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

Technical requirements

The project files for the chapter can be found at https://github.com/PacktPublishing/Architectural-Visualization-in-Unreal-Engine-5

The Unreal Material system may appear unfamiliar to those accustomed to offline renderers, but its immense flexibility and power become highly appreciated over time. Similar to node-based systems such as Cycles and V-Ray, Materials in Unreal are programmed in a simple yet advanced way that goes beyond traditional limitations, enabling the realization of any desired effect, whether it’s animated water, flowing lava, or shiny metals. Although further explanation will be provided later in this chapter, we’ll introduce two key concepts here: Master Materials and Material Instances.

Master Materials

In Unreal Engine, a Master Material serves as the foundation for creating various Material Instances: it consists of various nodes and functions connected in a visual scripting interface known as the Material Editor...