Author Topic: Unreal Engine 4 for ArchViz - Thoughts?  (Read 292404 times)

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
Behance  Probably best updated portfolio of my work
lysfaere.com Please check the new stuff!

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.''