Book Image

Architectural Visualization in Unreal Engine 5

By : Ludovico Palmeri
Book Image

Architectural Visualization in Unreal Engine 5

By: Ludovico Palmeri

Overview of this book

If you excel at creating beautiful architectural renderings offline, but face challenges replicating the same quality in real time, this book will show you how the versatile Unreal Engine 5 enables such transformations effortlessly. While UE5 is widely popular, existing online training resources can be overwhelming and often lack a focus on Architectural visualization. This comprehensive guide is designed for individuals managing tight deadlines, striving for photorealism, and handling typical client revisions inherent to architectural visualization. The book starts with an introduction to UE5 and its capabilities, as well as the basic concepts and principles of architectural visualization. You’ll then progress to essential topics such as setting up a project, modeling and texturing 3D assets, lighting and materials, and post-processing effects. Along the way, you’ll find practical tips, best practices, and hands-on exercises to develop your skills by applying what you learn. By the end of this UE5 book, you'll have acquired the skills to confidently create high-quality architectural visualizations in Unreal Engine and become proficient in building an architectural interior scene in UE5 to produce professional still images.
Table of Contents (24 chapters)
1
Part 1: Building the Scene
6
Part 2: Illuminating and Materializing the Scene
12
Part 3: Completing the Scene
16
Part 4: Rendering the Scene
Appendix:Substrate Materials

Blending materials

A very important aspect of materials, especially in , is the ability to blend multiple materials, layering them on top of each other or painting them on surfaces. Unreal Engine is highly powerful in this regard, offering many techniques to achieve such blending, some of which are incredibly flexible. However, layered materials can be a bit challenging for beginners, and they are particularly useful in outdoor environments or scenarios. That’s why while we will briefly touch on this topic, our focus primarily lies on interiors at the moment, so we will only cover the basics.

Layered materials

There are two primary methods in Unreal Engine for layering materials and creating complex blends between different surface types:

  • The first approach uses Layered Materials with Material Functions. Each layer in the material is defined as a separate Material Function using Material Attributes expressions. A base material is then created, which incorporates...