walk thrus like game engine rendering...

[SgWRX]

hi all. so the biggest thing that has held me back from doing walk thrus using a game engine, like unity or such, is that it seems like you have to

 

1. create a model in the 3ds max with materials that are compatible

or

2. recreate all lighting and materials in the game engine program

 

is that basically what has to be done every time? for example, i used to use mentalray for renders and animations, but if i were to go to a game engine, i'd have to change all those materials and lights to be compatible.

 

also, over the last couple years, i've used more and more bitmaps even though i'd get some tiling (which i usually manipulate to hide), so fewer procedural maps - which again might not be compatible with a game engine.

 

thanks,

[Francisco Penaloza]

Well is not that terrible really, but there is extra work to do but.

Regarding materials, yes you need to translate to something that Unity will use as a base, so Standard materials would be the choice. having said that, if you already know that you'll use Unity for your output, then no need to start everything in VRay then change to standard. Also, there may be a plugin or scrip for Unity that may be able to manage VRay materials translation, I am not a Unity user so I don't know.

 

Now everything that is game engine base, will work better with pre-baked or texture base. None of the procedural maps from 3d Max will translate.

So if you are used to using textures as diffuse, specular, Normal maps those are perfect for game engines.

[SgWRX]

ok. so it's better to then bake. so lighting in the game engine typically isn't as good of quality or as fast?

[Francisco Penaloza]

Well, it seems like you been out of all the real-time party hum?

Yes usually you need to bake to get the best lighting and best performance with any game engine, having said that you could also use real-time lighting, no need to bake, but quality wise it won't be the same, also performance gets limited. Needles to say Unreal it been working on real-time GI and better quality, and the results are very promising.

 

For our industry, baking should be the workflow to get result 'similar' to what we are used to regular Raytracer render engine.

Now regarding 'Fast' that's relative, because as you mentioned you need to prep your scene in a different way, then you need to bake the lighting. but when all that is done, you could output an animation in a very short amount of time. Minutes even, also you could get stereo 360 panoramas to be used with google cardboard and if performance is good you will have a VR scene ready.

So it may be slower at the beginning but later you can get so much out it.

Of course, this will depend on your project size and deadlines, but the real-time technology it seems will be the natural evolution of our Industry, IMHO.

[SgWRX]

yeah, i have totally been out of the party. and honestly i feel like in my current job there's almost no way i could spend a day or two or three prepping a vr walk thru or just walk thru, due to all the designers changing everything right up until the client meeting!

 

but anyway, baking materials and lighting has never been good for me because it seems that no matter what resolution i do, it always looks horrible. maybe you mean baking a light map and maybe that looks good? i guess i haven't tried that.

 

i just did a demo of enscape plugin for revit and wow is that nice. so maybe this is all moot haha. it's not that bad really, but it's not like walking thru a render. it apparently even packages an executable to send to clients. i'm still looking at that. basically all i would have to do is add lighting and textures in revit. i'd let our lighting engineers do the lights haha.

 

i'd like to at least do this once at a high-level. i suppose i could do it in between jobs

[SgWRX]

i had some time and downloaded unity. it actually works really well. the last time i tried it i had to load collada files. materials arent as bad as i remember but since i started to switch to mostly images and normal bump maps etc, its not too bad.