@awsc Hi Wong,
When will NVRTX-Caustics be updated to version 5.3? I’m looking forward to testing the capabilities of Unreal 5.3 with RTX caustics.
Hi @BjornCogxgoc , if you don’t need substrate support for your project, NvRTX 5.2.1 is robust https://github.com/NvRTX/UnrealEngine/tree/NvRTX_Caustics-5.2. For version 5.3, may be you need to wait for a bit longer since Substrate need to be taken into account.
Cheers,
JW
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- tor / vpn works
git-bash works fine as well but i’m not sure it cloning the right branch
- unfortunately there are a lot of warnings/errors after building in fresh VS 2022 (with zip) but with git everything looks fine )
Normally, I’m using source tree to arrange multiple git branches.
Cheers,
JW
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i’ll try Sourcetree next time, thanks for the hint )
@awsc Hi Jacky
I need version 5.3 because of some important features that version 5.2 doesn’t have. 
Cheers,
Bjørn
Hey, guys.
Need help.
I tried build version 5.2 NvRtx Caustics.
In Visual Studio 2022 there were no errors, but now when trying to open or create projects this error appears.
@awsc Can you help me?
My solution is just to move the project and engine to the root of storage drive, and then run the setup>generate project file> full rebuild the engine. Try using vs 2022 rather than vs 2019.
Hey I have been using a both UE4.72 and recently UE5.2 and heres a quick review from a product/arch viz viewpoint. (im also going to list the obivous pros and cons for those not in the gaming industry)
UE4 - almost perfect, stable, has just been amazing and replaced both vray and fstorm for me. (although i still use vray to bake round corners for unreal)
Con:
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Only artifact from caustics is specular bleed to near by objects when zoomed out, as far as i can tell there is no way to adjust this optimsation bias. But for 90% of situations this is a non-issue.
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DOF in reflections at shallow angles are incorrect but this is to be expected and can be solved with post production tricks.
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The need to optimise meshes… because displacement can only be used sparingly and POM has no self shadowing in raytracing.
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Lack of support for new plugins
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Primary rays Include DOF (for DOF through glass) causes a gridded artifact over specular pass. Not too noticable except in movie render so mostly have it off. (its mostly fine for hdscreenshot)
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Movie render queue cannot use DLSS, doesnt crash but breaks the image.
Other issues - has this version been discontinued? didnt work the last time I tried to pull from github. Which is a shame 
UE5 - Nanite and Lock actor plugin is tempting me to change. Infact general UI, usability, plugin support is a plus.
Cons:
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UE4 had more unified lighting, caustics, gi, reflections … etc e.g UE4 you dont need hybrid to see reflections of caustics where UE5 you need lumen or raytrace with hybrid reflectivity turned on both with their own pros and cons. Which isnt an huge problem but in UE4 you had one solution that fits all.
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Crashes… alot of crashes with right click… for seemingly irregular reasons. I have edits in the code for my build but I dont think thats the cause. Maybe I my build have issues… idk… either way its the most annoying thing about UE5
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PrimaryRaysIncludeDOF has same grid artifact as UE4
-Gotchas - BP_RTX (general engine control over-ride asset) has an annoying blueprint inside that turns off specular for lights every time it refreshes the viewport if nanite is enabled.
UE5 does not work with anisotropy - ie no simple brushed metal or carbon fiber. I guess something substrate will fix in the future?
Nanite meshes do not work with glass - but there are acceptable work arounds.
For archviz I would recommend UE4.72 for interior and product situations, for larger scenes you’ll probably need UE5. Dont forget engines and ddcs are huge and you may need 2 copies of each engine if you need plugins (in order to download the plugins via launcher thingy) On my machine UE4+UE5 is around 500GB (including ddc) (also not forgetting visualstudio and SDKs)-all of this needs to be on C drive is what I have been told so come to think of it, I havent tried this on another drive… either way be warned.
(other gotchas are the install times… its long… and be prepared to mess up and do it a few times)
Overall they both have pros and cons but compared to other engines, real time caustics is astonishing. Worst thing about unreal is the learning curve but its worth it for the speed.
I shall leave you with some high resolution screenshots from UE4.72 with dlss, all LOD0, og screenshot size 6k 30sec a img on RTX3090. Theres a variety of objects to show the technical aspects of NVRTX Caustics.
Can someone explain to me how to get this working in 5.2? I have compiled and recompiled, the RTXGI plugin gives an error, last time I tried to compiled after copying the plugin it gave this error after 12hr of build time: Fatal error: [File:C:\UECaustics\Engine\Source\Runtime\Core\Private\Modules\ModuleManager.cpp] [Line: 1167]
Unable to read module manifest from ‘…/…/…/Engine/Binaries/Win64/UnrealEditor.modules’. Module manifests are generated at build time, and must be present to locate modules at runtime.
0x00007ffe5cd247f6 UnrealEditor-Core.dll!FModuleManager::FindModulePaths() [C:\UECaustics\Engine\Source\Runtime\Core\Private\Modules\ModuleManager.cpp:1170]
0x00007ffe5cd258ce UnrealEditor-Core.dll!FModuleManager::FindModules() [C:\UECaustics\Engine\Source\Runtime\Core\Private\Modules\ModuleManager.cpp:147]
0x00007ffe5cd377ac UnrealEditor-Core.dll!FModuleManager::ModuleExists() [C:\UECaustics\Engine\Source\Runtime\Core\Private\Modules\ModuleManager.cpp:198]
0x00007ffe5ca8d594 UnrealEditor-Core.dll!FPlatformFileManager::GetPlatformFile() [C:\UECaustics\Engine\Source\Runtime\Core\Private\HAL\PlatformFileManager.cpp:80]
0x00007ff638835efe UnrealEditor.exe!LaunchCheckForFileOverride() [C:\UECaustics\Engine\Source\Runtime\Launch\Private\LaunchEngineLoop.cpp:1099]
0x00007ff63883f076 UnrealEditor.exe!FEngineLoop::PreInitPreStartupScreen() [C:\UECaustics\Engine\Source\Runtime\Launch\Private\LaunchEngineLoop.cpp:2216]
0x00007ff638834525 UnrealEditor.exe!GuardedMain() [C:\UECaustics\Engine\Source\Runtime\Launch\Private\Launch.cpp:140]
0x00007ff63883482a UnrealEditor.exe!GuardedMainWrapper() [C:\UECaustics\Engine\Source\Runtime\Launch\Private\Windows\LaunchWindows.cpp:107]
0x00007ff6388374f0 UnrealEditor.exe!LaunchWindowsStartup() [C:\UECaustics\Engine\Source\Runtime\Launch\Private\Windows\LaunchWindows.cpp:244]
0x00007ff63884a4c4 UnrealEditor.exe!WinMain() [C:\UECaustics\Engine\Source\Runtime\Launch\Private\Windows\LaunchWindows.cpp:284]
0x00007ff63884d996 UnrealEditor.exe!__scrt_common_main_seh() [D:\a_work\1\s\src\vctools\crt\vcstartup\src\startup\exe_common.inl:288]
0x00007ffefde6257d KERNEL32.DLL!UnknownFunction
0x00007ffeff38aa58 ntdll.dll!UnknownFunction
Hi ! @daadaa Thanks for the feed back, can you give me more information on these two issues, such as screenshots?
It is recommended to open the includeDOF, although there are some artifact, but it solves the problem that the DOF effect is the same what ever the translucent object far or near.
For the Anisotropic, UE5 is actually supported , here is a sample from Caustics 5.2.
you can find this material in UE car material example.
I also interest in car rendering, and this is carbon fiber with anisotropy.
But I notice the nice anisotropy effect on B&O head phone, is that a texture?
Any release date for the NvRTX Caustics 5.3 version?
Hey Johnny and hope you’ve had a great xmas!
1 - Caustics bleed
In the screenshots I have a dark object with a chrome edge casting caustics onto the floor below. When can camera turns to the otherside, this caustics will bleed onto near by objects. In UE4 it seems distance dependent while in UE5 it seems angle dependent… not sure why theres a difference.
2 - DOF in reflections at shallow angles but like I said before this is to be expected for agame engine. (review earlier was in perspective of archviz use so in comparasion to engines like vray)
3 - However I noticed a new bug while trying to create these screenshots. CineCamera seems to be incompatitble with Light Tracer? I wanted to do a comparason but crashes every time. This is only for UE5 and works fine for UE4.
4 - IncludeDOF - most obivous in CineCam + DOF + DLSS
Just to note this artifact is on all materials except translucent when incDOF is switched on, and happens on both UE4 and UE5 (bauball below is chrome)
5 - Anisotropy works fine in UE5 but breaks materials for nanite meshes… documented before:
- anisotropic effect in headphones (and all the screenshots above) are rendered in UE472
Currently I have both UE4 & 5 installed. UE4 is still my default engine due to better intergration of all aspects of lighting + effects under raytracing with UE5 being used for specific tasks.
UE5 lumen is great for general but fails when HD reflections are needed, Raytrace is great for perfect reflections but does not EvalSkylight. So overall its usable but UE472 Caustics is just better rendering wise.
UE5 also crashes ALOT (even with simple scenes), esp with sequencer… I havent used non caustics UE5 (or 4 for that matter) so not sure if its related.
Thanks for reading, hope the feedback is useful!
@awsc Hi
NvRTX Unreal 5.3.1 was released on Github.
Any predictions for the release of caustics 5.3?