3D Work flow.........

[philip kelly]

I am sure I asked this before.

At present I am a Corona user.
I was Vray for years.
So Clients want high quality stills and animations these days.
The time lines are very tight, and the budgets are ok, but not very big.

So animation in Corona take time, beautiful but time and costly over time.

So should I go back to Vray and Vray of Unreal, so the work flow in linear.
Once everything is textured in Vray , output to vray for Unreal, and animations would be quicker........I am presuming.

Is there another solution, lumion twinmotion, and the quality is not there, sorry, but it is not, and neither is the link .

Thank you

philip

[Alexander.Atanasov]

Hi, Philip

V-Ray for Unreal uses the same core as V-Ray GPU Next for 3ds Max, thus there won't be much difference in render speed. In the case of doing an animation project, I would recommend to use the DCC that allows for flexible animation editing. If you have already started the project in UE, or if you are planning to use assets from the marketplace, you may consider using V-Ray for Unreal. You can also migrate assets from one V-Ray to the other via vrscene files. Again, consider which DCC is going to provide you with more artistic flexibility and choose that one.

Best regards,
Alexander

[philip kelly]

Aleksander

Thank you for the reply.
So I am asking myself, what is the advantage of Unreal if the render times are the same, is it for interactive work with the rift?
When you DCC, what exactly do you mean.

I didn't realise there was a difference between Vray 3.7 or the lastest, and Vray Next till this morning , when I go the notification.

I presume Vray next is aimed at the GPU market primarily.

In your opinion then, what is the best work flow, I do Interiors ,Master Plans , Houses. Housing estates, the odd product.
I steps away from GPU because I got the offer of a Dual Cpu machine , with a 1070 card, so Corona is the better answer for that.
But I want to do Animations, it sort is a no brainer to offer it , since the models are completed.


Thank you again for your time.

[Alexander.Atanasov]

Hi, Philip

So I am asking myself, what is the advantage of Unreal if the render times are the same

The advantage of Unreal is the great real time graphics which speeds up your look development process. You can do faster iterations and without having to wait for the raytraced render each time you change something. After you are happy with what you see in Unreal's viewport then you can use V-Ray to render out the realistic raytraced results.

When you DCC, what exactly do you mean.

By DCC I mean the 3D platform that you are using to create your 3D assets and scenes- Max, Maya, Sketchup, etc.

In your opinion then, what is the best work flow, I do Interiors ,Master Plans , Houses. Housing estates, the odd product.

You would want to go into Unreal if you want to make a realtime walkthrough, configurator or a VR exprience in a package project for distribution. You can also render out animation from Unreal and you can choose between Unreal's renderer or V-Ray.
With Unreal's renderer:
+ you can render out animations extremely fast
- project needs to be lightbaked to have better lighting
- lighting has to be static(lights should not move or change intensity, color) to have correct GI and proper shadows
- approximated reflections and refractions

with V-Ray:
+ proper raytraced shadows, reflections, refractions, lighting
- slow render time due to raytracing

Please note that Corona materials are not yet supported for import and currently you will have to either convert them to V-Ray ones (you can check the docs here for more info:Supported Features) or import just the geometry into Ureal and make the materials from scratch. We will try to make that more streamlined in the future.

So overall as I mentioned in my previous post consider which software are you more comfortable with and which is going to provide you with more artistic flexibility and choose that one


Best regards,
Alexander

[philip kelly]

Aleksander

Thank you very much, that's a great reply, and tells me everything I need to know.
Some thinking and considering of what direction to go, and where to invest in the future.

Thank you again.

Philip

[bernhard]

Hmm.. but wait a minute... Philips questions are great.

There is one more. If you setup inside the Unreal Engine the Scene with Vray - and if you add to all your objects Vray Shaders. Well, I mean.. the Unreal Engine will use the Vray Shaders for Real Time, right?
Or did I misunderstand?

[Alexander.Atanasov]

V-Ray's shaders inside UE are still Unreal shaders that are created to match as close as possible V-Ray ones. If you open the VRayMtl, CarpaintUberMtl and VRayPBRMtl parent materials you will see that they are made up of Unreal nodes and expressions. When you render still images and animations with V-Ray you will use and render realistic and physically accurate shaders. Those calculations for lighting, refraction, reflections, etc are very expensive and that is why they are done in offline rendering and are aproximated in real time. Hope this makes sense.

Best regards,
Alexander

[bernhard]

Hi Alex!

ok.. just to confirm... that means... I can create my super cool VrayShaders (hehe) inside of 3dsmax, or directly inside of the Unreal Engine.
However.. once I am done generating my Vray Shaders.... and setting up my scene file... then... what's the next step?

What's happening then?
Is it then the so called "Baking" Process?

Inside the Unreal Engine you have the function "BUILD".
Is this the final step to output all your creations into the Unreal Engine as a final step?

And once this is done... all Vray Shaders will be exchanged with approximated UnrealShaders?

Is this the process?

I got also confused about this topic.. especially when coming from the traditional offline rendering.

Thanks a lot for clarification and keep rocking!
Love it, love it, love it!

cheers!

[jasonhuang1115]

V-Ray's shaders inside UE are still Unreal shaders that are created to match as close as possible V-Ray ones. If you open the VRayMtl, CarpaintUberMtl and VRayPBRMtl parent materials you will see that they are made up of Unreal nodes and expressions. When you render still images and animations with V-Ray you will use and render realistic and physically accurate shaders. Those calculations for lighting, refraction, reflections, etc are very expensive and that is why they are done in offline rendering and are aproximated in real time. Hope this makes sense. Alexander

Alexander, can one repurpose the VRayMtl's parent material as a Master Material to use it outside the context of Vray and create material instances from that? I am thinking to use it a solid all-purpose monolithic master material for general types of surfaces.

[Alexander.Atanasov]

Hi, guys

I can create my super cool VrayShaders (hehe) inside of 3dsmax, or directly inside of the Unreal Engine. However.. once I am done generating my Vray Shaders.... and setting up my scene file... then... what's the next step? What's happening then?

Can you specify what is your exact reason you would like to go to Unreal? Typical use cases are:

• Create interactive real-time experiences (e.g. walkthrough, space exploration, VR). These can be standalone applications that you can share with clients and make presentations of your projects.
• Faster look development. Editing materials in real time using the UE's render engine speeds up iterations. Note that these won't be physically accurate for complex materials and lighting (reflections, refraction, GI, IBL, etc.) For them you need actual ray-tracing.
• Create animation/flythrough previews with UE's faster rendering before committing for the final offline rendering.
• Make VR experiences for design exploration, environment awareness and scale validation.

To achieve high quality lighting a lot of resources and calculations are required. To achieve that real time you have to balance speed, quality and physical accuracy. If you want higher quality your performance will be reduced an vice versa. Even with the new RTX cards and real time ray tracing still there are limitations and that are required to achieve quality. The process of light baking is caching/rendering lighting information to simple textures which requires lot less resources and is still a preferred method to achieve high quality lighting and still have good performance. The quality of the lightmaps depend on the render engine that is used to calculate the. Unreal has its own light bake render engine called lightmass that produces sufficient quality. Here V-Ray shines with its higher quality lighting calculations. However if you would like to know more using Unreal's lighting you can read it here in the Unreal's docs: Lighting the Environment.

There are a number of tutorials that show different phases of preparation for your project to be imported in Unreal and then all a couple showing light baking, rendering still images, rendering animations and other in the docs here: Quick Start Guides. Packaging tutorials are not in the scope at the moment because it is pure Unreal functionality and has nothing to do with V-Ray but if there is enough requests we will make some tutorials.

And once this is done... all Vray Shaders will be exchanged with approximated UnrealShaders?

The moment you import your scene in Unreal all materials are converted to Unreal shaders. That is the reason for differences between materials that are imported and the original ones in Max for example. One to one parity between materials is nearly impossible between different render engines. We have tried to match the V-Ray shaders as much as possible using Unreal's shaders that suit the general use and common scenarios. The shaders or textures that are imported pink or not imported at all are those that we haven't found a way to match to an extend that will suit common uses. What's more, we added the "Render material from .vrscene" with that in mind..It stores the original shaders and allows using them instead for offline rendering and baking. The downside is that you might end up with a pink material in Unreal that will not do you good in VR or packaged projects. In that case you have to manually tweak and apply new materials that match the original ones.

Alexander, can one repurpose the VRayMtl's parent material as a Master Material to use it outside the context of Vray and create material instances from that? I am thinking to use it a solid all-purpose monolithic master material for general types of surfaces.

Yes, you can use the material in any way you want. You can modify it in any way and make it better. Just FYI, if you modify it in the end and try to render it, there is no guarantee that the viewport and render result will be the same.

Hope that answers all of your questions

Best regards,
Alexander

[bernhard]

Hi Alex!

thanks a lot for your explanation. What I would love to do is very simple. I just want to create a very easy 3dsmax Vray file (including a few primitive objects, a few VrayShaders with one VrayLight Source) and export this file to Unreal.
Nothing fancy, just to see what I am dealing with when using Unreal.

I have setup the file in 3dsmax within minutes and exported the .vrscene.

Now, it's all about Unreal. That's the real "Chaos" for me right now.... hahah...

I would love to see a simplified tutorial, that shows the final process in the Unreal Engine.

@Final_Process:
What do I mean about the so called "Final Process"

I mean nothing else, than bringing the quality of the rendered Vray Unreal Scene into pure Realtime!
Meaning, I don't want to hit the render button anymore and render with Light Cache or Brute Force.

I don't want to have any render-time at all anymore and bring my entire lovely teapots into the real-time based unreal engine.

That step, and that jump is the the unknown territory. And it's confusing.


How to get there?

@Confusion #1: Vray Bake vs. Unreal Build

1. Max file as .vrscene exported
2. .vrscene imported into Unreal
3. Lighting & Shading
-----------------------------------------------
so far so good... but what's next?


4. Vray Bake?
Is Vray Bake the next step? And once the Vray Bake process is done.. is this all?
Or are there any other steps I have to take to create my real-time Unreal scene?
Is Vray Bake replacing the Unreal "Build" process?
Or do I have to use VrayBake plus the unreal "Build" process to generate the final Unreal scene?


This is my big confusion. I tried to find any Videos or step by step tutorials, that explains this with a simplified scene.
But so far no luck.

I am super stoked about Vray & Unreal... love it, love it love it...

ohh... and to answer your question why I want to use it inside Unreal:
mainly for animations (camera animations, fly-through animations to avoid super long raytraced render times).
If I am not wrong, and if I do this right.. I don't need a renderfarm to raytrace 24fps .. instead.. I use the Unreal Engine, animate my camera.. and have my animation immediately....

Or am I totally wrong with this?
I hope not... lol;


Thanks a lot for all your help!
Appreciate it - happy pixeling & till later!

[Alexx31]

bernhard philip kelly
Hi, I am on a similar step at the moment, just afraid of the massive learning time it will take (because I still have no experience with UE).

- Can you tell a bit about your experiences or give some new advices? Things you wished to have known before?
- Is it after some more practice now useful for you?
- And can vray also render every material of UE, is it fully compatible?

Thank you!

[Alexander.Atanasov]

Hi guys,

bernhard The steps that you mentioned are all that you need for you to achieve the "Final Process" with a little of tweaks:
1. Max file as .vrscene exported
2. .vrscene imported into Unreal
3. Lighting & Shading (placing Reflection captures if you are not using UE raytracing)
4. V-Ray Bake (additional tweaking of lightmap resolutions per actor may be required to achieve better quality without light and shadow bleeds)
5. Create your animation with sequencer and export them.

The UE "Build" is a complex operation that can be seen if you click on the dropdown arrow: Build Lighting Only, Lighting Quality, Lighting Info, Build Reflections, Build Geometry....etc.The V-Ray bake only replaces the "Build Lighting Only" functionality and the rest are needed steps when you want to create a game/standalone application and are not required for cinematic or still shot rendering.

I know that UE can be confusing regarding not knowing "Is this the all I have to do or is there something else?" We do try to create online tutorials and quick start guides to make it easy for you guys to do the thing that you do best (be creative and produce awesome content) for the shortest amount of time possible


Alexx31
With V-Ray for Unreal you get the following benefits:

1. Inside Unreal
   1. Rendering
      1. Render Unreal scenes with physically accurate, ray-traced lighting and materials.
      2. Render sequences from the Unreal Sequence Editor to create V-Ray-quality, ray-traced animated cinematics.
      3. Supports a wide range of render elements for better control in compositing.
      4. Compatible with Unreal's native foliage system for rendering large environments and landscapes. Currently supports static foliage.
   2. Baking
      1. Bake your ray-traced lighting with V-Ray to lightmaps for the highest quality illumination.
      2. Export and then load lightmaps giving the possibility to:
         1. Resume lightbaking.
         2. Re-bake single objects instead of the whole scene.
         3. Modify lightmaps in image editing software (eg Nuke, Photoshop) for artistic reasons.
      3. VFB shows you progress of your bake giving you visual feedback on how the lightbake is going.
   3. Utilize all your hardware — with support for CPUs, NVIDIA GPUs and Distributed rendering for both rendering and lightmaps baking.
2. Import:
   1. Import your scenes from a DCC that have other versions of V-Ray (eg Max, Maya, Sketchup, Revit, Rhino, etc) using a vrscene.
   2. Import vrmeshes(proxies) in Unreal and use their memory optimization benefits when rendering with V-Ray.
   3. Automatically converts your materials and lights into real-time equivalents for UE workflows.

A note here - for a lightbake without problems, however, the scene needs preparation in the terms of setting proper UVs for each object. This is essential as lightmaps are unique for each object. You can check our quick start tutorial about scene preparation here:Preparing a project for Lightbaking. In most cases V-Ray Bake is faster and with better quality because V-Ray utilizes all your hardware unlike Lightmass(Unreal's lightbaking engine) which uses only CPU.

And can vray also render every material of UE, is it fully compatible?

V-Ray supports most of the commonly used materials. You can check the docs here for supported features in UE:Supported Features.

New features and support for different UE functionality is coming soon so keep an eye in the Announcement page of this section of the forum

Best regards,
Alexander