Hi there
I recently scanned a plate of curry. Unfortunately, when I import it into Unreal Engine, I get a poor result. In Reality Capture, the curry looks great. I looked at a (newly released) Epic tutorial and I understand why: the scan is unlit.
However, I want to try and get the best results with it. Other Quixel scanned assets, such as the bread in the below photo, look fantastic. Unreal 5 therefore clearly isn’t the problem. My model is.
The curry in Unreal Engine looks ‘plasticy’. Is this an issue with the material? Do I need to modify it, e.g. the roughness (however, the curry and plate would need to be different models, right? since they’ll have different roughness values)? But I assumed the textures from Reality Capture would be enough. Or do I need to run the model through the smoothing tool a couple times? Or recreate the plate in Blender? (But this doesn’t solve the plastic looking curry.)
How do I improve the end result so it looks as close as possible to the Reality Capture version? Or do I need to start again? (ie is there a problem with my scan)
Any help would be really, really appreciated!!!
Here’s the curry in Reality Capture:
Here’s the curry in Unreal Engine:
The main issue is your texture has baked in lighting data from the real world. When shaded as unlit, only this baked in data is seen, which allows the capture to look photorealistic.
In unreal, the render is adding shading too, which is causing it to be shaded twice. So while the material can be improved, ideally you would need to remove the real world lighting data from the image. This is done with a technique called cross polarization during the scan process. This exposes the truest possible albedo. Some software can also attempt to “de-light” the complete texture, but it won’t be nearly as accurate.
Here’s a video about the technique.
Interesting. Thanks for that. You might be right.
I tried to delight the photos in Lightroom but maybe you’re right, it’s not enough? Are there any other softwares you recommend?
Smoothing the object will help further right?
Are there any strategies you recommend apart form reshooting but’s it’s quite expensive right, cross polarisation?
A pro setup is quite expensive but you can make a functional DIY setup for cheap that is nearly as good. I don’t really recommend the software approach or any other, but you can get acceptable results with free tools like Agisoft Delighter.
Also more accurate materials like you mentioned. For example many foods like rice exhibit subsurface scattering. Using the default lit shading model will add to the plastic look.
Thanks. And do you have any links for creating a DIY setup? Not sure if it’s covered in William Faucher’s video.
And also do you have any other tips? I assume you think I should completely re-do it?
Cheers
You can buy cheap polarizing filters for like $20. You need two, one for the camera, and another for your light. Then you just need a reasonably bright light source that can be directed into the filter.
Heres a video that features a cheap setup.
Try and Agisoft delighter first and see if it can be salvaged for in engine use.
