Some experimentation with photogrammetry and Lumen,
more info on ArtStation
Greetings @mliuzzi !
Thank you for sharing your latest project with us, as well as your ArtStation.
You’ve done such an incredible job with the trees! This scene is very reminiscent of the swamps and bayous of the American South - only the trees are different and there are a lot more annoying, biting insects flying around. 
Your environment is so realistic, I can almost smell it! I really appreciate how there is a slight wobble in the camera, as if the scene was filmed from a waterborne vehicle.
What was the inspiration for your project? What was your process in determining the lighting for the environment?
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Thank you for the kind words 
I had been living in Scotland for a bit at that point, near a forested area that had a lake formed from an old limestone quarry. Most of the tree trunk meshes + textures came from that area, as well as some ground patches, and of course the old tire that has now become a small ecosystem.
I was going with as much photogrammetry as possible for this project, partially as an experiment to see if it was indeed faster than other methods. I found that when trying to achieve the randomness and organic feeling of nature sometimes the best artist is nature itself. Poly count of course becomes an issue quickly with leaves/ trees, but the engine handles it nicely by importing them as foliage actors.
Lighting is mainly a process of using different objects to create nice shapes for shadows and block the right amount of light from reaching the forest floor. If you spun the camera around you would see quite a few trees floating in the air at strange angles, there just to create shadow shapes for the shots. Luckily I was spending every day out in the forest by my house so I had constant reference to look at. I found it interesting that actually being in the forest gave a better reference for the experience of working in the engine than photos would have. Having textures and lighting displayed realtime while you work has a sort of immersive effect that I don’t get from working with traditional rendering engines, you are IN it rather than looking at it, if that makes sense. As always I push the saturation on indirect lighting as much as possible and dial it back at the end. There are also a few spotlights as well in there set at an extremely low strength to fine tune things.
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Really well done and great lighting! Love the little bugs flying around
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Did I misunderstand, sharing a downloadable project? Or simply sharing this insight into his obvious talents. Great job by the way!
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Thanks I actually didn’t set it up to share. I threw a bit of my file folder OCD out the window , as we do sometimes on personal projects, and I’d be pretty embarrassed based on the organization of the directories alone. Another factor is how I set up shots for VFX, this environment isn’t completely built out, and everything is super high resolution…so only people with a 3090 would be able to have a decent time, and it doesn’t look great once you angle away from these shots.
If you’re after the trees, do understand the frustration with a lack of photogrammetry quality trees / tree trunks out there, especially getting a variety of one species etc. It’s why I spent nearly a month in the forest getting my process down. Funny, it also drives me nuts to see the models the drone guys are doing on sketchfab just to show and not download lol, I definitely get it. (so many awesome dilapidated buildings I’ll never possess 
) So yeah, that’s basically my long winded way of saying sorry, it’s just a personal project.
Very inspirational work. The flying insects are one of the details that make your project appear so realistic.
Thanks for sharing. Look forward to seeing the next one.
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Hi Andy!
No, I was not referring to sharing a downloadable project. I was regarding the sharing of mliuzzi’s talent on our forums! 
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Freakin’ gorgeous.
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Great job! As others said, your lighting is great, textures and atmosphere in general.
I am new in UE and I am learning it this period, I have a simple question if you don’t mind:
The video is made with PathTracing or is in real time? I see no graphic issues like the Lumen and Shadows vibrations and AA is great. If you tell me is real time, well, I can’t figure out how to make visually better my real times scenes as Lumen and shadows are always vibrating and it is very annoying…
Thanks in advance!
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A new thing to fry my PC with
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dude this is awesome…reminds me of Left4dead game map
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too awesome
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It’s been said but those flying insects really sell it! Love the water material!
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This was not done with path tracing, actually - just 5.0 Lumen. I must have spent an entire week trying to eliminate flicker, what I ended up doing was moving things around to either block the flickering spots or rearrange objects until it stopped or was hidden.
Ironically most of this has been taken care of in 5.1. I honestly feel kinda dumb for not being patient and waiting…woops.
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