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

Project

Let’s open our scene in 3ds Max and select all the meshes that make up the main architectural design, such as walls, doors, windows, and floors. After quickly checking the UV, normal direction, pivot, and position of the items, select all our architectonic meshes, go to File | Export selected | Datasmith, and click OK. I’m exporting just the structure for now, not the furniture, and since the house is quite small, I’m doing it in one single batch:

Figure 3.17: Exporting from 3ds Max

Figure 3.17: Exporting from 3ds Max

We repeat the same process for furniture already in the scene. Whenever possible, it’s best to add items directly in Unreal instead of positioning them in 3D software. However, in my case, I had a few specific items already in place, which I decided to keep. I will add the rest of the furniture later inside Unreal.

We ended up having two different Datasmith files: Architecture and Furniture.

Thus, I can open the project in Unreal, create...