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

Exporting/importing with a traditional workflow

This is the most important workflow, even though it is not the one we will use as our primary one. This sentence may sound contradictory, but it is not. As already mentioned, the Datasmith workflow is the most useful for Archviz in general. However, it is mandatory to know the regular workflow for Unreal Engine in order to import all sorts of assets and pieces. This applies to many other things besides Archviz.

Exporting elements for use in Unreal is a straightforward process. We simply need to export our scene/assets in .fbx format, while making sure to check units, position, and orientation. As a general rule, consider these points:

  • Units inside Unreal are in centimeters. You can work in any unit you prefer, but make sure to convert the units during the export or import process (there are options for both). In general, this is automatically taken care of if you’re using Blender or 3ds Max on their default configuration...