Reality isn’t perfect, so our renders shouldn’t be either. If we want to simulate what a room *actually *looks like in reality, we need to add more to the scene than post-process effects, walls, and materials.
Looking at the floor of my office right now, I could say that the carpet is black. As clean as it is, there are still specks of dust, small clumps of dirt, and other imperfections. If I were to recreate this floor in UE4, my first thought would be to add a black carpet material and maybe factor some procedural imperfections on top of it. To match realism, I could add some camera effects to give it a better look. After building and rendering, I would have an idealistic version of what the floor might look like. Throw some shallow depth of field on it and call it a day, right? I don’t think that is good enough. It certainly isn’t precise enough.
Does anyone have a method for adding these little things? I’m talking about small clumps of dust, dirt in the corner, random rare bumps and extrusions on plaster walls, etc. I would be hesitant to add additional geometry - considering the things I’m referring to are less than a centimeter in size. Maybe some macro texturing with POM and normals?
Any ideas?