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Unreal engine 4 for ArchViz


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Hi guys! I'm new in the archviz field and I was watching some tutorials about the new features of the Unreal engine 4. The engine seems very powerful and pretty easy to use.

 

Is there a place in the arch viz world for realtime visualization? Is it a feature that could be more used eventually or I would be wasting my time by learning it? I would eventually like to work for a architectural or urban design firm and make visualization for them.

 

You can watch this serie of videos about creating a basic level (office) in unreal engine 4.

 

thanks!

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I can't really really say there is large demand at the moment, although that shouldn't matter. The moment you create an interesting work with it that some sort of client might seems helpful, you're set.

 

Although I am long time CryEngine user, I just couldn't pass up on owning Unreal4 ! What a deal :- )

unreal.jpg

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...What a deal :- )

 

It really is a great deal since you can continue using the most current version from your subscription even if you let your subscription lapse.

 

I think this technology has a lot of factors behind it that will push it to be far more relevant in arch-viz over the next 10 years than it has been over the last 10, one of the most notable factors being the likelihood of VR becoming mainstream.

 

I will likely be subscribing soon as well, but less for reasons related to arch-viz and more related to personal interest in game development.

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I will likely be subscribing soon as well, but less for reasons related to arch-viz and more related to personal interest in game development.

 

Well, even though I toy with idea to trying it for some type of projects, I use these likewise mostly because of my interest in game development :- ). It's my hobby so I am happy to play around even in case I wouldn't use it for archviz.

 

But yes, the tech is greater now than ever. PBR/PBS, VR, WebGL integration, lot's of exciting and useful stuff.

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The issue with real time and architectural visualization is that real time generally needs a well thought out production pipeline or else it gets messy and super expensive. You can't always try to cram a unoptimized Revit model into the engine and expect it to come out looking like a diamond. So small studios and individuals will have to lead the real time charge. Many architects in-house studios already have poorly functioning pipelines and are very resistant to changes in new technology.

 

However, the announcements at GDC with the new engines and the pricing structures could swing the door open to a massive jump in the need for real time. The Blueprints in UE4 will make a lot of what we do much quicker as well. Ironically, Unity is seemingly becoming the more pricey option now compared to UE4 and CryEngine.

 

If there will be a boom for real time, it will start with the mobile platforms first.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I can't see why you wouldn't move towards UE4 for this kind of thing eventually.

 

Back a decade ago quite a lot of the fudges you'd use to get faster rendering for arch vis type work were exactly how the real-time engines are working today.

 

Ie, shadow maps, stacked env maps (for HDR back then, but we just use HDR now with 16bpp envmaps), etc.

 

But today we also have proper energy conserving taken into account too, so from a lighting perspective and pre-computed light maps if needed, we can probably get quite accurate lighting appearance too... all in real-time.

 

 

I can't see why UE4 can't be used to do some very nice arch vis work. OK for the extreme composited static shots with high degree of artistic style then UE4 may be less useful, but for the practical purposes of a great deal of arch vis, being able to instantly change assets and lighting and interact with environments will prove very useful.

 

 

Given the deferred rendering nature too, I can see it being relatively trivial to fire out all your passes and comp them independently too if required (for more arty compositions etc)

 

The only real problem is high res materials for print etc... hmmm...

 

But in the end we have a box full of tools and UE4 is cheap enough and good enough to have in there and to know how to use it for arch vis use imo!

 

 

 

But the interactivity isn't something super new. I remember doing a 3D building in Max + radiosity in ~ 2003, I used Director and Shockwave in IE to walk around an interact with a building that looked pretty nice all considered. That was the max radiosity adding really nice lighting effects.

OK no glossy surfaces and reflections, but at the time it was pretty nice looking for real-time and interactivity in a browser!

 

It never really took off much but I think these things are much more appropriate now than they were back then. Everyone has a computer or iPad or whatever else, people expect more interactivity, more ability to iterate and see things before they are finished, and UE4 allows those kinds of interactions.

Sitting and waiting hours/days for things to render is pretty limiting given today's expectations. If you can get 90% of the way to looking real in real-time rendering then I think many people will be happy with that given the benefits of real-time performance and interactivity!

 

 

Thanks

 

Dave

Edited by DaveC
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Yesterday I went to see my cousin. He is an industrial designer making marinas and he often needs to have stuff rendered. He showed me some contracts he had with different 3d visualization studios and the work they've done for him. OMG the costs of these renders!!!!

 

His company paid 20k for 4 still images and a 80 seconds (720p ugh!) fly-tru animation. The cost of the video alone was 8000$. My cousin wasn't even really happy with the quality. The stills were cool but the video was meh. The 3d artist was not able to render a fully textured 80 secs animation of a marina with the sea and a couple boats. He made a black and white animation (just untextured) without any post-prod. Clearly the artist bought some 3d models and was too lazy to texture everything and/or to render it.

 

Anyway, I was thinking, why not use unreal engine to make my cousin some nice animations of his marinas, with realistic ocean, waves, moving trees, etc. I'm fairly new to arch viz but since the 3d design is quite simple (marinas are relatively minimalist) why not take advantage of all the fx unreal engine can provide so easily. VaOcean plugin make some super nice ocean waves. You can have boats floating around, clouds moving, wind, tress moving, etc just with a few plugins. Could even do it in real time possibly. I've not done many fx like that in vray but the render times must be insane!!!

 

And since my cousin's company is willing to pay 20k$ for sub-par 3d renders and I could do much more realistic with ue4...i'm gonna give it a shot. Just need to find a good workflow for importing 3d meshes in 3ds max...so far it's a bit of a pain lol. Because he clearly told me, As a designer and also a sales representative, he prefer to use a concept image over a cheap looking pseudo realistic render. And what they got for 20k$ was a bad attempt at realism that pretty much falls in between a conceptual image and realistic render. For example, they render a high poly marina with sweet lights, textures, but the landscape is google-maps quality lol. The ocean is static...in a fly-tru video, the boats are the 2-3 same models copied multiple times, untextured... :-S

 

Have you ever been able to render a realistic ocean animation with vray? I'm trying some plugins but it's seems to be faaar away from what VaOcean and Ue4 can do in real-time!!!

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Here is some nice grass shader :- D Don't expect Ocean one to be easier ;- )

 

14769639986_161c9d6b81_o.jpg

 

jk, good luck. I wouldn't render Unreal4 commercial project any cheaper than offline. Actually I would double the price.

 

Vray ocean: Check Peter Guthrie's blog. Imho, good

Edited by RyderSK
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Very impressive stuff, especially from a games point of view; would love to see GTA re-done with an engine this visually powerful.

 

On the other hand, again whilst it's impressive for the low/mid range renders I really don't think it can compete anywhere near the high level stuff. Perhaps in a few more years, maybe. But not as it stands.

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Realtime marina? Not sure how it compares to what you are expecting to get from UE4 visually, but Lumion3d can be purchased with a lot of the extra content you would need to populate the scenes.

 

No doubt UE4 could produce better results, but nowhere near as quickly without many years of experience and collected assets.

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I've decided to do it with vray. It would work in ue4 but the result wouldn't be less realistic, maybe a bit cartoony...unless I'd put tremendous amount of time but I already don't like the workflow 3ds-->ue4. Everytime I import something, there something not working correctly.

 

I'm experimenting with phoenix FD plug in for ocean and water-sim at the moment. Kinda like what i've done so far! This is like my 1st attempt at making an ocean... I'm texturing the marina to insert in that scene at the moment (it's low res, low render settings, just a test) but I think it has the potential :

 

oceantest.jpg

 

 

I like the first shot, from the heli, in the scene you provided..but other than that it looks a little bit too much like a video game imo. My goal was to make a fly-tru video of a marina and a couple of boats...but the angle would not show the shore. That mean I'd only need a good water shader, a well modeled marina et and couple boats... but finally I think vray is the way to go...just gonna take 2 years to render un my pc lol

Edited by philippelamoureux
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  • 2 weeks later...
As for Real Time interactive 3D for ArchViz I suggest you to have a look at http://www.cl3ver.com/ which is built for architects (here a project demo http://3d.cl3ver.com/hDQC0?tryitlocation=3). It's pretty easy to use and to create interactivity.

 

Just some bonus info to Luca's reply:

One of their guys (Nimrod) gave a presentation at the d2Conference in Vienna last weekend. It looked really interesting and he promised that their "automatic lightmap" feature would be ready in about 2 months. There were also talk about a vray mat converter/importer. He did however admit that vegetation was really lacking at the moment.

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You can't beat UE4's monthly price of $19 with ZERO royalties due with arch viz products and the quality you can get out of the engine. That price simply clobbers anyone who tries to compete with it. Unity 4/5 Pro is really close but the $1500 license fee might be steep for some and Unity's monthly subscription plans are quite crazy at $75 a month. Though you can still publish projects with Unity Free so that's a plus. The downside with UE4 and Unity is you have to put some development time into your product. It's not as drag and drop as other options out there.

 

Crytek has priced themselves out of the competition, even with their new structure you still owe royalties which are hard to cough up on something that has little resale value like architecture. Plus going to CryEngine makes you want to cry sometimes.

 

CL3VER is a decent product for something that runs solely on the web, but there are some hurdles that keeps us from adopting it. Though I am confident that once CL3VER gets some development time and feedback from users, it'll be a viable product.

 

Luminon and Twinmotion with their $$$$$ prices are a dinosaur that is on it's way out in my opinion. If they adopt reasonable monthly subscriptions, then they could see a surge in users.

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I'll give UE4 another shot. Considering the cost of rendering a Vray animation (let's say 1 min, 30 fps, not photorealistic) could be pretty high... I think here UE4 could shine... I've come to realize, I think, many architects/designers, don't even need/want the hyperrealism (I might be wrong) because it's not always necessary to communicate their ideas to their clients. So why not do semi-realism stuff at a very little cost, on Ue4 and charge the big price haha! (or not!)

 

For still images where realism is needed, no doubt vray is the way to go. But the price of UE4 is so appealing to me. 20$/month (can cancel it right after and still use the software heh, it's ridiculous, and royalties-free).

 

Still a bit steep to learn but not all projects are crazy complicated. The big thing for me, at the moment, is getting a bank of assets. I have close to none since i'm just starting doing this.

Edited by philippelamoureux
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I can't see it being easy enough to do in the near future. I can't be arsed baking GI and all the rest of it, only to have it look a bit better than lumion/twinmotion. I bet you there is a huge amount more optimisation gone into producing these videos.

 

Realistically it's not an easy thing. It's still a monumental task to turn out quality like this in UE4 in your average architecture budget and timeline. Even in Koola's thread he mentions he had to optimize and properly unwrap the object for a 2nd lightmap for use in UE4. He had to edit the lightmass ini to allow it to not compress the images which gives him much higher quality lightmap settings. In turn, this means you need a pretty good computer to run the scene as you are going to be pushing a lot through your GPU.

 

This was just posted, http://moritzweller.wordpress.com/2014/09/25/dissecting-koolas-ue4-archviz-magic/

All of the works shown are still crazy simple, so that's something to remember. A room with a few chairs or a kitchen and you focus your entire time on that. Of course it will look good. But what about a full scene or the client wanting to see every room? How well do these scenes play in actual walk through mode? Sure it's smooth, but it's pre-rendered video.

 

Overall I'm super excited about this stuff coming out of UE4, yet it still leaves many questions unanswered about it's usability in a more generalized workflow.

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Scott, The latest Koola scene is available as a demo on the Unreal Engine marketplace. I checked it out and of course it's very basic and everything but it's so cool that you can render this almost instantly... I know Koola uses a gtx 670 and a core i7 (exactly what I have). Now think about the computer power you would need to make a 1 minute or more animation on vray or any offline renderer... In ue4 you build your lights, take couple mins at most, and you record, and the costs...are pretty much inexistant. Now I guess a card like a gtx 980 would work wonderfully with UE4. Probably my next purchase!

 

I find UE4 much more fun to work it though, it's fast, responsive...imo it make 3ds max looks like a dinosaur... Of course we need both softwares but the heavy work seems more fluid to do in UE4. Now I have a loooooooot to learn before making decent renders though :-S

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