I’m working freaking hard to overcome some UE4 limitations. I’ve even built the engine source code to change the max resolution of the rendertargetcube to 8k. Now I know why Epic is locking it at 2k hehe!
But yea, right now for me it’s easier to have the engine do the post-work (adding fog, DoF, color balance, volumetric effects, LUTs, etc.) than doing it myself in Photoshop in post-prod. It’s a limitation for me unfortunately.
I think for pure interior design, ue4 artists have proven that it’s possible to make very nice stuff. For environment work too. Now I want to see bigger scale exterior renderings made with Unreal. For pure exterior shots, I’m sure you can use 100% dynamic lighting and avoid lightmaps completely.
I’ve made a test with a huge sketchup model of about 4600 objects. I managed to bake it. It’s ‘‘possible’’ but it’s messy and the building time can skyrocket to a point it’s not viable . The very same model used with 100% dynamic lighting works very well. And with some trickery I think can look very good. I’ll try to post pictures soon. To compensate for the very accurate G.I you would get with vray tho, you have to make sure you have outstanding materials and flawless composition. I want to make something similar to UE4arch church scene. The main reason I built a custom ue4 engine with 8k rendertargetcube is to use it to fake reflections in my glass metarial. If I can have faked but high res reflections, it’s gonna look good I think. I also started to use decals massively instead of having complex materials, with layers or vertex painting. Decals are so flexible! I’m making rust/leaks/creases with decals all over my scene!
I really hope we see more exterior arch-viz soon… Stay tuned!