BEGIN PROCESS BLOG
This summer I will be blogging my process as I explore compositing with real-time rendering using Unreal Engine 5 and UE5 Nuke plugin. For my first project, I will develop an interior environment. For this interior environment, I want to delve into my fascination with "liminal spaces." Liminal spaces often invoke a feeling of emptiness or uneasiness, almost like you're not supposed to be there. These liminal spaces are often locations of transition, such as hotel hallways, parking garages, or abandoned buildings.
An excellent example of a "liminal space" used in cinematography would be the hallway from Stanley Kubrick's film The Shining.
My goal for this project is to create an environment that invokes the same emotions of uneasiness that these spaces hold. Using Unreal Engine 5 and real-time rendering, I can bring my own spin on this concept to life! I am also interested in experimenting with Unreal Engine's VR capabilities, so that I can experience my interior environment in virtual reality!
Progress Update #1:
I have successfully imported my proxy geometry into Unreal Engine 5.
I am still working out my composition and style, as well as developing the textures. There may be an issue in the future regarding the version of Unreal Engine, I'm not sure if the Nuke plug-in is compatible with Unreal Engine 5.0.2
Progress Update #2:
Here is a lighting and texture concept for my scene, rendered in Arnold.
I am currently in the process of lighting my scene in UE5, I still am figuring out how the materials and texturing work. I will also continue improving the geometry of my scene to give it more complexity and character. For some reason, something is causing a lighting error on the polygons that surround my skylight in my scene. I will have to troubleshoot that, it is most likely a geometry issue that can be fixed in Maya.
Progress Update #3:
I have set up my CineCamera and have begun establishing the final look in UE5. I am wanting to incorporate water elements, seeing that it can be done easily using Unreal. Lighting will also be improved.
Screenshot without water elements:
Screenshot with water elements (work-in progress):
Progress Update #4:
Here is a rendered camera move of my scene with DOF. I removed the second pedestal to only have the one. I will composite my actor on top of the pedestal. Before my final version, I also plan to add a tile texture to the surfaces in my scene from Polyhaven. There are a few more lighting errors that need to be fixed.
Progress Update #5:
New and updated textures and modelling! There are still polygon issues that need to be fixed, and textures are not final.
This 1080p 6-second video took less than a minute to render with Unreal Engine 5. Compare to this 720p Arnold render with low samples that took 6:26 for one frame:
Clearly, the quality of the Arnold render is much less than the UE5 render and the time to render MUCH longer. While I would say that stylistically, the Arnold render feels more realistic. But given the higher quality of the Unreal Engine footage and the extremely fast render time, I prefer UE5 for this experiment. One thing I would like to note is how different the water shader looks between the two. With Arnold, I used the "Clear_Water" preset on an aiStandardSurface material on a mesh plane. With UE5, I am using a premade water asset provided by the software. The water shader in Unreal Engine looks much better in my opinion, because it fills the room with a blue-green glow that emulates the atmosphere I am trying to achieve.
I am now finding more and more inspiration for my look from the "Dreampools" trend on the internet. The "Dreampools" are often simple geometric structures with a tile surface and submerged in water. Artist who created these renders is Jared Pike:
Progress Update #6:
Today I decided to do a lighting/mood alteration for my scene. By shifting the color tones to a cooler temperature, I am able to capture different emotions. I have also used a reflective black-tile material for the pillars, that I feel invoke a bit of the "Liminal Space" theme that I started this project with. There are two versions of this mood alteration: one with and without water. The water shader drastically changes how the lighting interacts with the scene through raytracing. I am curious on how to achieve a more realistic water shader in Unreal Engine. I am also experimenting with Post-Processing effects in UE5: I added chromatic aberration and bloom to my render for this mood alteration.
Progress Update #7:
Further development of the scene. I went back into Maya and improved the UVs of my scene a bit more, and also improved the materials and textures for my scene in UE5. The inspiration for the mood of this scene comes from the aesthetics of the film Blade Runner 2049. The warm color palette is supposed to invoke the same feeling. As the scene develops, my preference tends to lean more towards the version without water, it simply renders better.
Here is a look at the material node graph for the pillar texture in my scene:
Progress Update #7:
Today, I went out and got some photos of various environments, textures, and materials to study.
I've also fixed the mesh for the stairs, which was previously causing rendering issues and flickering.
Progress Update #8:
I have finalized the look for my floor texture/material using Photoshop. Below is how the texture looks in my scene viewport:
Here is the node graph for my floor texture:
I am also currently in the process of revamping the water shader:
After conducting extensive research, it seems that there is no efficient way to achieve realistic caustics in real-time. This article by NVIDIA talks about water caustics in Unreal Engine 4: Generating Ray-Traced Caustic Effects in Unreal Engine 4, Part 2 | NVIDIA Technical Blog
Progress Update #9:
I have begun the process of implementing a character into my scene. Floor and pillar textures are final.
This article I found goes into the process for creating realistic water graphics in Unreal Engine. The method they use to create caustics is not in real-time, but rather calculated in a different software such as Houdini.
Learning Water Graphics in UE4【UE4 Environment Art Dive 2019】 | ドクセル (docswell.com) Progress Update #10:
For finalizing my materials, I have drawn inspiration from different museums and buildings such as the Getty Center Museum in Los Angeles, CA. The tiled texture on the building is very similar to what I am trying to emulate, and the stairs made of stone have a very clean and modern brutalist aesthetic. The Jepson Center Museum in Savannah, GA (where I currently live) has also served as a point of inspiration and reference for my scene and textures.
The Getty Center Museum exterior:
The Jepson Center Interior:
The dynamic shadows and lighting cast by the overhead structure is very similar to the structure that I have built in Unreal Engine and intends to invoke the same emotions and look.
Progress Update #11:
I have decided to do 3 scene variations. One with water, one with plants, and scary atmospheric scene with the Slenderman character.
Screencap of my scene in-engine:
The plant and vine elements I used for the scene are Quixel megascans from the Unreal Engine marketplace, as well as the Roman statue. I successfully achieved psuedo-water caustics with a Light Function Material and 2 rectangular lights. Here is the node graph for my caustic material:
Here are the node graphs for the tile material in my scene, as well as the materials for the SlenderMan character:
I intended to have animation on the slenderman character model, but that will require further research on my behalf on how to implement custom character animations in UE5.
For the flickering lights on the Slender scene, another Light Function Material was implemented to jitter the brightness of the point-light.
The light also uses an IES texture, using photometric data provided by Philips: Professional Lighting Photometric Data - Philips lighting The specific IES texture used is 230698.
Reflecting Thoughts
The learning curve for this engine is a bit steep, but I am slowly finding my way around it and will continue to experiment and explore. The vision for this project was constantly changing, but in the end, I think I captured a little bit of everything for each different idea. The pillars are very indicative of the parking garage/liminal space aesthetic, blended with motifs from the Dreampools by Jared Pike. I also invoked inspiration from the Getty Center and the Jepson Center, and even added a little creepy variation at the end. The render times for these scenes was exceptionally fast, much more efficient than Arnold renderer and the quality of the render proportional to render time is leagues ahead. Going forward, I anticipate using the Nuke plugin for Unreal Engine so I can work with real-time compositing elements.
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