Author Topic: Unreal Engine 4 for ArchViz - Thoughts?  (Read 292381 times)

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 »