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One of nvidia gameworks dev showed an image of vxgi with multiple bounces. Can't wait to test it out.

Left side = one bounce, right side, multiple bounces (I guess 2 for now). Only use 1 spot light. Pretty cool.


source :
https://forums.unrealengine.com/showthread.php?53735-NVIDIA-GameWorks-Integration&p=285867&viewfull=1#post285867

2015-05-11, 20:34:33
Reply #135

philippelamoureux

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Found this project on UE4 forums. I like the atmosphere and the rain shader!!! The creator posted a playable demo. 60fps with vsync on my gtx 980!!! He made it with a gtx 580 that's probably why it's aliased and seems low res in the video. Much better when I play it on my pc.

« Last Edit: 2015-05-15, 01:07:41 by philippelamoureux »

2015-06-07, 21:35:36
Reply #136

philippelamoureux

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Here's latest Koola's scene. Simple but superb. He stated that all his walls don't have any diffuse texture and are white. Lighting is amazing.


Source : https://forums.unrealengine.com/showthread.php?58385-Koola-s-stuff&p=306095&viewfull=1#post306095

Also, London appartment by UE4arch.com is amazing imo.



2015-06-08, 07:57:59
Reply #137

tomislavn

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Oh man, that London apartment looks insanely good! It is quite realistic :O
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2015-06-08, 11:34:14
Reply #138

maru

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God how I hate these 60fps videos. It makes everything look so artificially smooth, like in fast forward mode, or like a cheap soap opera. :) I believe there is a reason why filmmakers use 24fps standard. Now they even put this "intelligent frame creation" in TVs, bleh.

UE4 guys seem to use exaggerated bloom and dof too, but I guess it's very tempting to see this in real time. :)
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2015-06-08, 12:47:05
Reply #139

agentdark45

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I'm seriously considering purchasing that UE4 London apartment if it includes a usable file ready to compile / edit. The video looks AMAZING.
Vray who?

2015-06-08, 13:41:22
Reply #140

Rimas

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God how I hate these 60fps videos. It makes everything look so artificially smooth, like in fast forward mode, or like a cheap soap opera. :) I believe there is a reason why filmmakers use 24fps standard. Now they even put this "intelligent frame creation" in TVs, bleh.

The 24 fps (and 29.976, etc) standard came to be due to audio tracks being recorded on the side of perforated filmstrip. The early days of film saw very random framerates as everyone was using whatever they wanted. Obviously this caused a problem with audio sync and speed so standards had to be put in place. American 30fps NTSC was also B/W TV while 29.976 (today's '30fps') came to be when color TV signals came out (needed to separate the frequencies for broadcast and that 1 increment was good enough).

It is by no means a standard of 'what looks right' so much as a necessity for audio and transmission back in the day. In today's digital world we can record and display whatever we want without sync problems and I would personally GLADLY watch 100-144fps+ videos if those were available (running a high refresh rate panel myself).
Remember - your eyes see a constant stream of light and in terms of frames - you could notice a single black frame at ~250fps or more (fighter pilots can identify an aircraft at 1/220th of a second without much problem as test showed!). You can't call a high framerate artificial as the higher - the more lifelike it will be.

One thing to consider - we've each had DECADES of 24-30fps content and we are used to it. Now 60 for some reason looks weird because of that to most people. The fact is - when I moved to a 105Hz display refresh rate (overclocked my laptop from 60Hz to 105Hz) - everything appeared so smooth! And after a while it became a normal thing. So normal that I can't do 60Hz - not enough frames! Talk about getting used to, eh..? :D

There's a LOT to consider in terms of framerates and motion blur and image persistence and how it all relates with resolution and blah blah blah - my post would go on forever. But I'm happy to discuss if anyone's interested :)
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2015-06-08, 13:46:18
Reply #141

Rimas

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God how I hate these 60fps videos. It makes everything look so artificially smooth, like in fast forward mode, or like a cheap soap opera. :) I believe there is a reason why filmmakers use 24fps standard. Now they even put this "intelligent frame creation" in TVs, bleh.

Another interesting thing - eye movement! A camera moves smoothly, however our eyes twitch muscles and jump around! Try looking as far sideways as you can to lock your eyes in place and don't move them. Now rotate your head left and right. You'll see that 'high fps' that you hate :D
A morning of awkwardness is far better than a night of loneliness...

2015-06-08, 14:58:39
Reply #142

lacilaci

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"overclocked my laptop from 60Hz to 105Hz" what?? Overclocked display, from 60 to 105hz on a laptop? Didn't know this was even possible :D

2015-06-08, 15:18:11
Reply #143

Rimas

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"overclocked my laptop from 60Hz to 105Hz" what?? Overclocked display, from 60 to 105hz on a laptop? Didn't know this was even possible :D
Laptops are VERY good at this. My desktop screens for workstations (5 in total, 2 different brands, 3 different models) only went up to 75Hz tops, as do most screens (between 65-80Hz).
Laptop panels, however, can do crazy things. I can do 107Hz with ZERO artifacting or skipping whatsoever. Can do 120Hz if I didn't mind a slight pixel flickering at certain colors (like reds) lol. There is a guy who OC'd a cheap HP laptop's screen to 180Hz with no artifacts and even posted proof using TESTUFO website :D
Some korean desktop panels can do 60 to 120Hz with no sweat too.

The technicality behind this is that laptop parts are just plain BETTER. The capacitors are better, they resist heat (they have to) and current fluctuations more, etc. That's why we can push them so much. Desktop panels are backed by poor electronics, but that's because they don't work near CPUs/GPUs that emit crazy amounts of heat (had my two cards at 95degrees celsius when gaming once). You can push them to a degree too, but not as far and the capacitors will fail much faster than on a laptop.

It's an interesting topic :)
« Last Edit: 2015-06-08, 15:23:40 by Rimas »
A morning of awkwardness is far better than a night of loneliness...

2015-06-08, 15:31:01
Reply #144

maru

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Thanks for the explanations Rimas, I didn't want to sound like an ignorant (though I definitely am one sometimes). :) You are probably right, I am used to lower framerates. Same goes with wide screens. Some time ago when I used a 4:3 monitor I would say I will never use a 16:9 display. Now I can't imagine different. Same with touch-screen only phones, I am currently getting used to first one. Ok, enough offtopic!
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2015-06-15, 14:06:30
Reply #145

Ludvik Koutny

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Actually 60FPS is not why it looks uncanny :) Real camera footages look nice and smooth even with 60FPS, like here:
(be sure to switch to 720 or 1080p to get 60FPS playback.

But what's mostly missing in these UE4 viz videos is realistic motion blur with correct length. It's a subtle difference, but it's enough to provide uncanny appearance.

2015-06-15, 17:25:38
Reply #146

maru

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Still looks like a soap opera to me. :P

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motion_interpolation#Soap_opera_effect
I didn't even know this is called "soap opera effect" and I always called it this. I can see there is a lot of articles about this on the Internet. But you are right, they say that people are simply used to ~24fps and that's why it's still a standard.
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2015-06-28, 01:19:29
Reply #147

philippelamoureux

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made with UE4 :




Koola's work again!
Source : http://www.ronenbekerman.com/unreal-engine-4-tastings-by-koola/
« Last Edit: 2015-06-30, 03:20:19 by philippelamoureux »

2015-06-30, 08:23:56
Reply #148

philippelamoureux

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Latest WIP work from Rafael Reis (the guy behind UE4ARCH.com) I think he is one of the most talented right now doing arch-viz in Unreal.
What's great about that scene? He doesn't use gimmicks like fake lights, reflectors, etc. It's a directional light and a skylight with fine tuning and it's able to beautifully light the interior and the exterior. Lightmass is quite capable once you learn how to tune it. According to him, current lighting build time is 10 hours!!!


2015-06-30, 12:44:43
Reply #149

Juraj

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He's good :- ) Let's not forget he was the one behind Tearte studio, wonder if he still does both ?

Anyone from here participating in Ronen's competition ?
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2015-06-30, 23:24:31
Reply #150

philippelamoureux

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I would like to but I want to finish my interior/exterior scene first. It's taking forever to finish cause it's summer and I'm lazy! I'm not an architect / designer so I'm not sure If I can come up with a really neat idea for the vineyard. It's gonna be a lot of work to do it solo too!

2015-07-04, 05:30:55
Reply #151

philippelamoureux

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New scene from Benoit Dereau, the guy who made Unreal Paris. Much bigger scene this time.


2015-07-28, 07:10:10
Reply #152

philippelamoureux

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Xoio released their Winter Chalet as a playable demo (VR included). It's seriously awesome.

http://xoio.de/en/interactive-winter-scene/

2015-07-28, 13:41:20
Reply #153

lasse1309

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hola :D yes, we did!

actually the whole UE thing is quite cool, but - as you might guess - a lot of work. I really love the koola snow trees and falling snow! too bad our trees did not make it to that stage; seriously hardware demands are very high, even with excessive LOD staging. actually trees are very hard to light properly (vine plants as well btw). leaves tend to blacken out..


have fun with it!

(actually i was quite surprised to find this UE thread on beloved corona forum)

Lasse
xoio
« Last Edit: 2015-07-28, 14:35:15 by lasse1309 »

2015-07-28, 15:38:49
Reply #154

tomislavn

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Xoio released their Winter Chalet as a playable demo (VR included). It's seriously awesome.

http://xoio.de/en/interactive-winter-scene/

Haha, now that is some wicked UE4 sorcery :). Very nice job xoio! I wish I had time to study UE4 a bit, been planning to do it for ages now :)
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2015-08-01, 16:08:48
Reply #155

chrisis

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What could be better than visiting the corona forum *and* reading about UE4 :)

The Xoio scene is quite awesome. Lasse, thank you for releasing it!
In free walk mode, how would one go about getting in the building? Oh, and throwing snowballs is totally awesome!


Here is another winter scene btw. :) Definately not as nice, but the r&d was aimed towards getting decent GI (resulting in 70 hour bakes), and mimicking some offline render features such as 2 sided mats and skylight portals.


2015-08-11, 05:16:09
Reply #156

philippelamoureux

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UE4arch.com latest scene. Interior+exterior with nice menu and controls. Made by Rafareis123 on unreal engine forums.


2015-08-11, 11:44:42
Reply #157

Juraj

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This guys mastered how to unwrap architectural elements for flawless GI, same goes go finicky lightmass.

It simply looks great. Is he selling this one yet.. ? Would buy I think.
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2015-08-11, 13:08:40
Reply #158

tomislavn

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UE4arch.com latest scene. Interior+exterior with nice menu and controls. Made by Rafareis123 on unreal engine forums.


This is insanely cool :O I love this one!
My 3d stock portfolio - http://3docean.net/user/tomislavn

2015-08-11, 16:36:23
Reply #159

borisquezadaa

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Hope all interface is built using blueprints system.
What i do with Corona My Corona post of random stuff rendering
WARNING: English.dll still loading...

2015-08-13, 14:44:52
Reply #160

lasse1309

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2015-08-14, 23:16:02
Reply #161

philippelamoureux

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New arch viz toolkit coming to marketplace soon, for 85$. No more time spent settings up 56 000 blueprints.


https://forums.unrealengine.com/showthread.php?79885-HAL-Archviz-Toolkit-Marketplace-submission

Apparently it's gonna come with tutorials and everything you need to add interactivity to your presentation.

2015-08-14, 23:23:34
Reply #162

philippelamoureux

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This guys mastered how to unwrap architectural elements for flawless GI, same goes go finicky lightmass.

It simply looks great. Is he selling this one yet.. ? Would buy I think.

Stay tuned Juraj. I'm quoting Rafareis123 (ue4 arch) here about his Riviera House project :

Thanks guys!

I'm going to release a video-lesson soon, I think in december. I will explain the whole process of getting a photorealistic result like that.

I also gave a support for the guys from Epic about the lightmass parameters and I think they will going to put some parameters on the editor or something.


:-)

2015-08-19, 23:37:06
Reply #163

cecofuli

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OFFICIAL VIDEOTUTORIAL STINGRAY

The correct name should be "STINREAL" =)

It's veeery similar  (as UI, concept  and interface) to Unreal.

Stingray, I think, will use a Beast lightmapping tecnology.


« Last Edit: 2015-08-20, 00:23:06 by cecofuli »

2015-08-19, 23:45:41
Reply #164

philippelamoureux

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I'll check it out cecofuli...in the meantime...another cool UE4arch project...


2015-08-20, 06:09:15
Reply #165

philippelamoureux

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The thing with StingREAL is ... can beast produce G.I as nice as Lightmass? I guess they're quite similair but we'll have to see when someone sacrifices himself to test it out.

2015-08-30, 11:38:04
Reply #166

philippelamoureux

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Now this is freaking good G.I
Looks very real!


2015-10-01, 08:54:07
Reply #167

fellazb

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It's getting better and better...


2015-10-09, 09:24:13
Reply #168

Tanakov

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It's getting better and better...


This one is quite impressive, easy i mean theres nothing fancly going on, but its really nice.
Using Corona since 2014-01-02
https://www.behance.net/Gringott

2015-10-13, 00:57:05
Reply #169

philippelamoureux

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2 new superb scenes!



2015-10-13, 12:04:16
Reply #170

tomislavn

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I like the bed facing camera in the 2nd video ;D

Jokes aside, both are really nice!
My 3d stock portfolio - http://3docean.net/user/tomislavn

2015-10-29, 04:47:11
Reply #171

philippelamoureux

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Another project from the guy who did the same last two. He's doing great work.


2015-11-28, 05:24:30
Reply #172

philippelamoureux

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Koola dropped this on his twitter. All billboards (planes with texture and opacity mask).  Very nice. I already used billboards in one of my scene. You can have A ton of instances and it still runs great!


2015-11-28, 12:02:46
Reply #173

burnin

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^Nice work again. Got any link?

2015-11-28, 23:02:51
Reply #174

philippelamoureux

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2015-12-03, 13:50:40
Reply #175

DarcTheo

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2015-12-14, 14:24:39
Reply #176

spadestick

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I think I found something that unwraps for UNREAL...

https://www.thefoundry.co.uk/products/mari/learn/

the 1st video.


2015-12-14, 15:45:32
Reply #177

tomislavn

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I think I found something that unwraps for UNREAL...

https://www.thefoundry.co.uk/products/mari/learn/

the 1st video.

What do you mean? AFAIK, MARI is a texture painting software that requires already unwrapped model to work with. It just creates textures and exports them to be straight forward compatible when used with UE4 (presets for roughness, metallic, etc.).

It probably has some internal quick unwrap generator like most of texture painting programs (Substance, Quixel, etc.), but not sure why would it be specifically good for Unreal?

Or am I missing something? :S
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2015-12-14, 16:26:27
Reply #178

lacilaci

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I think I found something that unwraps for UNREAL...

https://www.thefoundry.co.uk/products/mari/learn/

the 1st video.

I wasn't aware Mari can do UV's :D what's wrong with standard unwrapping tools?

2016-02-07, 01:22:27
Reply #179

melviso

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New work by Koola,with ue4:


This guy's work is just awesome. I am wondering if he used realtime GI or everything is baked. Probably baked. I am probably gonna try some realtime stuff really soon. Have to give this a go!!

2016-02-07, 06:31:41
Reply #180

philippelamoureux

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No I think he said it's dynamic sun/sky... it's easy because it's an exterior shot with very few asset. His use of substance designer is awesome tho!

2016-02-07, 14:39:18
Reply #181

Ludvik Koutny

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New work by Koola,with ue4:

This guy's work is just awesome. I am wondering if he used realtime GI or everything is baked. Probably baked. I am probably gonna try some realtime stuff really soon. Have to give this a go!!

Well, he is great, I give him that, but he also picks a lot of very specific scenarios to cover up things where UE4, or all game engines for that matter still don't catch up. He always picks the right scene from right angle, and doesn't do much to let that uncanny game visuals feeling get to you. So in this particular case, GI is really irrelevant as this scene would probably look almost the same way even with GI completely disabled, using just UE4's environment light.

2016-02-07, 17:09:14
Reply #182

Juraj

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I too find it bit over-the-top when people obsess about close-up of single material with counter-light and DOF. Everything will look good and realistic this way, it's not impressive in any way.

On other hand, some of these new games out now, like Division, manage to do full environment from regular human point of view to look realistic, and that is what takes real skill.
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2016-02-09, 05:47:22
Reply #183

philippelamoureux

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Yeah the division looks pretty good, apparently nowhere near the ''e3 tech demo'' tho. Always have to make concessions I guess.

Juraj do you think you'll ever use ue4 again for an arch-viz? I really liked your Vineyard entry. Have you ever received a demand for something made with unreal from a client?  Like a playable scene or maybe a movie similar to your vineyard scene?

Concerning Koola, sure he always pick the right camera angle and do close up, but have a look at his winter scene, it's pretty 360 degrees around you. I even managed to change his scene to 100% static + remove AO. Took 25 mins to bake with HQ lightmass settings. It runs way faster (120+ fps on my gtx 980) and could allow to add architectural stuff in the scene. I mostly want to study his material setup.

No matter how hard I try to make good atmospheric/moody scenes with corona or vray, I get bad results...mainly because my skills in photoshop/post-prod are weak. But I think I can get something very decent out of unreal thanks to the post-process volumes!!!

2016-02-09, 06:24:57
Reply #184

melviso

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I have also noticed most of the materials in his scene don't contain glass or objects with clear reflections or transparent materials and it's probably because ue4 doesn't handle them so well. I think ue4 devs are still working on making reflections and transparency especially for glass better. UE4 reflections are still static at runtime.

I do feel realtime pbr is quite interesting. What I like about his work is the texturing and the detailing of the materials. Lighting and good textures are really very important. Realtime GI lighting probably wouldn't work if you have a lot of assets and tessellation everywhere. Yeah, its a small scene but he is really good.

I do intend to try out realtime pbr rendering. See what I can come up with.

Another cool ue4 stuff. Its just a character probably would be too intensive if animated and running realtime with other high poly assets and lighting. Wonder if a Titan X would handle such a scene.

@ philippelamoureux
If you keep on practicing, I am sure you will get better with PS. The thing is to gather references of the mood scenes you are going for and try and study the lighting, and how the materials look and what tone they take. If you keep doing this, your eye will get accustomed to what you see and how to go about creating it.
« Last Edit: 2016-02-09, 06:33:10 by melviso »

2016-02-09, 07:06:14
Reply #185

philippelamoureux

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For me it's the interactivity. Making material and tweaking them is very easy because you get instant feedback.

For example, koola's snowy ground material is very dynamic. When you sculpt your terrain, the texture adjust automatically...You lower the terrain and you see dirt appearing, you raise it and snow show up!!! It's so flexible and you see all of it in realtime. The material also tesselate the landscape based on the camera distance. It's amazing all the stuff a single material can do.

2016-02-11, 02:54:08
Reply #186

melviso

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That's quite true. Realtime interactivity and feedback makes things so much easier. I think in a couple of years especially with how gpus are becoming more powerful, Proper realtime GI will be possible. I remember reading about the Brigade engine. It seems they are working towards this.

I also recall the Luminous engine from Square Enix. Just try doing a small scene in ue4 and see if it suits your needs.
« Last Edit: 2016-02-11, 03:22:15 by melviso »

2016-02-11, 06:12:26
Reply #187

philippelamoureux

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Really looking foward to Octane Render 3. OR2 was a pretty good renderer and the 3rd version will have a plugin for ue4, to replace lightmass (ue4 photon mapping). Can't wait to check that out.

2016-02-23, 06:04:19
Reply #188

philippelamoureux

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A new scene by ue4arch that's going to be the subject of a video-course. It looks great!
The lighting is quite something!

« Last Edit: 2016-02-24, 05:25:32 by philippelamoureux »

2016-02-24, 19:08:00
Reply #189

AnubisMe

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2016-02-26, 05:27:01
Reply #190

philippelamoureux

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I think we will. I consider Unreal interesting for people who want a 1 min+ animation but don't have 10-15 000$ to spend. Since doing an animation does not take much more time than doing a still (except the compo/storyboard/post prod) it could be more affordable. You completely remove the rendering costs. It's win-win for everybody, except rebusfarm hehe!

2016-02-28, 18:40:24
Reply #191

Juraj

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I think we will. I consider Unreal interesting for people who want a 1 min+ animation but don't have 10-15 000$ to spend. Since doing an animation does not take much more time than doing a still (except the compo/storyboard/post prod) it could be more affordable. You completely remove the rendering costs. It's win-win for everybody, except rebusfarm hehe!

I wouldn't do a Unreal4 project unless it was at least with 15 000 budget to start with though. Even then I would hesitant. Not worth the effort it takes to reach commercial quality comparable with raytracing yet.

You might have noticed, but there isn't a single quality commercial archviz project yet, the absolutely stunning works are all personal. That is because if client suddenly asks you to use 20 custom furniture pieces you won't be able to just buy quickly from DesignConnected. They need to work with Unreal first, you need to be sure they can be nicely unwrapped. And then do the actual unwrapping.

It won't work for any existing vegetation on market either. You need to create all of it from scratch, with heavy limitations. Bespoke vegetations is super hard and expensive to make now, but for Unreal, it's one step further.

So for one or two more years, it will be minor. But than there is this possibility it will be a big nieche :- )

The latest Rafael's work above is STUNNING !! Love the quality, the smoothness...
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2016-02-29, 13:59:48
Reply #192

philippelamoureux

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15 000$ :-O

I offered a guy a real-time basic archviz app for 2k USD and he just stopped communicating with me haha!

It's not targeted at the lowballers! Well, any good CG for that matter!

« Last Edit: 2016-02-29, 14:05:14 by philippelamoureux »

2016-02-29, 17:31:42
Reply #193

burnin

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2k?
Oh, you'd be torturing yourself :D
Consider: Interactive application for a residential building project (cc 500m2), all done from scratch or using bought asset (no redistributing assets allowed, they must buy to own) a team of 5 and 3 months of work... at least €15k. Is it expensive?


In such case i suggest a client to buy Lumion and make visuals themselves, even though it's just for animations. Haven't seen a single one do it. 
Don't understand what kind of architects are those. If they don't know how to be equals, if they don't listen, how can they understand the occupants and life of a built architecture?
Vitruvio is sad. :( They should just be called planners :)

2016-03-02, 09:17:13
Reply #194

philippelamoureux

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...But you don't need 5 persons for 3 months to do that...

I'm doing a int/ext scene with landscape and i'm alone. It's a house in the woods, winter scene.  I've spent about 20 hours for modeling, and that's because I'm really bad at it and the rest in unreal is the quickest part imo. It's just tweaking values to make it look good. Of course I use pre-made assets (with some modifications). I really don't see how I would need 3 months for that.

The uvmapping/unwrapping is done 100% automatically with scripts for 95% of objects in max. I took a 4600 objects scene freebie on Ronen website's and unwrapped it all in a couple minutes. Imported in ue4 all objects and started to bake it. I think people don't realize the workflow is getting easier and faster all the time! But it's sure it's not drag and drop and hit render with corona and everything looks smooth. Requires more planning hehe!

Rafael Reis is alone, or with his partner Daniel for his scenes. I don't even think he took 3 months to do his most complete projects, with blueprints and all.
« Last Edit: 2016-03-02, 09:27:16 by philippelamoureux »

2016-03-02, 10:26:55
Reply #195

philippelamoureux

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Ue4's most fun feature : The decals.

Flexible, easy to use, unlimited use. Drag and drop wherever you need them.





2016-03-02, 11:48:58
Reply #196

Juraj

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Are you building real-time version of it :-) ? I have that in my backlog for so long.

Decals are so painful in Max with the composite shit.

Please follow my new Instagram for latest projects, tips&tricks, short video tutorials and free models
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2016-03-02, 11:49:50
Reply #197

burnin

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Have you considered the difference?
business/ clients wishes VS personal project

I assumed final fully PBR interactive application with all the details (color & light studies, interactive materials, day to night...) no generic or freebie stuff (rights for commercial redistribution passed to client).
Working hours are 8h per day/ 5-6 days per week, taxes, insurance, accounting, holiday, vacations... and so on.

But don't mind me, just another brick in the wall.

edit...
Oh, nice tackle... National library M~R competition stuff... hope to see your vision.
« Last Edit: 2016-03-02, 13:13:59 by burnin »

2016-03-02, 14:03:14
Reply #198

philippelamoureux

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Yes I'm trying the Nationalgalerie.

I have 2 versions, one baked and one 100% dynamic... not sure which one to use yet.

Concerning the background, how do you make it identical to the real world counterpart...do you quick-model each building? I fear it's going to be a pain to find 100% exact images usable for backdrops.

2016-03-02, 14:08:20
Reply #199

philippelamoureux

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Have you considered the difference?
business/ clients wishes VS personal project

I assumed final fully PBR interactive application with all the details (color & light studies, interactive materials, day to night...) no generic or freebie stuff (rights for commercial redistribution passed to client).
Working hours are 8h per day/ 5-6 days per week, taxes, insurance, accounting, holiday, vacations... and so on.

But don't mind me, just another brick in the wall.

edit...
Oh, nice tackle... National library M~R competition stuff... hope to see your vision.

I don't think that the commercial redistribution of assets is a problem because when you give your client a .exe, everything is packaged and cannot be extracted by the user. We are not giving a uproject file, but a .exe, like any other game.
The more bespoke is the project the more painful it's going to be, you are right. and you know what's worse than uvmapping/unwrapping? ''repairing'' the geometry to make it usable in ue4. Huge models with 56 000 objects attached together ain't gonna work!
That's a bummer right now.

2016-03-02, 22:17:41
Reply #200

burnin

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^thru that - lovely optimizations :D also making LOD asset needed for a larger projects master planning, urban development, environment...

For surrounding environment, backgrounds... i usually just make billboards, blocks, mattes, street view alike ;)

Doing any baking also (hi>lo)?

2016-03-03, 05:25:03
Reply #201

philippelamoureux

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I know Rafael Reis form ue4arch does some object baking in vray for objects that won't be too close to the camera. I have not done it yet.
Anything master plan/urban dev is out of the question with unreal imo. Unless you want something non-photoreal and stylized then maybe.

I want to explore ''matte painting'' directly in unreal and apply it to architecture in some kind of way. I've seen cool stuff, mostly sci-fi, done that way. Kinda like these :


By the way, if you haven't tried the new ue4 sequencer (replacement for matinee) is freaking nice. Sooo easy to use. Still experimental but I can't wait to make movies/animations with it.
« Last Edit: 2016-03-04, 08:21:51 by philippelamoureux »

2016-03-05, 00:08:26
Reply #202

melviso

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@philippelamoureux   U have started a scene with ue4. That's cool. What's your opinion so far, compared with offline renderers?

Seems they are already working on human skin and hair. What they have right now does look good.


I am wondering if this is dx12? I have been thinking of upgarding to Windows 10 to get dx12. Hoping it isn't problematic cause Winows 8.1 works just fine.
« Last Edit: 2016-03-05, 00:46:12 by melviso »

2016-03-05, 05:47:39
Reply #203

philippelamoureux

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I will soon update to win10 for dx12 but it's not urgent right now! I doubt Paragon will require dx12, Epic would be shooting themselves in the foot imo.

I find more fun to do a scene in ue4 but it's more challenging because it's made for games. Some stuff are hard to get right, like reflection/refraction and vegetation. If we had an offline renderer with the level of polish of the ue4 interface and viewport it would be amazing! (maybe octane render 3 + ue4, we have to see when it's out). There are ways to do almost anything but you gotta think outside the box imo.

That female character is awesome considering it's a video game character. Can't wait to see the graphics of Paragon. I think it will be quite impressive!
« Last Edit: 2016-03-05, 10:50:57 by philippelamoureux »

2016-03-05, 22:44:25
Reply #204

melviso

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Indeed! I started playing with Blender a few days ago. Trying out a small scene with it. Since I have a good gpu card. Blender cycles seems fast and it has baking. Which will of course make animations easier.
I watched the whole video as well as another one on how lighting is going to be in the upcoming ue4 4.11 version using paragon files. I was quite impressed with how the lead lighting artist lit a scene with the female model in real time. Its just crazy. Also shadow capsules to create soft shadows for dynamic objects.

Here is the vid about lighting techniques in their next ue4 version release:

There is also improvements towards lighting for archviz using portals as well.

The pagragon trailer if anyone is interested. It's all real time rendered from ue4. It's getting there.

« Last Edit: 2016-03-06, 22:12:09 by melviso »

2016-03-07, 06:21:11
Reply #205

philippelamoureux

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If you have some time download the unreal tournament editor (a stripped version of ue4 tailored for the new unreal) and check out the map Outpost-23 source file. It's very impressive. You can steal 2-3 things for archi-viz projects!

2016-03-08, 22:23:07
Reply #206

melviso

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Haha..Already have a good library of models I have made myself over the past year for archviz stuff and textured exactly the way I want with a lot of detailing.

What version of ue4 are u using? Just learnt that they released a preview version of ue 4.11 since December last year. And people are already playing with it.

2016-03-09, 00:35:40
Reply #207

philippelamoureux

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4.11 preview because of light portals and they implemented embree so it's faster!

2016-03-10, 01:19:14
Reply #208

melviso

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Ok. Cool. I will probably try out a scene with it soon. I wonder if anyone here has tried Autodesk stingray engine.

2016-03-10, 05:25:56
Reply #209

philippelamoureux

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I talked to Rafael Reis (ue4arch) about it because he did some consulting to help improve Stingray. He said :

''Autodesk is working hard to turn Stingray as an "Archviz game engine". They are trying to implement good lighting/shaders solutions, but this will take time. It's not ready by now. But I think in less than one year, they could make Stingray better than UE for archviz.
UE4 has many good features and a good potencial to move the archviz industry to realtime, but they have to fix minor things (like a decent transculency and blurred glass) that should be fixed a long time ago! But you know, this is a game engine. Lightmass or Beast are GI solvers to deal with lighting in games, where the lighting bugs aren't a problem.''


2016-03-10, 23:24:53
Reply #210

melviso

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Ok. Thanks philippelamoureux. Rafael's work with ue4 is really good.

Seems Autodesk is taking Stingray very seriously. UE4 also needs to implement light linking. From what I gather it is in their to do list.

2016-03-11, 21:03:43
Reply #211

philippelamoureux

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2016-03-17, 02:19:38
Reply #212

melviso

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It looks really nice but something seems off. The materials look really good though.

Just stumbled on this new engine called Lumberyard by Amazon. Its based off the Cryengine sdk with better features and it's completely free. It seems to have fully implemented realtime GI unlike ue4.

Seems really cool. Also has hair, skin, eye, vegetation shader already that ue4.11 preview is all about.

I might try this out. Since I am having trouble downloading ue4.11 through epic games launcher. Tried everything.

Then again Cryengine is now free but it's backwards compared to Unity and ue4. I love the competition and variety of game engines out there presently. It seems game engines are the future. Makes me worry about offline renderers though.

2016-03-17, 04:07:14
Reply #213

philippelamoureux

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I may try Cry Engine eventually but without a good community it's not tempting. Unreal community is muuuuch bigger!

It's GDC 2016 right now and we're seeing amazing stuff. Like this car showroom made in ue4. Stunning


2016-03-17, 05:27:00
Reply #214

melviso

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Really good. The environment is really plain so I am not sure if the reflections are realtime. If there were moving objects in the environment, I am sure the realism would be broken. The car is static so there is a probability the lighting is baked? ue4 doesn't have dynamic realtime gi yet. Otherwise, very realistic and impressive especially for a vechicle concept animation rather than huge render times using offline renderers especially with the same quality.

Whereas Cryengine:

But like you mentioned ue4 has more support and an active community especially if you run into problems. I just can't get it to download with the launcher. Will keep trying.
« Last Edit: 2016-03-17, 05:49:13 by melviso »

2016-03-17, 05:52:39
Reply #215

philippelamoureux

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Imo realtime G.I is overrated. People are too lazy to make lightmaps? Quality is muuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuch better than any realtime G.I solution.

Cry engine dynamic G.I is similar to vxgi, good for games but far from enough for arch viz. The shadows are not precise enough!

The car above could've been rendered without ''real'' G.I and just movable lights in the scene) as long as it looks good in the end.

Have you seen the Hellblade gdc trailer? amazing character models running in realtime.


What happen when you try to download it? get an error?
« Last Edit: 2016-03-17, 05:58:10 by philippelamoureux »

2016-03-17, 06:09:34
Reply #216

melviso

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She looks pretty impressive.

I keep getting
Install failed.
Could not download installation information. Please try again later, Code 0

I have followed all the solutions on answerhub. O well.

2016-03-17, 06:36:22
Reply #217

philippelamoureux

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Try to reinstall the launcher. Maybe it could work.

Or download the github version and build it yourself with visual studio 2015 (the free version is fine).

2016-03-18, 03:03:32
Reply #218

melviso

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I even uninstalled the whole ue4 (had 4.3.1 version previously,trying to download 4.11 preview version) and the epic launcher and tried again. This is just a little fustrating tbh. I don't know why they couldn't just go the way u could just download udk, install and use. Lumberyard is just this simple. Download, install and use.
I might just try the github version. This might discourage some ppl from using ue4. The only reason I might still give this another go is because it is widely used (though that might change with Cryengine and Lumberyard new license releases in the next year). The advantage UE4 had was its license compared to Cryengine and other engines in the past. Cryengine has always looked better graphically.
I was speaking with a friend today and he mentioned Lumberyard being the most likely to be successful out of all the game engines in the near future. With the heavy financial backing Amazon has, it's development will be very fast. They already have an up and running documentation . A lot of features on the same level now with ue4 and they are responding to people's feedback very fast. They also seem to have and are hiring the best devs to get things done swiftly and efficiently.

Will probably stick to Corona and 3dsmax for now.
« Last Edit: 2016-03-18, 03:19:19 by melviso »

2016-03-18, 08:13:49
Reply #219

Juraj

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With the heavy financial backing Amazon has

They all have :- ) Epic has been silent about it but they also got heavy (330mil. for 40perc.) injection from Chinese investor ( non other then Tencent themselves).

This is why they are all free. No charity is involved :- )
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2016-03-18, 09:24:51
Reply #220

philippelamoureux

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Cry engine is now free but No community and no real convincing architectural visualisation examples.

Lumberyard = No community, same as above

Unity = nothing more than ue4 afaik

Stingray = right now meh, we'll see if they fine tune it for architecture. Still no real community and examples yet.

If I had to try another game engine it would be Cry engine, but just for fun. If it was possible I'd love to have a look at the Fox engine too :-)

And as Juraj said, with Tencent in the game, money should not be a problem http://www.forbes.com/companies/tencent-holdings/
« Last Edit: 2016-03-18, 09:32:52 by philippelamoureux »

2016-03-18, 09:34:39
Reply #221

philippelamoureux

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Really good. The environment is really plain so I am not sure if the reflections are realtime. If there were moving objects in the environment, I am sure the realism would be broken. The car is static so there is a probability the lighting is baked? ue4 doesn't have dynamic realtime gi yet. Otherwise, very realistic and impressive especially for a vechicle concept animation rather than huge render times using offline renderers especially with the same quality.

Whereas Cryengine:

But like you mentioned ue4 has more support and an active community especially if you run into problems. I just can't get it to download with the launcher. Will keep trying.

By the way you can download that playable scene. Check the youtube description there's a link. It's not as good as you think tho when you test it!

2016-03-19, 02:35:32
Reply #222

melviso

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They all have :- ) Epic has been silent about it but they also got heavy (330mil. for 40perc.) injection from Chinese investor ( non other then Tencent themselves).

This is why they are all free. No charity is involved :- )

Ok. Didn't know that. Amazon seems to be taking their engine very seriously. They just recently added a full brand new FBX importer, support for importing meshes from Blender and support for substance plugin. They are taking feedback and getting stuff the community is asking for included with speed even compared to Unreal. Their community is gonna build up really fast the way they are going. :-)

Cry engine is now free but No community and no real convincing architectural visualisation examples.

Lumberyard = No community, same as above

Unity = nothing more than ue4 afaik

Stingray = right now meh, we'll see if they fine tune it for architecture. Still no real community and examples yet.

If I had to try another game engine it would be Cry engine, but just for fun. If it was possible I'd love to have a look at the Fox engine too :-)

Evey product starts from somewhere. At some point, a community gets formed around that product.I have been gathering some intel and a lot of people are actually downloading Cryengine and Lumberyard to try them out which means some might stop using unreal if they like the other ones. On the unreal forums, ppl have already started pointing out some of the things ue4 is lacking like realtime reflections, good G.I, among other things. What epic games has going for them right now is the community support, tutorials  e.t.c. Stingray on the otherhand, isn't the best imho. I feel it doesn't look graphically as good as the others. They have a lot of stuff they need to add and their pricing model compared to the others.

Frankly, I am quite pleased with the competition presently. Gives you a lot of options. The next few months will determine how things go. I kinda have a feeling koola might do a small scene with cryengine or lumberyard. Don't know why.

As for the Cryengine vid, I noticed some things were off, especially with shadows. This is not the new Cryengine V and for it's time, it was pretty impressive. I am not sure if the version used has distance AO. Enabling AO probably would have solved or improved the shadows.

I don't think it's a bad idea to try these engines out .Especially Cryengine and Lumberyard in one's free time. Ue4 is already set in stone but I have a feeling things are going to change in the next coming months and it is going to be interesting. :-)

If it was possible,would like to try out Frostbite engine.
« Last Edit: 2016-03-19, 06:19:28 by melviso »

2016-03-19, 06:54:33
Reply #223

philippelamoureux

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I wonder if glass can look better in Cry engine but I haven't found good examples yet.
You are right, competition is always good for software development!!!

I think svogi in Cry is the same as Vxgi in ue4. I tried vxgi but it's not good. It's okay for a game with stylized graphics but not for architecture.
You don't get contact and soft shadows with svogi/vxgi.

I'll keep an eye on Lumberyard...it is like an improved version of the cry engine?

2016-03-19, 09:10:37
Reply #224

melviso

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From this thread:
https://forums.unrealengine.com/showthread.php?104251-CryEngine-becomes-free/page3

It seems Cryengine has better reflections than ue4. But I recon Cryengine is less convenient to use?

Someone trying out Cryengine's volumetric clouds earlier today.
I am not sure game engines can perfect refraction/glass properly yet. Probably next gen?

Found this:https://gamedev.amazon.com/forums/questions/4517/cryengine-vs-lumberyard.html

Seems Lumberyard is missing some new features the new Cryengine has like "Heightmap-Based Ambient Occlusion, Designer Tool UV Mapping, Character Attachment Merging, New Depth-of-Field Implementation, Improved Motion Blur and Volumetric Fog Quality, Improved SVOGI". They plan to add new features roughly every 4-6 weeks. So I am sure they already have things planned. They just released an update 4 days ago and are looking for ways ppl can download these updates without huge download times.

For me, I feel Lumberyard might be more reliable because they seem to be making changes and listening to customers. Cryengine on the otherhand seems to be more rigid in their approach and with their reputation in the past, we have no idea what might come out of this pay what you want module. I gather Cryengine is hoping to make money from marketplace and support subscription. In otherwords, if u need technical support, you have to have a subscription account. I think Lumberyard will grow fast and acquire new features if it's community builds up fast.

Realtime GI and reflections in Lumberyard should be good enough to get you good results. Someone said, these game engines are basically the same, if you are a talented artists, your quality of work should be top notch regardless of what engine you are using. Right now, I don't think people trusts Crytex considering their past and how tight fisted they have been about their engine.

I haven't really gotten round to testing Lumberyard yet. It is possible I might not like it. At least I have used ue4 before so I have something to compare it with.

« Last Edit: 2016-03-19, 09:19:36 by melviso »

2016-03-19, 09:37:22
Reply #225

Juraj

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I think svogi in Cry is the same as Vxgi in ue4

It's not. Unreal has one guy trying to integrate the original nVidia's code, Crytek has full rendering research department doing this stuff :- ). It's also why CryEngine already has it fully working on soon to be released games (like Kingdom Come).
Of course, looks good enough for games only, but that's the point.


I was reading past 2 days all the tech papers about in-house engine used for Order 1866 and it's blast, these guys are maniacs. It has bunch of stuff that is way above Unreal in visual rendering technology, namely unlimited full material blending with no performance cost because of packing.
That's completely genial workflow. Instead of building giant unique shader from repeated elements, you keep stacking 'common' materials into more complex, keeping full relationship untouched. Unreal can do it, but it's like every other renderer, you will be rendering all the materials visible in particular pixel. So 8 materials, 8 times the cost. Wonder if that could be changed ? Also the 'spherical gaussian' lightmaps for rough materials, who keep correct spatiality. Unreal solves this with screen-space reflections, but those are grainy and expensive. Bunch of incredible tech. I can only wonder what other in-house engines have developed for themselves. Don't get me wrong, Unreal is superior gaming engine, super easy, super robust and oriented flexibily for any kind of game. But these in-house tools with proprietary rendering research have that edge in doing particular visual things better. (also why open-world games were and are such strong point in CryEngine).

Here are all of them: http://www.readyatdawn.com/presentations/

Here is the particular artist-oriented: https://readyatdawn.sharefile.com/share?cmd=d&id=s3187a0527304cf1b#/view/s3187a0527304cf1b?_k=ntb0zs

« Last Edit: 2016-03-19, 09:48:32 by Juraj_Talcik »
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2016-03-19, 10:02:14
Reply #226

philippelamoureux

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Sometimes it's sad to see that some super cool engines are made only for a game or two. Such a waste of potential. It's like Konami letting Kojima build the fox engine then when mgs5 is out, they fire him. Now god knows what's gonna happen to the fox. Are they going to reuse it? maybe. Maybe not. They seems to want to focus on mobile games, where it's popular in Japan. Meh!

I'll check that out Juraj even tho it's probably too technical for me hehe!
« Last Edit: 2016-03-19, 10:09:30 by philippelamoureux »

2016-03-22, 07:48:07
Reply #227

philippelamoureux

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Photogrammetry in ue4. These are very simple scenes but it's almostt too real to be made in ue4. What do you think? the guy is supposed to post a breakdown on his website someday.


source : http://www.artbyrens.com/

2016-03-22, 09:06:53
Reply #228

Juraj

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I think it looks that good because it has fully baked-in light and reflection from photos, ie. nothing is actually realtime outside of camera.

But maybe I am wrong..
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2016-03-22, 09:51:52
Reply #229

philippelamoureux

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No you are probably right! Having this kind of environment details rendered instantly is pretty dope tho!
Could make very nice architecture movies with all photoscanned environments since it's usually the hardest (a real pain in a game engine imo) part to model/texture!

I played with some photoscanned 3d assets from sketchfab and they look awesome in ue4! Some are very high poly tho! Gotta be careful but modern engines don't have too much problem with polycount!

2016-03-23, 00:41:30
Reply #230

melviso

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Really nice. Yeah..I also think it is baked. Problem is the materials here have very glossy to minimal reflections. If the assets were to move or are dynamic since the reflections are not realtime. The realism might not hold up.

I also rewatched the Hellbalde trailer and reflections are part of what breaks the great work the devs did. If u look at the water reflections of the tree when it burns, the reflections of flames falling to the ground are missing. Same with the ground on which Senua stands towards the end of the cinematic which is muddy water.

Unreal devs need to try and do something about realtime reflections. Wonder if it's gonna be possible this gen.

EDIT:
Seems some studios are already using unity game engine for rendering cartoons. This looks quite good especially the art style..

« Last Edit: 2016-03-26, 02:37:49 by melviso »

2016-04-01, 12:15:05
Reply #231

maru

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http://www.3dartistonline.com/news/2016/04/whats-new-in-unreal-4-11/
"you can make pupils dilate in relation to light sources"
Not sure if april fools... :O
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2016-04-01, 14:17:18
Reply #232

philippelamoureux

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I think it's real. They've implemented a ton of stuff that they used in Paragon.

Also made with Unity. Adam cg movie.


2016-04-02, 05:20:10
Reply #233

JGallagher

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That Adam demo is insane.

2016-04-02, 08:10:01
Reply #234

melviso

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The Adam demo is really good. Does anyone know if the lighting is realtime GI or baked?

Demo by Lumberyard;

The animation isn't the best but the graphics is really good. With better photorealistisc textures/materials, this could be very even miles better.

2016-04-02, 10:42:19
Reply #235

sebastian___

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The animation isn't the best but the graphics is really good. With better photorealistisc textures/materials, this could be very even miles better.

One of the problems with gaming engines are low poly models used, low res textures, not good enough shader tweaking and low quality antialiasing.. And maybe lack of realistic depth of field and motion blur.

You start using high or even very high poly models, maybe at least for the models close to the camera, good textures and antialiasing similar to a renderer and the results will be much better.

The Lumberyard demo posted didn't had motion blur on for some reason (among other problems). The good thing is these game engines can be pushed much further.

2016-04-02, 17:41:46
Reply #236

melviso

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U are completely right, This could be pushed even further. At some point, I think new users might try out using higher res models, textures and better post processing settings to get better photorealism in Lumberyard.  Lumberyard supports motion blur, wondering why it was turned off for this demo or was this due to performance issues and they wanted to demonstrate the demo  working on an average pc.

Read up on 4.11 release, seems they have added light linking (lighting channels). That's +1 for lighting artists.
« Last Edit: 2016-04-02, 18:18:41 by melviso »

2016-04-05, 22:57:11
Reply #237

dubcat

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IKEA has joined the Unreal 4/Allegorithmic VR train

http://store.steampowered.com/app/447270

First comment on steam: "I played this just to steal the pencils"

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2016-04-06, 12:22:06
Reply #238

maru

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Wow, that's really interesting. Looks like soon VR and augmented reality will be found everywhere. I can imagine VR glasses in IKEAs where you can put them on and see the real-world interiors change colors, textures, lighting. Exciting and scary at the same time. :)
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2016-04-07, 05:40:22
Reply #239

philippelamoureux

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I ''won'' a HTC vive from valve/Epic (via the unreal dev grants). They had 500 units to give away. I showed them an architectural scene  I've done with ue4 and it worked. It's awesome!

I just saw the new MODO 10 stuff and it looks like they have some enhanced workflow tools for unreal and unity built-in! Maybe something interesting even tho I find the workflow not that bad with max/ue4.

http://www.evermotion.org/articles/show/10079/modo-10-0v1-released

This is particularly interesting : Streamlined export to games engines – Now you can transfer assets between MODO and Unity or Unreal Editor 4 with shading information intact, eliminating the need to recreate shading work in the games engine editor. What’s more, exporting to games engines is now single-step operation, thanks to a new preset mechanism with ready-made presets for Unreal and Unity, and the ability to create custom presets to target additional engines. In addition meshes are now automatically triangulated on FBX export—matching MODO's internal triangulation for GL rendering and ensuring a visual match—and there’s now direct support for a range of common DDS image formats.
« Last Edit: 2016-04-08, 05:16:03 by philippelamoureux »

2016-04-08, 10:01:11
Reply #240

rambambulli

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2016-04-08, 10:42:53
Reply #241

philippelamoureux

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Their presentation was weird. They said it was real-time but all they showed was from a static pov. At this point it just seemed like a normal 360 stereo panoramic image to me.

''I got the chance to experience a demonstration of Iray VR Lite on an HTC Vive, and in this demo Nvidia had a handful of pre-defined head positions. I could look around, and in the distance there would be a glowing green orb. Using the controller, I could aim at it and trigger a teleport. With that, I was able to maneuver through the upcoming headquarters, Endeavor. It was quite an impressive demo, but lacking the ability to move my head around did feel, well, lacking.'' -Niels Broekhuijsen

''The demo was run on Nvidia’s VCA (Visual Computing Appliance) with 32 nodes in Santa Clara, with the output transmitted to the convention center through a very fast Internet connection''

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/nvidia-iray-vr-gtc-2016,31573.html

That all sounds very MEH to me. Require overly expensive hardware.

2016-04-08, 10:46:54
Reply #242

Juraj

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Quote
Given that a typical Iray render takes seconds or even minutes to calculate, even on a multi-GPU machine, whereas VR headsets have a refresh rate of 90fps, Iray VR isn’t a real-time raytracing solution.

Quote
Given that a typical Iray render takes SECONDS

:- D


Anyway, so it's rendering hundreds of 360s which somehow blend with depth buffer. Well that, must truly be "impressive". Seems like another completely useless gimmick.
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2016-04-08, 11:00:31
Reply #243

philippelamoureux

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2016-04-08, 11:22:11
Reply #244

racoonart

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Anyway, so it's rendering hundreds of 360s which somehow blend with depth buffer. Well that, must truly be "impressive". Seems like another completely useless gimmick.
Sigh.... VR is currently one of those bullshit bingo loaded topics in the industry. Everyone is trying to present themselves as "world-leading" in producing "immersive" demos that show the "future" of VR - no matter how impractical or far it is from production reality. Most of the stuff has been around for years or decades and was as unusable then as it is now. Lightfields for example - I'm still waiting for oTOY to release their incredible "changing-everything1!!11!" technology they were (not) showing for months. A calculator and some primary school maths is enough to show that there are serious limitations in this approach (which is why this tech exists for over a decade and no one has been using it for serious stuff). It's a bit like deep compositing - everyone was thrilled by the possibilities but even big production companies seem to be abandoning it in some cases because it's impractical.
In this case it's just nvidia marketing crap, nothing more.
Any sufficiently advanced bug is indistinguishable from a feature.

2016-04-08, 11:42:44
Reply #245

Juraj

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nVidia does it routinely though. They do have some nice public tech, esp. Gameworks, but then the other half is just jumping on any train for what you write, marketing purposes. But I am surprised it gets so much traction nonetheless.
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2016-04-08, 13:12:54
Reply #246

Ondra

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Quote
Given that a typical Iray render takes SECONDS


Seriously, this is how you lie like a professional. NVidia marketing folks are experts at this. This is the same concept as GPU rendering. Do not try to persuade anyone about the lie. Just state it as a footnote, btw-remark in something completely unrelated, over and over again. Be confident, talk about it as a widely established fact. Do not try to convince anybody about the lie - just do not let them even doubt it! Bravo.
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2016-04-08, 13:26:56
Reply #247

rambambulli

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That all sounds very MEH to me

+1

Sorry for mentioning it.

2016-04-08, 13:29:12
Reply #248

philippelamoureux

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Does that mean that this was a lie too? ;-P

SECONDS!!!

« Last Edit: 2016-04-08, 13:35:41 by philippelamoureux »

2016-04-08, 15:28:16
Reply #249

maru

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Does that mean that this was a lie too? ;-P
OMG I am totally replacing my CPU with a GPU now!!!
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2016-04-08, 16:34:41
Reply #250

romullus

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Don't forget to order bunch of these! :]

I'm not Corona Team member. Everything i say, is my personal opinion only.
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2016-05-05, 10:34:31
Reply #251

melviso

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@philippelamoureux

Been really busy. How is the ue4 project coming along? Any updates?


Currently trying out Lumberyard in my free time. Just scratching the surface atm. I am really digging the realtime GI and how easily u can set up Time of Day. Unfortunately their material editor is quite limited, no nodes. So all texturing will have to be done externally. I am still trying to test the realtime reflections. The engine seems quite straightforward.

Will still be experimenting with ue4 as well (finally downloaded it).

2016-06-03, 12:11:50
Reply #252

melviso

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Someone on the unreal engine forums is doing some test with ue4:


 More info here: https://forums.unrealengine.com/showthread.php?107852-Environment-WIP-Forever

I have tried out Amazon lumberyard during my spare time and while it has realtime GI (doesn't have indirect shadows). It isn't the best to use due to it's limited material editor and file, texture and animation requirement hurdles for import. Documentation is not really fleshed out. Another thing is I have noticed a lot of ppl are not using it. that might not be best as a community is important for this engine to strive. The devs have however been really up and doing . I am not sure Cryengine is getting a lot of use since they changed their payment model
Unity has a new payment model in place which is really upsetting it's userbase.

Ue4 on the otherhand is a beast and lightmass seems to be doing quite well. It's realtime GI- Vxgi is still in development. UE4 is the it engine right now and the ease of importing 3d models, animations and textures is just dope. Let's all hope UE4 doesn't change theirs though there is something about Unreal Engine Enterprise.


2016-06-03, 15:06:00
Reply #253

cecofuli

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2016-06-03, 15:31:25
Reply #254

maru

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I'd love to run this in real-time (even though it would be probably 5fps ;) ).

Do you guys know of any nice free UE demos? I only know of "Winter Chalet" (yes, I did find the snowmobile).
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2016-06-03, 15:39:16
Reply #255

Juraj

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I'd love to run this in real-time (even though it would be probably 5fps ;) ).

Do you guys know of any nice free UE demos? I only know of "Winter Chalet" (yes, I did find the snowmobile).

Just search marketplace, there's tons of them :- )
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2016-06-03, 15:55:36
Reply #256

maru

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Oh, thanks, I haven't yet delved into the UE content.
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2016-06-03, 17:12:11
Reply #257

rafpug

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Someone on the unreal engine forums is doing some test with ue4:


 More info here: https://forums.unrealengine.com/showthread.php?107852-Environment-WIP-Forever

I have tried out Amazon lumberyard during my spare time and while it has realtime GI (doesn't have indirect shadows). It isn't the best to use due to it's limited material editor and file, texture and animation requirement hurdles for import. Documentation is not really fleshed out. Another thing is I have noticed a lot of ppl are not using it. that might not be best as a community is important for this engine to strive. The devs have however been really up and doing . I am not sure Cryengine is getting a lot of use since they changed their payment model
Unity has a new payment model in place which is really upsetting it's userbase.

Ue4 on the otherhand is a beast and lightmass seems to be doing quite well. It's realtime GI- Vxgi is still in development. UE4 is the it engine right now and the ease of importing 3d models, animations and textures is just dope. Let's all hope UE4 doesn't change theirs though there is something about Unreal Engine Enterprise.


impressive  -  the rendering time more or less for this type of image ?

2016-06-03, 17:46:39
Reply #258

melviso

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I'd love to run this in real-time (even though it would be probably 5fps ;) ).

Do you guys know of any nice free UE demos? I only know of "Winter Chalet" (yes, I did find the snowmobile).

The artist says the scene currently runs on  ''50~70fps at 1080p on a gtx 980ti''. Hasn't been optimised yet. As for UE scene demos, u can try the kite demo. There is an animation sequence of it on youtube.


impressive  -  the rendering time more or less for this type of image ?


One hour. The grasses and trees use dynamic lighting in realtime.  U can check the link I posted to his thread on the unreal engine forums. He has posted some info on  his workflow and process.
« Last Edit: 2016-06-03, 18:06:12 by melviso »


2016-06-04, 08:15:47
Reply #260

philippelamoureux

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Now. What 'scool with ue4 is you can have baked and non-baked objects in the same scene. For exterior shot it's cool. The house is baked but the vegetation is not so light build times are very low. (there is no proper render time when it's real-time, but a lighting build time). Baking such vegetation is impossible anyway.

The guys at ue4arch are working on the Barcelona Pavilion and high-end vegetation. It looks very promising. Some sneak peaks here : https://twitter.com/ue4arch

2016-06-04, 08:45:47
Reply #261

philippelamoureux

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By the way, in 4.12 they unlocked the 128x128 resolution limit on the cubemaps (hdri) and reflection probes.

-Added cinematic camera actor with real world camera settings
-sequencer replaced matinee. Much better tool to make movies

TON better reflections, especially with the planar reflection actor. Thanks Unreal Engine Enterprise.

This is the beginning, now they have realised ue4 is not only about games.
« Last Edit: 2016-06-06, 20:34:52 by philippelamoureux »

2016-06-08, 18:54:36
Reply #262

Benny

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Since this thread appears to take a little breather, could anyone be bothered to give a little summary of the most reasonable workflow as it stands now? How do you go from Max/Corona to sharing your scene in an Oculus? I'm afraid I don't speak baking and lightmaps but I could learn if I knew the suggested steps. It would seem to me that the rendered environment in Corona is more realistic than Unreal, and I'm not keen on learning yet another material editor.

On the other hand some of my colleagues at work says I should forget all this and just use Enscape. Lol. I'm trying to figure out something in between.

2016-06-08, 19:43:44
Reply #263

sebastian___

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impressive  -  the rendering time more or less for this type of image ?

Doesn't matter. Still much faster than any 3ds max renderer.

2016-06-09, 03:33:41
Reply #264

melviso

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Another new game engine called Xenko:

http://xenko.com/


Kinda limited and its documentation is still being worked on. It's still in beta. Just wanted to post this in case anyone wants to  try it out.

2016-06-09, 06:20:21
Reply #265

philippelamoureux

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impressive  -  the rendering time more or less for this type of image ?

Doesn't matter. Still much faster than any 3ds max renderer.

Rendering aside, you know what's even more faster? The editor itself (viewport, etc). Speed of light compared to 3ds max. This is what keeps me trying to learn Unreal.

2016-06-09, 09:49:35
Reply #266

sebastian___

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Yes. It was the same with cryengine - even in 2007. So 8 or 9 years ago !!!  . An editor quite similar with 3ds max, inspired from it as an interface, so very easy for a 3ds max user to move into. But in 2007 had soft shadows, ambient occlusion (SSAO), POM (a form of optical displacement), depth of field with circle bokeh, or any shapes (with some tweaks), lots of post process effects - adjustable, a pretty realistic daylight lighting simulation, thin leaf vegetation sss like material. Vegetation dynamics, meaning vegetation would react to being touched, to wind, explosions and so on.
An easy to use track view editor. A node based editor similar with the new Max Creation Graph - used to do animations and logic based reaction.

A very basic mesh editor. A fun voxel sculpting tool.

A better looking wind animation of plants and leafs than the professional software used for nature at that time - e-on Vue.
And much more.

 All these visible in real time in the viewport. Even motion blur. And all these in 2007 / 2008.
And it was so fast and smooth, every time I would switch to 3ds max (in 2007 through 2010 and later) I was so puzzled.

Imagine how it would be to have all that in 3ds max at that time. 3ds max doesn't have those not even now in the viewport. And probably not any time soon.

2016-06-17, 06:44:09
Reply #267

philippelamoureux

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Rafael Reis last ue4 architecture scene. I talked to him and he modeled all the background buildings himself, from photo reference. Looks so real. Materials are done with substance designer.


2016-06-20, 15:31:05
Reply #268

Juraj

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Love it..
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2016-06-20, 16:12:33
Reply #269

yagi

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what does unreal engine run on....is it cpu or gpu based? im thinking of building a new system for the sake of unreal engine and i have to make sure i get the best hardware put together. any particular specs ?

2016-06-20, 16:16:07
Reply #270

cecofuli

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You need, obivously, fast GPU for play the"game" in realtime with smooth FPS. But, also, a strong CPU (better Dual Xeon) for backing Lightmaps

2016-06-20, 16:17:03
Reply #271

Juraj

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what does unreal engine run on....is it cpu or gpu based? im thinking of building a new system for the sake of unreal engine and i have to make sure i get the best hardware put together. any particular specs ?

Anything with GTX 1080 and you're set for quite some time. Once real-time, it relies almost solely on GPU for the visual part.

Having strong CPU will let you run your 'bakes' (lighting..etc..) faster though.
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2016-06-20, 18:28:58
Reply #272

yagi

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wow! the 1080 is almost 1000 dollars!... well, will have to buy it either ways. honestly, i dont know anything about xeon processors yet. i would like to know how much the setup that did 33 seconds on corona benchmark scene costs (Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2696 v4 @ 2.20GHz (×2))...or at least the 2nd spec cos when i see the number of cores in that benchmark list i get confused!?...like what kind of processor(s) is that? i want one for my office!

2016-06-20, 18:40:32
Reply #273

Ondra

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well... you have my permission to buy that card, but please do not request Corona GPU afterwards just because you spent a shitton of money on GPU :D
Rendering is magic.How to get minidumps for crashed/frozen 3ds Max | Sorry for short replies, brief responses = more time to develop Corona ;)

2016-06-20, 18:59:39
Reply #274

TomG

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The 1080s are much cheaper than that, around $600 to $700. The 1070s perform well too, and their price is around $450 (US dollars, these prices).

Probably something like $8,000 and up for the 2697 based systems in the top place, the processors alone are close to $3,000 or so each and those systems have 2 processors in them. Cores are as follows - a single Xeon 2697 (the second place ones on the benchmark)has 18 cores, the top systems on the benchmark have two of those processors in them (as Xeons can work together like that) which makes 36 physical cores, and each core can run two threads, making 72 logical cores (apologies if my terminology is a bit off!)

Hope this helps!
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2016-06-20, 21:09:26
Reply #275

Juraj

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The very top guy (Say) with the 2696v4, which is OEM (and probably also ES/QS ) version of 2699v4, the baddest of v4 line-up (with small exception of rare QS sample which has even 2 more cores...) probably didn't pay anything close to what Peter and Henry did for their machines which are around 10k euro mark.

1080 doesn't cost 1k... ignore the "founders edition/reference cooler" which cost a good hundred more (and has some issue too now). This card is more powerful than my Titan-X (although with 8 vs 12gb vram) and good 30perc. cheaper.
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2016-06-20, 23:43:50
Reply #276

romullus

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How important is VRAM amount in that UE/ArchViz game? I'm planning to replace my old video card and have very tigh budget, but i don't want that saved few euros would turn against me if i'd decide to try UE (or some other engine) in not so distant future. I'm thinking about GTX 950 2GB, but if that's way too low, i'd rather search for GTX 960 4GB.
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2016-06-20, 23:51:39
Reply #277

Juraj

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A lot. By default UE4 has aggressive texture compression that allows you to get by on on <4GB cards, and low default resolution for light and reflection baked maps. But for clean archviz surfaces, it's vital to get rid of it and upp the resolutions and that you just hover instantly over it.

So 4GB is the least I would go for. Is the new AMD RX480 pushing the price limit too high as well ? It has ridiculous value/performance. If yes, then it's lower-end counterpart coming soon should be great option on budget as well.
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2016-06-21, 20:01:11
Reply #278

romullus

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Thanks for advice Juraj! Did some search today and it's kind of hard to find something with 4GB VRAM and Nvidia logo on it, that would fit my budget. Might wait till july to see what rx460/470 will offer, although i'm not very exited to look into AMD camp :/
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2016-06-21, 21:39:45
Reply #279

Juraj

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I know, AMD just messed up too many times, but this looks like solid card for the price. GTX 1060 might still be rather above your budget.
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2016-06-21, 23:01:42
Reply #280

romullus

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Let's hope so.

GTX 1060 might still be rather above your budget.

Most likely. Besides, it probably many months away from release anyway...
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2016-06-22, 05:29:50
Reply #281

philippelamoureux

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Now using 1024x1024 reflection cubemaps and planar reflections. I think I've seen my gtx 980 94gb) crash a couple times, running out of memory :-)  I used displacement on terrain too.
Gonna have to start optimizing a little bit.

2016-07-08, 14:19:41
Reply #282

MgVrN

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i think corona to ue4 material converter would be sweet

2016-07-08, 19:17:33
Reply #283

Benny

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well... you have my permission to buy that card, but please do not request Corona GPU afterwards just because you spent a shitton of money on GPU :D

Why not? I asked the same question in another thread but never got a response. I'm not arguing but curious whether things have changed since the inception of Corona. If the rumors of a Titan P next month is true (16GB with 6,000 cores) it would seem CPU would have a tough time keeping up at a reasonable cost? I mean, I will need a powerful GPU either way just to keep up with Unreal and VR, right? I need a new system shortly and these are tough decisions.

2016-07-08, 21:35:18
Reply #284

Juraj

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Yup, the 16GB Titan-P is going to be pretty revolutionary.

1 or 2 years, and Titan-Volta(or whatever) with 32GB of HMB memory, is going to absolutely kill CPU :- ). I am honestly surprised by this evolution. Mainstream 300 euro cards have 8GB of memory, glorious days.

You should buy the card nonetheless for Unreal :- ) I know I will.

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2016-07-08, 23:14:11
Reply #285

Nejc Kilar

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Yup, the 16GB Titan-P is going to be pretty revolutionary.

1 or 2 years, and Titan-Volta(or whatever) with 32GB of HMB memory, is going to absolutely kill CPU :- ). I am honestly surprised by this evolution. Mainstream 300 euro cards have 8GB of memory, glorious days.

You should buy the card nonetheless for Unreal :- ) I know I will.

If you are in the states you can get that 300 euro mark for the 8gb gfx card down to 250$ :P With CUDA reportedly getting ported for the AMD GCN (at least for Octane) that would make the AMD Vega super interesting too, especially since AMD isn't so stingy with VRAM.

What might also be interesting to people on a budget is a comparison between what a 1000$ CPU / GPU part gives you compared to each other in terms of rendering performance. Interesting stuff indeed!
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2016-07-08, 23:17:20
Reply #286

Juraj

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Well I live in Europe, so dreaming about US prices without tax is quite pointless to me :- )

That comparison is quite interesting to me, something I want to find out with Redshift.
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2016-07-08, 23:32:30
Reply #287

Nejc Kilar

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Let me know how it works out, please :) Its fun to think about these things...

It will be also interesting to see what happens when GPUs hit the architecture shrink wall like the CPUs? Architecture optimizing?

edit: I feel ya about the prices though, I'm from Europe too.
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2016-07-09, 06:43:44
Reply #288

philippelamoureux

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I've seen Nvidia announce the gtx 1060 for 250$ with same perf as my 800$ gtx 980 (1year old). I want to cry. But yea, it's a good thing for everybody.

2016-07-09, 10:07:54
Reply #289

Benny

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1 or 2 years, and Titan-Volta(or whatever) with 32GB of HMB memory, is going to absolutely kill CPU :- ).

So using Corona will in 2 years potentially leave me at a serious disadvantage?

I love Corona but I'm an impatient man and interactivity is critical to me. If the Corona team is saying that it will never happen it's quite frankly worrying.

2016-07-09, 12:46:08
Reply #290

Juraj

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I am currently playing with 3 GPU renderers....and only one of them is fast.

Using CPU renderer is not at being in disadvantage, the Corona devs believe they can speed-up the engine by other methods than simply swapping to GPU. Arnold and Vray think the same. (yes, Vray has VrayRtGPU, you can ignore it safely)
I also don't think they will be as fundamental about it forever :- ) You can have ideals, and then there is reality.
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2016-07-09, 21:04:29
Reply #291

Benny

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Thanks for the wisdom, albeit a bit cryptic.   :)

I realize this is a Corona forum, but you can't tease like that, which is the fast one?

The only one I have actual experience of is Vray GPU, but my memory card can't hold most of my scenes so I never really bothered with it although it may be more optimized nowadays. Why should it be ignored? Still too different result from the regular one?

But back to our favorite renderer, wasn't there talk a while ago about some collaborative project together with AMD?

2016-07-09, 22:59:59
Reply #292

philippelamoureux

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If there were more online gpu renderfarm that would help too. Right now if you don't have your own and you have a movie to make, you are pretty much screwed!!!

2016-07-09, 23:30:31
Reply #293

Juraj

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Having gpu render farm defeats the whole "gpus is faster" concept no ? If I am still at mercy of render-farm, I can just stay forever with cpus :- ). The farms won't have more vram, and they won't be cheaper.


Quote
Thanks for the wisdom, albeit a bit cryptic.   :)

I realize this is a Corona forum, but you can't tease like that, which is the fast one?

Haha, I didn't mean to be cryptic :- ) Just didn't consider it important for the argument to name them. I already wrote here I am testing Redshift (I don't plan on switching, but it's the first gpu engine that really interests me).
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2016-07-11, 17:09:08
Reply #294

Benny

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Having gpu render farm defeats the whole "gpus is faster" concept no ? If I am still at mercy of render-farm, I can just stay forever with cpus :- ). The farms won't have more vram, and they won't be cheaper.

Well, I guess the core point is whether gpu will be exponentially faster long term. I don't know of any CPU based renderfarm that can give me a close to real time experience but a future gpu based might, and since real time rendering is the holy grail of the industry such a renderfarm would be worth pursuing if it arrives here faster.

Having said that I must confess I have no idea how cpu and gpu correlates to each other. How many cuda cores would be comparable to a 5960X? Is it even possible to make such a comparison (putting aside software for a moment)? Vray RT owners must have tried this. If Titan P has 6000 cores and next years Titan 12,000 and then 20,0000 and so on, can cpu's make a dent even if they also double their amount of cores over the years?

2016-07-11, 17:22:28
Reply #295

Juraj

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It's not possible to make such comparison in general terms. GPU's "cores" are in no way similar functionally, so they can't be described as fraction of CPU core.

It can only be done on software level and particularly similar sampling, so CPU vs GPU path-tracing. But even then it's not that revealing about GPU performance solely.

But the scaling concept applies well, GPUs have quite easy time multiplying their performance per generation because of their super-specialization. CPU can't do that, even if Intel would have brought something revolutionary to table.
As long as the GPU's limitations (you still can't port everything to it) keep falling, it might be eventual winner. Esp, when the 32GB models start hitting mainstream.

Do note that, Titan-P will be 1400 +/- euros imho at minimum, if it's really so much more powerful than 1080. 2-3 of them, which you will need for really speedy GPU renderer, still makes for very expensive computer for average user. Average user with single quad-core is not gonna decrease his render times radically with single GTX 1070. Absolutely not with the two GPU path-tracers out there :- )
But for power-user, buying 7 Titans will be far better value/performance than Xeon farm (if we ignore the existence of "ES" models ;- ) ... )

But with Redshift I want to make that laic comparison anyway :- ) I have pretty much all CPUs at home imaginable, and quite few interesting GPUs ( Titan-X, will buy Titan-P also as soon as it's on market). So I will come up with some kind of metric to do a comparison. I fear it would start shitstorm, but it's a question everyone is asking themselves anyway :- )
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2016-07-11, 18:18:51
Reply #296

Ondra

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Well, I guess the core point is whether gpu will be exponentially faster long term. I don't know of any CPU based renderfarm that can give me a close to real time experience but a future gpu based might, and since real time rendering is the holy grail of the industry such a renderfarm would be worth pursuing if it arrives here faster.

I would like to have your optimism... I mean, 10 years ago I heard exactly the same story: GPUs are not yet all-powerful, but soon they will be and will allow you to render stuff you never even thought possible... just one or two generations... just one or two problems to fix :D


Generally it is impossible to compare GPU core to CPU core, but you can compare the overal practical performance, which is roughly similar per-$ and per-Watt.
Rendering is magic.How to get minidumps for crashed/frozen 3ds Max | Sorry for short replies, brief responses = more time to develop Corona ;)

2016-07-12, 06:10:31
Reply #297

philippelamoureux

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The rendertime isn't a huge deal. 10 mins on cpu or 7 mins on gpu, or vice versa... we have all the power of the world in 1 click with render farms for now.

What I want is a real-time viewport experience, as smooth as unreal/unity.
Corona interactive is good but I don't really like 3ds max, I find it sluggish. It's one of the only software that feels heavy and buggy.

2016-07-12, 07:05:33
Reply #298

Benny

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I would like to have your optimism... I mean, 10 years ago I heard exactly the same story: GPUs are not yet all-powerful, but soon they will be and will allow you to render stuff you never even thought possible... just one or two generations... just one or two problems to fix :D

That's all very true. I'm old enough to remember a company called Intergraph, who were trying to take on SGI at the time with Windows NT machines, boasting about their realtime rendering graphics system. They were showing impressive things at the time, which of course would look hopelessly simple by today's standards.

Still, if different product strategies are viable but on different development trajectories, and one is potentially a better long term solution, their performance curves will eventually cross and after that point it is no longer one or two generations away, it has happened. And I agree with Philippe, it is not so much about the final render as it is about the interactivity getting there.

I'm not familiar with Redshift, but if a serious player comes out that is similar to Corona, but focused on GPU instead of CPU, it could become a very successful product. I really love Corona and their desire to remove all clutter from the renderer, realizing that not everyone likes to tinker with render settings. (Having come to the point I'm at today together with and because of Vray, I actually feel disloyal to Vray saying that, as it clearly is a comment directed in that direction, but I just can't do it anymore. Vlado and his user base is either just to smart for me, or they are too interested in render technology in itself. Quick Settings aside I've long ago given up that they will clean up and automate the interface and every suggestion to make it more elegant, like a material preview shader, is apparently a waste of time that no one will use anyway.)

Philippe, I actually find Max both fast and capable, what would be the alternative? If one comes along I'm sure creative forces like Juraj, Guthrie, Bekenman, Bernard and the other usual suspects will jump ship and we'll all follow along, just like we did with Corona.  :D

2016-07-12, 17:49:40
Reply #299

Juraj

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WYSIWYG workflow like real-time engines offer is pretty amazing, but it isn't fair comparison. People use raytracers for their absolute visual quality, so there will always be some trade-off. I can live with many limitations, as long as the final result is worth it.

Unreal will be Unreal, and raytracers will be raytracers for quite some time.

Redshift is pretty genial in many aspects, but it's not competitor for Corona honestly, it will compete primarily against Arnold (and Vray I guess, if it survives long enough :- ) ... ).
It has way more options than Vray 3.4SP :- ), which btw, can be used quite similarly to Corona already, they streamlined the workflow. The fact the "hardcore" community users stick to their "verified" methods dating back to 1.5, isn't Vlado's fault.
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2016-07-15, 07:37:16
Reply #300

philippelamoureux

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I strongly suggest you guys to try the Barcelona Pavillion virtual tour. It's a guided tour and free exploration too. I've only tried the standard pc version. Tomorrow I'll try the htc vive version.

It's pretty immersive, well done and some mats are amazing, like the travertine :-O Must see in ultra graphics!!! It has to be the closest thing to the real building!!!

https://ue4arch.com/product-category/virtualplan/

« Last Edit: 2016-07-21, 08:09:57 by philippelamoureux »

2016-10-21, 02:05:24
Reply #301

melviso

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Interesting upcoming release from makers of marmoset toolbag:

Seems like they have added some sort of G.I, animation and baking. This might become a competitor for unreal engine in the long run. It's already shaping up nicely. It's not up to ue4's level for archviz yet but it's interesting to see them adding those features. Seems good for previsualization for animations, products and scenes. Marmoset toolbag is a realtime renderer/viewer for 3d assets and its easier to use and some claim it looks better for realtime asset rendering. Also avoids the whole engine learning hassles if you just want to make realtime stuff.

« Last Edit: 2016-10-21, 02:09:56 by melviso »

2016-10-21, 09:56:13
Reply #302

lacilaci

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Interesting upcoming release from makers of marmoset toolbag:

Seems like they have added some sort of G.I, animation and baking. This might become a competitor for unreal engine in the long run. It's already shaping up nicely. It's not up to ue4's level for archviz yet but it's interesting to see them adding those features. Seems good for previsualization for animations, products and scenes. Marmoset toolbag is a realtime renderer/viewer for 3d assets and its easier to use and some claim it looks better for realtime asset rendering. Also avoids the whole engine learning hassles if you just want to make realtime stuff.


Yeah well, you cannot make interactive virtual tour with marmoset. It's cool though, marmoset was always nice tool for quick previewing and rendering all kinds of assets for games etc...

2016-10-22, 04:52:11
Reply #303

melviso

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That's true. Virtual reality is a really cool feature that comes with game engines and it seems to be taking off quite well. Won't be surprised if clients start making this a requirements for projects. I remember mentioning how game engines will be playing a big role in archviz's future during my postgrad and everyone seemed to just prefer offline renderers..lol.
I can't help wondering what ue5 will be about. :)

2016-10-23, 00:24:46
Reply #304

burnin

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All good and dandy... now consider something about costs and prices:
CGI pipeline & workflow to comply according to AdobeRGB, CMYK, Pantone or other hiQ printing standards ~ regular price * 10!
HiQ VR pipeline, workflow with capacities, abilities and the official service during working hours ~ regular price * 33 (yes, you will also need to employ few extra staff & uphold a sanitary standard for your clients to use the damn helmet)

... all along while clients without a pinch of creative imagination think it all fell from the sky :D
   

2016-10-29, 02:22:02
Reply #305

melviso

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 I do see why some people would prefer to just stick to archviz stills and animations :)

VR workflow, management and delivery will definitely get better as time advances. At some point, even clients would have their own helmets. I think in the future, vr headsets will become relatively cheap, very light and portable, more like the eyeglasses we put on everyday.
VR is still in its early stages while CGI pipeline has been around for a long time and has seen advancements and improvements technology wise.


2016-11-01, 19:37:02
Reply #306

philippelamoureux

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I don't know if you guys have seen ue4arch lake house scene? But THIS is pushing the limits of ue4 hehe.

Maybe not super practical but pretty cool nonetheless. The shadow casting is pretty dope.

2016-11-01, 21:44:19
Reply #307

romullus

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Mightily impressive. Reflection in the door glass in the first shot get screwed though. Looks like vampire :]
I'm not Corona Team member. Everything i say, is my personal opinion only.
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2016-11-01, 22:49:33
Reply #308

philippelamoureux

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Rafael didn't use the new planar reflection actor on the glass doors I think. Project was made before the feature was available.

2016-11-02, 12:59:13
Reply #309

philippelamoureux

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Have you guys seen unite 2016 and Otoy's announce?

Starts at 1:18:15


Octane render fully integrated in Unity, for free, able to be used for, amongst other cool things, progressive lightmap baking. The dream!

https://twitter.com/OTOY/status/793585937145933824

and not only that, they're still working on a fully fledged ue4 plugin that should basically do the same in ue4....

https://twitter.com/icelaglace/status/793696804218953728



« Last Edit: 2016-11-02, 13:07:27 by philippelamoureux »

2016-11-02, 13:38:01
Reply #310

moriah

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Ehhh Otoy, everytime they announce something i take it with a huge grain of salt..... Maybe they should focus on making octane 3 actually usable in production, and implement the dozens of features they promised.

2016-11-02, 13:49:53
Reply #311

philippelamoureux

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2016-11-02, 19:17:28
Reply #312

RobSteady

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But they are really good at announcing things, probably the best out there.
What was Octane Render Cloud again? :)

2016-11-03, 02:51:03
Reply #313

burnin

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Thought they were going on with the Brigade and the whole cloud thing... Octane is to slow for a game engine (unless baked).
Just watched MAX conference (Adobe). One year to full in cloud app servitude, yikes. Trend continues... not much development on the tools themselves.

2016-11-03, 04:38:21
Reply #314

philippelamoureux

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The point of octane in unity (or unreal) is to have a better renderer within an outstanding all-in-one creation software. Octane will blow unity and unreal renderers out of the water. Ue4 is a thousand time more intuitive and refined than 3ds max when it comes to viewport performance, material editor, content browser, etc.

This is not a real-time G.I solution. It's just a better renderer to bake lightmaps for games, cinematics, vr etc. but it comes with the benefits of progressive renderers, like almost instant fast previews. Right now, in ue4/unity you cannot have a decent preview of what your baked scene will look like with production settings. It will be a game changer within the real-time software world.

2016-11-08, 10:19:42
Reply #315

melviso

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Found this:

Seems realtime raytracing development is picking up fast. Won't be surprised if by next year, this becomes a full fledged feature.
« Last Edit: 2016-11-08, 10:26:24 by melviso »

2017-02-09, 16:52:01
Reply #316

melviso

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Trying out ue4. Really cool especially with detailing. Still WIP:

2017-04-07, 00:04:38
Reply #317

rambambulli

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Quote
This is not a real-time G.I solution. It's just a better renderer to bake lightmaps for games, cinematics, vr etc. but it comes with the benefits of progressive renderers, like almost instant fast previews. Right now, in ue4/unity you cannot have a decent preview of what your baked scene will look like with production settings. It will be a game changer within the real-time software world.

Can't wait for this!!
I was triggered by the Otoy-Unity keynote and dreaming of Corona being the lightmapper of unreal  :)

Because I don't think it will happen soon...
I thought I'll try to bake lightmaps from Corona. Just for fun and for training. I had no unreal, unwrap, bake experience what so ever.
I used the good old Corona room and imported it to Unreal. There are some objects that look weird because I made reflection tests that don't work out the way I want them to, yet.

It works great with my Vive (easy 120+ fps on gtx1070).

I learned a lot from this little project and I am also gonna test it on WebGl/Three.js to see how it runs on a web browser.








2017-05-09, 02:21:50
Reply #318

melviso

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Latest work with UE4:




« Last Edit: 2017-06-16, 07:53:08 by melviso »

2017-05-18, 03:36:44
Reply #319

philippelamoureux

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very good work man!


2017-05-18, 11:30:13
Reply #321

RolandB

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Seems very easy ?? Great work with a very simple scene, and easy to imagine it could be a commercial work.
Congrats man !
Roland
Portfolio on Béhance
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2017-05-20, 01:14:37
Reply #322

melviso

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Thanks RolandB
Figured I should make a small scene to test the engine. Learnt a lot especially on the animation aspect of things like the butterflies and the vegetation wind effect. What I really like is how helpful the Unreal engine 4 community is. Will definitely make something quite substantial with it. Material wise, ue4 is dope.

2017-06-15, 19:12:33
Reply #323

cecofuli

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2017-06-19, 16:46:23
Reply #324

philippelamoureux

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And vray is coming to ue4. Interesting stuff coming. https://80.lv/articles/vray-for-unreal-engine-4/
But as you can see on the slides, lightmap baking is a potential feature. This is like the most interesting feature. It needs to be there!

2017-06-19, 17:41:07
Reply #325

rambambulli

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Vray has plans. Unreal thinks their light baking is really great (????). So it will take a while :(

Check this out:
https://forum.unity3d.com/threads/additional-otoy-octane-details.463964/page-2

IMHO it is Monday :)

2017-06-19, 20:42:53
Reply #326

philippelamoureux

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Unreal lightmass is awesome but it's meant for games, not ultra realistic renderings.

Octane for unity/ue4 looks so nice and they have progressive lightmap baking. This is so important. Offline-quality baked lighting/shadows usable in a real-time scene/game! The next logical step is fully real-time raytracing but it's not for now.

2017-06-19, 22:21:08
Reply #327

rambambulli

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Quote
Unreal lightmass is awesome but it's meant for games, not ultra realistic renderings.[/qoute]

You are right. I meant for archviz purpose. Although selectieve backing would be great for everyone :)


2017-06-20, 00:28:48
Reply #328

melviso

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Yep..Unreal's lightmass is good for certain scenes and completely falls apart for other scenes. It's not the best under certain circumstances. I have seen some good stuff with vxgi but the engine needs improvements for things like reflections, proper GI and other important stuff. To get the best results, tweaking to the best of thy ability is paramount. (till love the engine though)


2017-07-08, 03:40:34
Reply #329

melviso

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Amazon Lumberyard devs have made speed tree free for their users:
https://80.lv/articles/get-free-speedtree-8-with-lumberyard/

Seems like a good move to get more people to try the engine out. UE4 is still dope though. I wonder if Amazon Lumberyard have improved their realtime GI?

2017-07-20, 12:48:36
Reply #330

Marian

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Very nice video

2017-07-21, 11:52:11
Reply #331

philippelamoureux

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Amazon Lumberyard devs have made speed tree free for their users:
https://80.lv/articles/get-free-speedtree-8-with-lumberyard/

Seems like a good move to get more people to try the engine out. UE4 is still dope though. I wonder if Amazon Lumberyard have improved their realtime GI?

I'm not sure it's even worth it to make your own trees when you can use megascans stuff which looks amazingly real. Maybe when you need a verrrrry specific tree essence, but then it's a lot of hard work.

Look at this... Made entirely from pre-made megascans assets. how can the average joe compete with speedtree lol.

2017-07-21, 11:58:13
Reply #332

Juraj

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Megascan doesn't give you Trees though ;- ) I would have known having account and being part of all the secret betas currently.

You still NEED SpeedTree so you can use the nice Megascan atlases on something. What they currently have scanned in 3D are just barks, trunks, or partial dead trees, but it's impossible to scan full trees and they're not creating them.
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2017-07-22, 05:20:32
Reply #333

philippelamoureux

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Ah yeah my bad... I was sure megascans had complete 3d trees. I only subscribed during 1-2 months and didn't use many assets. Was lacking in biomes!!!

Are you still experimenting with ue4 once in a while Juraj. I was on otoy forum earlier and the unity+octane beta is out apparently. Hopefully it will be great!
« Last Edit: 2017-07-22, 05:52:46 by philippelamoureux »

2017-09-25, 04:02:46
Reply #334

melviso

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Latest UE4 4.18 preview version now has multi bounce from skylight and uses volumetric lightmaps. This is a game changer, Lightmass just got better.
https://forums.unrealengine.com/unreal-engine/announcements-and-releases/1357546-unreal-engine-4-18-preview
« Last Edit: 2017-09-25, 04:13:37 by melviso »

2017-10-21, 22:57:59
Reply #335

rambambulli

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https://forums.unrealengine.com/enterprise-beta/project-nile-beta-discussions/3dsmax-to-ue4-plugins/1371470-lightmapping-cont-region-bake-gizmo

from the datasmith forum.

I think they finally realize the light baking in unreal sucks. It but it is on the agenda.
 

2017-10-31, 09:06:02
Reply #336

rambambulli

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Has anyone seen this? Looks promising

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_rAHM70jfzo

Seems a faster method as Lytro's Volume tracers and better reflections as Nozon's Presenz I think.

2017-10-31, 10:55:36
Reply #337

melviso

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Has anyone seen this? Looks promising

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_rAHM70jfzo

Seems a faster method as Lytro's Volume tracers and better reflections as Nozon's Presenz I think.

This is quite interesting. Looking forward to more info and demonstration with this.

2017-11-05, 22:30:50
Reply #338

melviso

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My latest experimentation with Unreal Engine 4.
Candle flame in UE4:

Handpainted textures except for the candle light texture. Still WIP. The latest ue4 version has improved greatly. :- )
« Last Edit: 2017-11-05, 22:34:42 by melviso »

2017-11-13, 21:16:43
Reply #339

Monkeybrother

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I have been doing games and experiments for fun in Unity for 10 years now, but now that I accidentally became an archvizer I'm slowly realizing that I bet on the wrong horse. Especially with Datasmith around the corner. Can you recommend some good beginner tutorials for Unreal? Maybe even tutorials for people coming from Unity?

2017-11-14, 01:08:28
Reply #340

melviso

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I have been doing games and experiments for fun in Unity for 10 years now, but now that I accidentally became an archvizer I'm slowly realizing that I bet on the wrong horse. Especially with Datasmith around the corner. Can you recommend some good beginner tutorials for Unreal? Maybe even tutorials for people coming from Unity?

You can check out the Unreal engine official youtube page:
https://www.youtube.com/user/UnrealDevelopmentKit/featured

There are beginner tutorials there. Also try hanging out on the ue4 forums. There are a lot of cool people who are willing to help in case you have questions :-)

2017-12-11, 20:39:47
Reply #341

ylucic

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Is anybody else testing Datasmith ? ... I've been in the beta for like a week now. Exporting mesh is really good and most basic materials are fine.
There are some Corona users posting in the UE beta program forum. It would be nice to share stuff here too...
Industrial Designer
SCL

2017-12-11, 20:42:24
Reply #342

Nejc Kilar

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Is anybody else testing Datasmith ? ... I've been in the beta for like a week now. Exporting mesh is really good and most basic materials are fine.
There are some Corona users posting in the UE beta program forum. It would be nice to share stuff here too...

Do tell more if you can please :) I applied but never got in. I was always torn whether its going to be gimmicky aka its going to take a long time to move over assets and convert them or its really going to help the whole DCC <-> UE workflow.
Nejc Kilar | chaos-corona.com
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2017-12-11, 22:31:12
Reply #343

ylucic

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Will do as soon I finish some other stuff at work. I'm really new to UE so I did some testing on my spare time with the limited knowledge I have on light and shading in UE.

I did some really quick export from max2017 /corona 1.7 to UE...literally just click export and then import to ue..no more than 3 minutes each. I did the test with some downloaded scenes first.

The last 3 images are the same scene, with simple materials..just diffuse, some of them with bump and falloff for reflections...but all models collapsed...I think it helps a lot with the uvw unwraping export process....and then just click export and import ...

There is no support for color correction yet, bump maps (greyscale) and other stuff, but the export process is really good on geometry...

I think it's a really good tool for us that don't know a lot of UE and had to deal with a lot of optimizing, unwrapping, etc, etc. before getting into the fun part in UE.

In one of the UE groups on facebook it has been said that this week there is going to be a big round of beta invites. So maybe more people here can test it and share tips and good practices here (and in the beta forum) ..

Industrial Designer
SCL

2017-12-20, 06:28:36
Reply #344

melviso

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Latest Ue4 work: Apartment CW



2018-01-17, 10:18:26
Reply #345

maru

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Have you seen the new "Book of the dead" teaser made in Unity?
https://blog.megascans.se/2018/01/16/megascans-inspires-unitys-book-of-the-dead/


Jeez, it makes me want to play any game with graphics like this, preferably on a VR headset!
Marcin Miodek | chaos-corona.com
3D Support Team Lead - Corona | contact us

2018-02-10, 07:17:04
Reply #346

lacilaci

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Did you guys see what kind of realtime viewport is blender getting in 2.8 version?

Due to lack of GI baking it's not on unreal's level but having the same disney princibled shader used in realtime viewport as in rendering is pretty awesome.


2018-02-10, 17:38:44
Reply #347

burnin

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^yup... also, unreal is stepping up the game

2018-02-10, 19:39:18
Reply #348

Eddoron

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^yup... also, unreal is stepping up the game

A bit more than a gaming computer: Dual 1080TI in SLI, Intel Core i7 5960X, Asus X99-E WS, Corsair 64GB DDR4 2400MHz

But I can imagine it being a viable solution for certain illustration purposes. With new third-party integrations(Nextlimit, Otoy etc.), some things are worth reconsidering. Still cheaper than a professional rendering machine and software.

Also:

Still in its infancy but looks promising

Quote
...With other engines, path tracing takes hours to render accurate environments or objects. In fact, in a well-documented case, it took nearly 22 hours to render a few seconds of ray-traced crystal balls moving around a table. Brigade can take motion-captured characters in an environment with path traced lighting and real-time shadow casting and render it in real-time at 30-60 fps.

With Brigade, artists and game developers can design without rendering restrictions. There is no need for hacks, pre-bake maps or cheats.

octane for unity



Unity Demo Assets
« Last Edit: 2018-02-11, 01:39:22 by Eddoron »

2018-02-11, 07:03:27
Reply #349

melviso

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Did you guys see what kind of realtime viewport is blender getting in 2.8 version?

Due to lack of GI baking it's not on unreal's level but having the same disney princibled shader used in realtime viewport as in rendering is pretty awesome.


Yep, its getting more and more impressive. I am thinking of giving eevee a go. I wonder what they have planned lighting wise. In the first video, there are certain workflows he could have tried lightingwise to get more shadows and lights in certain areas. I am not sure if eevee supports soft shadows yet.

2018-02-11, 08:31:11
Reply #350

Eddoron

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Did you guys see what kind of realtime viewport is blender getting in 2.8 version?

Due to lack of GI baking it's not on unreal's level but having the same disney princibled shader used in realtime viewport as in rendering is pretty awesome.


Yep, its getting more and more impressive. I am thinking of giving eevee a go. I wonder what they have planned lighting wise. In the first video, there are certain workflows he could have tried lightingwise to get more shadows and lights in certain areas. I am not sure if eevee supports soft shadows yet.

Eevee is similar to game engines and they mostly use shadow maps. Stencil shadows in the past, a bit rare nowadays.
But to answer your question - yes, the proper blurring value has to be set:

Edit: Baking the GI or AO can be done by hand.
« Last Edit: 2018-02-11, 08:35:39 by Eddoron »

2018-02-12, 14:51:43
Reply #351

melviso

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That's really informative. Thanks for the post, Eddoron.
« Last Edit: 2018-02-13, 16:43:27 by melviso »

2018-02-15, 08:50:00
Reply #352

Eddoron

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There's something else I always forget, even though it's one of my favorite blogs(and now a Youtube channel).


www.simonschreibt.de

It's a blog (in English) about really cool tricks they use in the games industry.
I can't recommend this enough.

He shows effects that look very cool or CPU/gpu/memory intensive but in fact are easy to do.
 A lot of those can also be used in offline rendering.

have a look:




There's certainly something in there if you want to try archviz using Unreal(or any other real-time engine) and have it run at a decent performance.

2018-02-15, 09:20:49
Reply #353

Jpjapers

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Tested out datasmith yesterday. Imported a 100k square foot building with materials and a few thousand pieces of furniture in less than 2 minutes. Export took about 30 seconds - 1 min.
Im guessing they figured out they could do alot of the grunt work of exporting on the frontend within max such as assigning materials to models etc.
Still a way to go with the plugin but its definitely going to be fantastic when its out of beta!


2018-02-15, 09:26:55
Reply #354

Nejc Kilar

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Tested out datasmith yesterday. Imported a 100k square foot building with materials and a few thousand pieces of furniture in less than 2 minutes. Export took about 30 seconds - 1 min.
Im guessing they figured out they could do alot of the grunt work of exporting on the frontend within max such as assigning materials to models etc.
Still a way to go with the plugin but its definitely going to be fantastic when its out of beta!

I am in the beta too but so far I haven't had the time to test it out.

If you don't mind me asking, how is the material conversion? Does it create any sort of logical nodes in UE or is it better to start from scratch in case you'd want to create something more advanced?
Nejc Kilar | chaos-corona.com
Educational Content Creator | contact us

2018-02-15, 11:08:31
Reply #355

Jpjapers

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Tested out datasmith yesterday. Imported a 100k square foot building with materials and a few thousand pieces of furniture in less than 2 minutes. Export took about 30 seconds - 1 min.
Im guessing they figured out they could do alot of the grunt work of exporting on the frontend within max such as assigning materials to models etc.
Still a way to go with the plugin but its definitely going to be fantastic when its out of beta!

I am in the beta too but so far I haven't had the time to test it out.

If you don't mind me asking, how is the material conversion? Does it create any sort of logical nodes in UE or is it better to start from scratch in case you'd want to create something more advanced?

We havent had any major issues although the node layout is a little different to what im used to. Im looking into exploring a way of making presets that i can apply on import but thats way off yet.

2018-02-16, 18:54:30
Reply #356

Nejc Kilar

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Ah, cool. I'll look into  it, thanks!

My biggest issue with converters is that sometimes they create a giant mess. Now if you do smaller, less detailed stuff thats great but if you like to have complete control over materials I'd much prefer for the node editor to make at least some sense and  resemblance of a typical shader. Obviously if it converts it well it can save you time.

Looking forward to testing it out! Please do report back here with your impressions, I'd appreciate it.
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2018-02-17, 14:30:19
Reply #357

burnin

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2018-03-21, 23:44:47
Reply #358

philippelamoureux

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ray tracing in unreal engine 4.

« Last Edit: 2018-03-21, 23:54:32 by philippelamoureux »

2018-03-22, 01:19:42
Reply #359

melviso

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Great post  philippelamoureux :- )

This is crazy. I wasn't expecting demos would be already out. Looks great. Where does this leave offline renderers? The problem with game engines have always been reflections. I am gathering this is for GPUs that will be released in the future. Maybe 2019 next year?
EDIT: Seems the first video required ''4x Tesla V100 connected via NVLink to run at 1080p 24fps'' Still very impressive though.

2018-03-23, 03:27:11
Reply #360

philippelamoureux

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Volta-based gpus (not released yet) are going to have hardware on it specifically for Ray tracing. We may have to wait a little bit!

2018-03-23, 09:04:48
Reply #361

Nejc Kilar

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Volta-based gpus (not released yet) are going to have hardware on it specifically for Ray tracing. We may have to wait a little bit!

Are we talking about the Tensor cores or something specific?

Afaik the latest rumor point to Volta being a prosumer product while Ampere / Turing should be the gaming equivalent.
Nejc Kilar | chaos-corona.com
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2018-03-24, 01:29:23
Reply #362

philippelamoureux

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I have absolutely no idea unfortunately.

2018-03-27, 22:07:31
Reply #363

philippelamoureux

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Received this in my mailbox. Some people may be interested. and according to vlado in the official forums, they're looking into adding lightmap baking.

Vray for Unreal. https://newsletters.chaosgroup.com/newsletters/preview/1392
« Last Edit: 2018-03-27, 22:18:45 by philippelamoureux »

2018-04-05, 15:49:00
Reply #364

Eddoron

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This is Octane for Unity but quite insane:


Full path tracing, not limited to reflections, multiple AIs for denoising, etc.

2018-04-23, 14:23:08
Reply #365

melviso

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All made with UE4. No long render times or render farms. Really nice work.


2018-04-23, 22:18:03
Reply #366

rambambulli

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Anybody saw this?

https://forums.unrealengine.com/development-discussion/rendering/1460002-luoshuang-s-gpulightmass

finally, someone is tackling the horrible lightbaker in Unreal. I gave it a try. I liked it very much. Nothing near Corona quality of course :D


2018-04-25, 19:03:53
Reply #367

melviso

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Thanks for posting the thread, rambambull. i just tried the GPU lightmass baker. It's really very fast.

This was posted by rafareis123(ue4arch) on the Luoshuang's GPULightmass thread using the GPU baker:

Really awesome work and rendered faster too.
« Last Edit: 2018-04-25, 19:40:25 by melviso »

2018-04-28, 12:11:28
Reply #368

Monkeybrother

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A question for the developers maybe: will VRay be able to read Corona materials, and if so, will we be able to export a .vrscene with Corona materials and import them correctly in the Unreal VRay plugin? That would be really nice when VRay Unreal can bake lightmaps inside Unreal.

2018-04-29, 01:12:57
Reply #369

Noah45

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stills no biggie, but animations, this is huuge
Retail Illustrator  (for ever' 80's )
3DMax 2020/Corona Version: 6DB

2018-04-30, 11:25:48
Reply #370

Juraj

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Wow that baked GI is looking CRISP in that interior !!

So it can finally look like this ? Rafael is boss.
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2018-04-30, 22:27:15
Reply #371

melviso

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Yep. Rafael's bake looks like an offline render :- )
 The GPU baker is very fast. I have tried it myself. Hopefully it's even improved upon after this release. The quality has definitely gone up.

2018-05-01, 09:35:31
Reply #372

rambambulli

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Quote
The GPU baker is very fast. I have tried it myself. Hopefully, it's even improved upon after this release. The quality has definitely gone up.

Definitely. So maybe we can help Unreal a little if we all reply to the "Requested item" on the Unreal Studio forum page. And tell them if they really want to make something out of Unreal Studio/Datasmith they should prioritize light baking.

link to the forum page: https://forums.unrealengine.com/development-discussion/architectural-and-design-visualization/1447815-unreal-studio-feature-requests

2018-05-04, 06:00:20
Reply #373

melviso

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Anyone trying VXGI 2.0? I am wondering if they have solved the light leaks issues?

EDIT: @rambambulli  Currently I gather they have recruited some very talented renderer devs to work on a better and improved lighting baker for ue4 including the guy who made the gpu lightbaker :- )
 Hopefully we will hear something in the coming months.
« Last Edit: 2018-07-27, 03:15:02 by melviso »

2018-05-04, 21:57:40
Reply #374

Eddoron

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Here's something interesting: V-Ray for Unreal (Beta)


Quote
The fastest, simplest way for you to:
1. Bring V-Ray scenes into real-time
2. Render ray traced images directly from Unreal

Now in open beta, we’re excited to introduce V-Ray for Unreal. Now you can bring V-Ray scenes from 3ds Max, Maya and SketchUp directly into the Unreal Editor.

And for the first time, you can render ray traced, photorealistic images with V-Ray directly from Unreal.
material]





2018-06-21, 10:18:39
Reply #375

Eddoron

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Does anyone have a good source for  UE4 node presets, things like fresnel etc etc. thaz have to be built instead of having one node?

2018-06-25, 12:17:55
Reply #376

melviso

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Currently experimenting with dynamic handpainted textures. Also possible with photo textures as well. Material setup can get really complex though for more details and complex assets. Very useful for clients during discussion and planning as changes can be made on the fly and easier for getting clients to see and make variations of choices on color, mood and design schemes in real time.
EDIT: See demo in video below :- )



« Last Edit: 2018-07-27, 04:13:21 by melviso »

2018-07-15, 04:04:38
Reply #377

melviso

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My latest work in ue4 using dynamic textures:
« Last Edit: 2018-07-27, 02:44:11 by melviso »

2018-07-17, 02:15:49
Reply #378

melviso

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We might be getting really good interior shading with dynamic sun and sky with Localised  IBL implementation using reflection capture probes in ue4:

https://forums.unrealengine.com/development-discussion/rendering/1493669-localized-ibl-implementation

Hopefully Epic adds this to the engine. This bakes literally in seconds :- ) This will look even great with dfao.

2018-07-21, 23:40:39
Reply #379

melviso

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2018-08-27, 17:30:51
Reply #380

sebastian___

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I still haven't seen really good vegetation shader examples in UE4, like cryengine had in 2007. I mean dual sided translucency/reflection and so on.
And also based on the video above, seems DOF still makes sharp edges on objects in blur. But I think I remember reading about UE4 to have now new posibilities for objects in DOF with soft edges ? Anything new about that ?
But with the new RTX card we should see soon some sweet new posibilities, no ?

My latest work in ue4 using dynamic textures:

2018-08-28, 10:55:28
Reply #381

Juraj

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It's not technical limitation, Unreal does have good pseudo-SS on leaves. It's more the poor art-direction you often seen and not good shaders.

The lighting in the above example is like "let's drop default Sun&Sky at 45 degree angle". So much effort to build high-quality scene and very poor art direction.

I would suggest some of those dense forests people on Polycount keep rendering in Unreal :- ). Those are often very impressive.
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2018-08-28, 18:54:15
Reply #382

melviso

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I still haven't seen really good vegetation shader examples in UE4, like cryengine had in 2007. I mean dual sided translucency/reflection and so on.
And also based on the video above, seems DOF still makes sharp edges on objects in blur. But I think I remember reading about UE4 to have now new posibilities for objects in DOF with soft edges ? Anything new about that ?
But with the new RTX card we should see soon some sweet new posibilities, no ?


ue4.20 version has improved DOF now so its definitely better.

As for reflection, game engines have not been able to perfect this (Cryengine was quite ahead of its time). Combining reflection captures and ssr is what is being used currently. Ue4 has the two sided foilage shader:

Translucency in UE4 is sort of limited so most times subsurface or masked/dither opacity is used due to viewport sorting issues. RTX cards will definitely open up possibilities with this.

The awesome thing about game engines is that there are tricks, custom shaders, engine modifications and workarounds that can be employed to create something close to what the goal is.That is why research and repeated practice is important.
« Last Edit: 2018-08-29, 13:10:35 by melviso »

2018-09-01, 02:37:27
Reply #383

melviso

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@sebastian___
Ue4 still has issues with foliage. U can check out the link. Seems CryEngine has better solutions. Explains some of the reasons. Like I said earlier, there are tricks and workarounds but it would be ideal if these are possible upfront by the devs.
https://forums.unrealengine.com/development-discussion/rendering/1455573-foliage-shading-softness



2018-09-03, 15:50:53
Reply #384

sebastian___

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I would suggest some of those dense forests people on Polycount keep rendering in Unreal :- ). Those are often very impressive.

If you have some links with nice forests or good leafs rendering, please post.

ue4.20 version has improved DOF now so its definitely better.

I mean in this screenshot crop, hope it's visible, you can see the typical sharp edge look of 2d screenspace DOF:
(it's better visible in the video at 0:23 - in video and motion looks almost like some defects or noise/artefacts)



2018-09-03, 15:59:11
Reply #385

Juraj

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Truth the told, DOF in real-time is almost always terrible. And since it's used almost all the time in rendered out animation, I think the artist might rather render out z-depth buffer and make the DOF in compositor. Those few additional seconds will not kill anyone :- ).

But Unreal4 is on 3rd iteration of DOF tech and it still looks terrible as first time..
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2018-09-03, 16:29:30
Reply #386

sebastian___

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I think I remember I read some new paper with some new development to improve this and make the edges soft, but I don;t remember if it was for UE4 or cryengine and was it for DOF or motion blur.

But real-time has still a long way to go. Even the new nvidia RTX area shadows development when scrutinized it seems lacking. I'm talking about the demo with tomb raider - the part in the market at night and how the people shadows are blurred with raytracing. But the shadows are not sharp enough and lack contact and seem to blur too much when extending further.

The architectural renders posted here with UE4 are fine, but that's because the lighting is baked, but when it comes to real-time we still need to get proper :
- GI or at least good AO - not screenspace and not blurred, sharp enough for contact as well
- reflections/refractions which might be good enough with the new RTX
- great area shadows with good contact (which is kind of the same technology as world-space AO)
- HDR raytraced 3d motion blur and DOF, with proper blurry margins

We already have the rest, as in: polygon count, great textures resolution, good displacement and bump mapping, lens flare and glare and so on.

2018-09-03, 16:41:07
Reply #387

Juraj

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Well, real-time is moving lot faster than offline. I almost like never read any exciting progress on the latter. It does the job but hardly excites. Maybe the denoising.
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2018-09-03, 19:05:33
Reply #388

melviso

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I think the RTX cards support some form of GI.

U can check out some info about the new depth of field here:
https://forums.unrealengine.com/development-discussion/rendering/1482233-ue-4-20-new-depth-of-field-test

 I noticed it in the animation short. There is a possibility he might have used the 4.19 version.


I saw the Tombraider demo too. I agree with points u raised. The shadows did look blurry. Have u seen the Battlefield demo showing real time reflections? VR is going to look way better in the coming years. Does RTX cards support refraction for transparent glass? I think there was a demo of refraction during the announcement event.

I feel like the demos shown are a testament to the tech still being in the early stages. In two or three years, we may be looking at a lot of near photorealistic works in real time rivalling offline rendered content. There are so much possibilities now that we have realtime reflections/raytracing. It just needs to be improved, polished and perfected definitely with more research and findings There are a lot of studios that are already experimenting with ue4 for animated shorts, cinematics and adverts and with this, offline rendered preference might no longer become the norm.
« Last Edit: 2018-09-03, 19:10:16 by melviso »

2018-09-03, 19:55:28
Reply #389

sebastian___

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For VR I could also add to the list foveated rendering and variable resolution and maybe even variable frame rates? and so on. I mean for good VR - huge resolutions like 8k are very important and what's the point to render the parts of the image which we are not paying attention.

U can check out some info about the new depth of field here:
https://forums.unrealengine.com/development-discussion/rendering/1482233-ue-4-20-new-depth-of-field-test

I meant close objects in blur with blurry edges. I never saw this from a game engine, except from the new Lumion.
Like in these photos, not very clear because they are small:






Or my old demos, you can better see here the close objects also have blurry edges:

  (insect wings)





2018-09-04, 02:57:41
Reply #390

melviso

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Opened the scene in 4.20 version:
 I am using the circle dof.

There is some improvement compared to 4.19. UE4 will be giving a livestream on cinematic depth of field on twitch:
https://forums.unrealengine.com/unreal-engine/events/1520940-unreal-engine-livestream-getting-to-know-cinematic-depth-of-field-sept-6th-live-from-epic-hq
Most definitely they will continue to improve it along with other features.
« Last Edit: 2019-04-13, 06:04:00 by melviso »

2018-09-04, 17:40:22
Reply #391

sebastian___

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This is way better. Even though it still looks like the edges should be a little more blurry and transparent, still it's clearly an improvement.
Can you get pictures where a blade of grass is so blurry and so close to the camera that it's completely transparent/see-through ?

2018-09-05, 07:34:09
Reply #392

melviso

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Ue4 has three DOF methods: Gussian, bokeh and circle dof. They work and appear different in ue4. The circle and bokeh dof mimicks real life camera DOF sort of while guassian is more post process bluring. I doubt it is possible to get it completely transperent or see through like I mentioned earlier, ue4 has sorting issues with transperency, most real time viewport have this issue.

2018-09-05, 14:37:35
Reply #393

sebastian___

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That's a great test and it's much improved even if UE can't get that completely transparent look yet of objects very close to the camera.

2018-09-06, 02:27:18
Reply #394

melviso

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Thanks. Further testing. It's definitely possible using a workaround/trick with material adjustments with dof.
« Last Edit: 2018-09-06, 19:11:48 by melviso »

2018-09-08, 15:49:33
Reply #395

sebastian___

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It's almost there, and the leafs are almost completely transparent, but I feel like the margins should be more blurry. Perhaps with further tweaking it's possible to get more out of it.

I took a quick photo for comparison. It's not pretty, but in front of the camera (lens 50mm, F4.0) there's a dry brown and a green branch and some leafs, and they are completely blurry and see-through.

2018-09-09, 04:42:25
Reply #396

melviso

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I tweaked it further but I don't think dof for game engines are like real world cameras yet. There are definitely some limitations but it can somewhat be close:- )
 I can't wait for the new lighting system they are working on. Hopefully we can get some info this year.

Also, UE4 devs posted their livestream about cinematic depth of field on twitch:
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/306700900

Also wanted to add this It's by UE4arch:
VR walkthrough:
Imagine better dynamic lighting, shadows, GI and interation in VR in the next 5 years. RTX cards definitely is a step in the right direction. Only with time will this be the future.

« Last Edit: 2018-09-09, 04:46:21 by melviso »


2019-03-15, 00:40:22
Reply #398

melviso

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Seems more progress is being made with ue4 and vxgi 2.0.1 tech


Ue4 raytracying tech with rtx cards. Still in early development:



2019-03-22, 06:50:25
Reply #399

melviso

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Latest in game engine demos at gdc 2019:


Quixel made a demo using ue4:

Seems Cryengine has a tech implemented for realtime raytrced reflections without RTX cards:
So it works with normal gpu. No need for RTX cards with their engine. My only gripe with Cryengine is it isn't very easy to learn. Ue4 is more artist friendly and Cryengine doesn't have a lot of available information out there when u need it.

Right now, a lot of animation film houses are looking into game engines as alternatives to making animated films, series and shorts. I am really impressed with the graphical advancements we are seeing.

2019-04-02, 22:16:56
Reply #400

rambambulli

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Cry Engine ray tracing look great. But can't beat the Datasmith workflow imho.

Can't wait to get started with this:
[/youtube]

I don't think I going to sleep tonight :D

2019-04-02, 22:47:56
Reply #401

sebastian___

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My only gripe with Cryengine is it isn't very easy to learn.

What do you mean ? I've heard this before, but the Cryengine editor, at least the old one, was modeled after 3ds max. So in theory and at least for 3ds max users, it should be easier than Unreal.
Unless you meant some other aspects from the engine, or the programing part.

2019-04-02, 22:51:55
Reply #402

sebastian___

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Wow, the path tracer included seems greet. Can you export videos with it ?  Because they said it's just for reference and compare.

Cry Engine ray tracing look great. But can't beat the Datasmith workflow imho.

Can't wait to get started with this:
[/youtube]

I don't think I going to sleep tonight :D

2019-04-03, 00:49:45
Reply #403

melviso

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My only gripe with Cryengine is it isn't very easy to learn.

What do you mean ? I've heard this before, but the Cryengine editor, at least the old one, was modeled after 3ds max. So in theory and at least for 3ds max users, it should be easier than Unreal.
Unless you meant some other aspects from the engine, or the programing part.

I have heard a lot of ppl who have used the engine in past say this especially when they run into technical issues, have questions, looking up tutorials, e.t.c. I have also tried out amazon lumberyard engine (older version of Cryengine)when it was first released and I found it problematic finding learning resources for it compared to Unreal as I found the cryengine tutorials available since they are similar were very limited. Exporting assets was old school compared to unreal not to mention the material editor.. Unreal community has been very instrumental in ue4 success as there are ppl who are available to help solve issues or questions u might have.
I admit Cryengine has made a lot of improvements over the years but UE4 is preferred because how easy it is to learn imho.

2019-06-06, 04:05:40
Reply #404

melviso

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The RTX cards have been out for some time now, out of curiousity, has anyone here tried out the card with ue4 and realtime raytracing? How well does it hold up and your experiences using it? I am wondering how production ready it is for animations especially archviz.

2019-06-12, 03:04:23
Reply #405

melviso

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2019-08-02, 04:54:02
Reply #406

melviso

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2019-08-16, 15:08:03
Reply #407

bcgi

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The RTX cards have been out for some time now, out of curiousity, has anyone here tried out the card with ue4 and realtime raytracing? How well does it hold up and your experiences using it? I am wondering how production ready it is for animations especially archviz.

I would love to hear some thoughts about that as well. If someone could share some experiences about live archviz projects that would be great.
I am really wondering if one 2080Ti is enough for a good quality (let's say in 4k), polygon heavy, fully ray traced archviz project or you should go for an SLI/nVlink setup?
« Last Edit: 2019-08-16, 15:11:25 by bcgi »

2019-08-26, 21:39:29
Reply #408

melviso

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I wish I can test real time raytracing in ue4 but the cards are too damn expensive. A lot of the studios that make pre rendered content are experimenting with it and some have adopted it for a good number of their projects.

2019-10-06, 08:03:52
Reply #409

melviso

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2019-10-06, 14:57:23
Reply #410

Fluss

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Wow this is freaking insane!

2019-10-20, 16:12:52
Reply #411

melviso

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It is.

According to Koola, for the ue4 storm test scene-
Quote:
''- no optimization at all
 - no pre-baked animation
 - 20 trees (70000 poly each, no lod)
 - 100 bushes (6000 poly each, no lod)
 - 35-60fps 1080p on a gtx970 (with epic/high quality)''

2019-11-12, 13:15:37
Reply #412

melviso

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Megascan library is now free for unreal engine users. Also Quixel Mixer and bridge would be free:


With Mixer, I think substance painter has a competitor. Also Megascans subscription prices lowered for everyone

2019-11-12, 15:36:38
Reply #413

romullus

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Mmm... maybe it's time to start learning Unreal.
I'm not Corona Team member. Everything i say, is my personal opinion only.
My Models | My Videos | My Pictures

2019-11-13, 11:33:30
Reply #414

Rhodesy

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LOL, dont believe the hype! Their prices have actually gone up. I wouldnt call $199 per month cheap for megascans for DCC apps for anyone who isnt a one man band. Great for unreal bad for arch viz.

2019-11-13, 12:48:29
Reply #415

burnin

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not really, use it to create visuals with UE, Studio, Twinmotion (?) and it's free

"If you are using Unreal Engine for architecture, automotive, film, television, broadcast, live events, training and simulation, or other non-games projects, there are no royalties to be paid, you can create, build, and distribute your projects for free.

otherwise, subscription and "... there is a 5% royalty on gross product revenue after the first $3,000 per game per calendar quarter."
Games, are the real thing for revenue. ;)
« Last Edit: 2019-11-13, 12:54:42 by burnin »

2019-12-09, 15:50:36
Reply #416

JoeVallard

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Decided to play with Ue4 a little bit this morning as I saw that the new preview build added some better optimizations for raytracing. This is a scene I'm slowly working on and the light settings are barely above the defaults. This is full raytracing and no light baking was done. Just a straight import from 3ds Max.

Check out the attached screenshot for a higher quality Lighting sample test.

2019-12-09, 18:09:37
Reply #417

Philip kelly

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Looks great.
Are you running a high end card .
I am in between rendering in corona for an interior of a house or learning Unreal, and outputting very quickly, but the run up to the rendering will be amssive time .
Dell Precision T7910

2019-12-11, 14:19:21
Reply #418

JoeVallard

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Looks great.
Are you running a high end card .
I am in between rendering in corona for an interior of a house or learning Unreal, and outputting very quickly, but the run up to the rendering will be amssive time .

Am I running a 2080ti. Epic has made some impressive progress on their raytracing. When I first got my 2080ti a few months back enabling GI raytracing tanked the card to a few fps on default settings. But now with the newest build I can crank up the sun, skylight and GI settings and still have around 10fps with massively better quality compared to previously.

2019-12-18, 04:32:55
Reply #419

JoeVallard

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Found out that you can enable Screen Space GI with a command code and gave it a try. Using the same HDRI light that I used in Corona to light the scene. Your not able to add another light bounce on the Screen space GI that I am aware of so the corners are really dark from the lack of another another light bounce.

Corona


Ue4



Corona


Ue4


2019-12-26, 14:48:58
Reply #420

melviso

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Did u combine SSGI with light baking? SSGI is screen space based so u need light baking to calculate light bounce from other objects that are not on screen.
« Last Edit: 2019-12-26, 20:48:50 by melviso »

2020-01-26, 23:31:32
Reply #421

melviso

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2020-08-13, 06:15:06
Reply #422

melviso

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Cinematic film done by the talented Andrew Svanberg Hamilton using UE4;

2020-08-13, 10:13:50
Reply #423

romullus

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This looks crazy good. Makes you wonder, why i'm still using offline renderer...
I'm not Corona Team member. Everything i say, is my personal opinion only.
My Models | My Videos | My Pictures

2020-08-13, 10:28:49
Reply #424

jms.lwly

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2020-08-13, 17:23:02
Reply #425

maru

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Crazy good, I would love to play a game like this. In a VR headset. And you don't even need a gun. You can just walk around and watch birds. :)

I like it how they "turned bugs into features" - e.g. shadows are flickering? No problem! Shadows flicker in real life too! DOF flickers? No problem! It's in a grass field, so you won't notice anyway! :)
Marcin Miodek | chaos-corona.com
3D Support Team Lead - Corona | contact us

2020-10-04, 20:30:05
Reply #426

lupaz

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Hi everyone.
I'm looking to see what's out there now a days in terms of interactive walkthrough with unreal.
Like, the best out there, to see how far it got in the last 5 or 6 years.

So no cinematics, just interactive.
Does anyone have a link to anything like that by any chance?


Thanks.