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

Discovering 3D modeling for real-time usage

We are now standing at a critical crossroads, diverging from what you’ve been accustomed to until now. Unlike offline renderings, where any objects or surfaces within the scene can be rendered without issue, the type of lighting system used in Unreal will determine how your model is created. If incorrect models are used for a specific type of lighting, errors and inaccurate lighting can result. Before discussing light types, we need to take a small step forward to introduce a concept that will be covered in Chapter 5. There are two main approaches to lighting in Unreal Engine 5: baked lights and real-time/dynamic lights using Lumen or path tracing. This is an extreme simplification, but it will serve our current purpose. Let’s take a brief look at their differences.

Before going forward

Is it important to note that the baking light process is a bit outdated, unless you are developing for mobile or VR, and this will be...