I was recently tasked to transfer a large building into UE5.1 and light/texture it for presentations. The base is 70x70m wide with 12 storeys so its quite a big project.
Does anyone have experience with such large archviz projects? My fear is that the performance will completely tank and the project will be unusable at this scale.
Especially since I will have to add more detail to the base model.
Is there a way to approach this in a way that helps with the certain performance issues?
This is a bit hard to answer. Lumen is pretty good rendering millions of polygon. But there are other things to consider. Practicality, how to maintain such a big project. File size, Texture Pool (max size of all textures), collision for the player, and so on. It’s not something I would recommend if you are new to Unreal.
It might run well though. Only one way to find out. Just put it in and see how it runs. Shouldn’t take long. There are games made with Unreal that are a lot larger than an office building. So it’s definitely possible.
StuVee, you should be able to do this. Here are a few tips to follow so you don’t find yourself in trouble too far down the process.
Make sure your geometry is properly instanced and organized in your original model (Max, Revit, Rhino etc.)
Make use of Datasmith and the Archvis template in UE, this will help with instancing, basic material import and organization as well as having the necessary plugins enabled
you will need a big GPU, an RTX 3080 with 16Gb of V ram should do the trick. This way you can take advantage of Lumen, Nanite and Virtual shadow maps with Hardware.
Import your scene in chunks and individual Datasmith files. This way you will be able to break it down in a way that you can sort out if any piece of geometry is giving you problems. I typically import from larger to smaller, walls and basic architecture first then to doors windows to furniture and set dressing.
In the case of a building you could break it down to First floor, 2-11 floor (assuming they are instanced because they look the same) then 12. Its really a matter of how you like to organize your scene and have the ability to identify issues as the arise.
Collapse meshes that are unnecessarily broken. Like a window frame made from 5 static meshes should be just collapsed and imported as one object. This will save you draw calls once you have hundreds of them.
Use a main level where you would have your main scene, then use sublevels that you can drag and drop into the main level where you would have your lighting. This way you can keep things tidy and work on them separately if needed.
I hope this helps. What you are describing is certainly more than doable. Performance will depend on your hardware and how organized you are with your scene.