Hey guys,
I’m an architectural visualisation artist, so my job on a day to day basis is to produce photo-realistic imagery/animations. Just recently we’ve been producing a lot of 360 panoramas that have been really impressive (especially when they’re stereo), but the next logical step is to create entire photo-realistic scenes within unreal engine.
Now, I’m used to using Sketchup/3DS Max/Vray and generally we use real world scale when UV mapping objects, rather than unwrapping them. Am I right in believing that this workflow isn’t best suited for UE (or any game engine)?
In an ideal world I’d like a one click solution to export my already photo-real scenes out of max and into UE (lol, wouldn’t we all) - but as this isn’t possible, is there a particular workflow that I should adopt? Presumably a lot of you guys also use 3DS Max. Is it possible to export an entire scene to UE in one click, or should individual items be exported? Is there a way to expedite exporting individual objects?
One of the largest hurdles I’m finding is material creation within UE, it’s so much less intuitive than in render engines where you simply drag in a diffuse, specular & bump map et voila, and don’t get me started on creating a realistic glass (or any refractive material)! I fully understand I need to learn a whole new way of working/software package and am committed to that, but I’m finding this part rather difficult. Almost all of the tutorials I have seen on the subject are very much along the lines of “do this, then this, then this, and now you have your material” and seem to gloss over what each part of the process actually does (what in gods name is a LERP for example?).
Basically I am looking for any kind of help, tips, pointers, do’s & dont’s.
I’m currently trying to set up a living room/kitchen scene and will be asking some more specific questions as time goes on.
Thank you in anticipation.