Vray for Unreal Engine

[schauk]

also my sky always turns out black. i’ve tried all the sky-actors in the plugin content folder

[Chaos_Group]

Hello everyone,

Thanks for the responses and the time you invested to give our beta a try. I’ll try and answer as best as I can here.

To make things easier for us I would like to ask you to direct your questions in one place - preferably the forums at Chaos Group. Thank you!

@tmammela

Can’t get it working. Just gives a black render, tried with the example project and one of my own.

Also, does this require to use vray material instances or does normal ue4 materials work?

We have updated the docs pages to include the part that textures have to have their “source file” path set correctly:
https://docs.chaosgroup.com/display/VRAYUNREAL/Intro+to+V-Ray+for+Unreal+QuickStart

Currently only V-Ray materials are supported. Rendering UE materials is on the “To do” list.

@anonymous_user_f26c856c1

Hi!

I really don’t get the idea/usage behind it…

So basically you can import a full 3ds max/Vray ready scene into Unreal to render a still frame in Vray again? :S Whaaaaat?!?!:S What’t the point? :S
…and maybe I wasn’t watching carefully but before you can render your still in Unreal you have to build light?!

I really don’t understand the hype… :S

Some of our customers want to render a ray traced version of their UE projects to get better lighting/reflections/refractions.
Yes, this is the UE light bake. While we fully support the lighting UE and Lightmass produce, we are also working towards baking the lighting with V-Ray as a replacement of the Lightmass’ result.

@anonymous_user_f26c856c1

Ahaaa… still no sorry!
I’m sorry but it was ALWAYS like thise in Unreal… the real time part has nothing to do with Vray rendering… that’s Unreal’s bake…

You are correct in that we are using the native UE shading system to represent the V-Ray materials. This way you can keep the high frame rate that you usually go for in a real time engine.
We also transfer the materials in a material instance that:

1. Allows faster interactive changes without much recompilation.
2. Keeps the original V-Ray material under the hood, so when you do a V-Ray rendering it is reused. This way you get the same look as the one you started with.

@Chesire

Can’t render any UE4 material. Needs every single material converted to a UE4-VRay Material right?

Yes, at the moment only V-Ray materials are supported. We are looking into rendering UE materials and we will update you when we have more info on that.

Best regards,
Simeon

[Chaos_Group]

@Chesire

From what I can tell (testing the beta currently) it comes with its own set of Vray materials inside Unreal Engine. If I try to render a UE4 scene with Vray that’s got standard UE4 materials, they all turn pink. The Vray importer also discards any Vray material that uses a composite (which, when working with Vray outdoor scene is approx. halve your mats. UE4 Vray materials also have NOTHING in common with default UE4 materials. There’s a PBR Vray Material which is what you’d typically use when converting a UE4 material with metal/rough to a Vray material but for Vray Scene imports you’re looking at a material that’s fully geared to your typical Vray material in 3dsMax/Maya (makes sense I guess) ll in all this is a HUGE disadvantage. I really hope Chaos Group will create some kind of converter. (Haven’t even tested stuff like fog,particles etc. yet).

The combinations you can create in 3ds Max/Maya/Sketchup are endless, and moreover not optimized for real-time. In addition the shading systems in V-Ray and Unreal are quite different and most of the combinations won’t match, while some cannot be recreated.
That’s where all of you come in and tell us what would you like to see in this product.

The VRayMtl is going to support the PBR model soon, but in the meantime you can use the VRayPBRMtl.
As for a converter - we are looking into this. More info on that will be announced on our dedicated forum.

@schauk

needs to have an converter for standard material as posted above… else its just for simple scenes. if you want vertex painted materials, pom materials etc it’s not working would be great if you can just switch the material typ domain or something to vray (maybe epic can help) instead of relying on a Master Material

Unreal’s architecture does not allow us (as a plugin) to modify the built-in shader. Unfortunately, there is nothing much we can do at this time.

@schauk

also my sky always turns out black. i’ve tried all the sky-actors in the plugin content folder

Could you please post a screen shot of your setup in the “Problems” sub-forum:
https://forums.chaosgroup.com/forum/v-ray-next-beta-for-unreal/v-ray-next-beta-for-unreal-problems

Once more, I encourage you to take the discussion on our dedicated forums, it will make it easier for us to address your questions/issues there. Thanks again!

Best regards,
Simeon

[meijervis]

Great news for V-Ray studios looking to get into using Unreal! Unfortunately I don’t see a lot of use for this for Unreal developers, as you have to convert all your materials to vray parent material (which takes a lot of time) just to get a slightly better looking still image out of it.
I am very curious though to see where they will take it, and if they will implement light mapping (or a better alternative) which would really take this V-Ray - Unreal crossover to the next level.

[darthviper107]

It’d be great if it can be used as an alternate lightmap baking renderer, but it would likely be slower than Lightmass, the advantage though would be that the results would be better.

[Chesire]

@Simeon.Balabanov

The combinations you can create in 3ds Max/Maya/Sketchup are endless, and moreover not optimized for real-time. In addition the shading systems in V-Ray and Unreal are quite different and most of the combinations won’t match, while some cannot be recreated.
That’s where all of you come in and tell us what would you like to see in this product.
Simeon

-The world is grimy. Something as simple as a 3dsMax composite map conversion into a UE4 blend material should be possible. Not saying it’s a breeze but right now I’m missing this option a lot.
I don’t expect procedurals to be ported over into textures but it would be ace if a composite blend of -example- a brick wall with a dirt texture could transfer seamlessly.

-I’d also strongly urge you guys to try your product with some of the ArchInteriors/ArchExteriors scenes made by Evermotion. UE4 Studio(Datasmith) chews through most of these scenes nicely -as in acceptable export and import times- but Vray seems to grind to a absolute crawl the moment you try importing a scene with many lights and slightly more complex geometry than average.

[heartlessphil]

@darthviper107

It’d be great if it can be used as an alternate lightmap baking renderer, but it would likely be slower than Lightmass, the advantage though would be that the results would be better.

Vlado, the ceo of chaosgroup said that they’re working on it on the official vray for unreal forums.

[anonymous_user_d678beb3]

Looking to test the beta but my install appears broken. It gives me the errors:

VRayLog: Error: Looking for V-Ray AppSDK in UE4 plugins: C:/Program Files/EpicGames/UE_4.18/Engine/Plugins/VRayForUnreal/ThirdParty/vrayappsdk/bin/
VRayLog: Error: Error Loading V-Ray SDK: Cannot load V-Ray SDK Library file. [The specified module could not be found.]
VRayLog: Error: Looking for V-Ray AppSDK in VRAY_FOR_UNREAL_APPSDK: C:\Program Files/Chaos Group/V-Ray/Unreal/bin/
VRayLog: Error: Error Loading V-Ray SDK: No license for this product error. Render node license error -98.

If we look at the first log path (C:/Program Files/EpicGames/UE_4.18/Engine/Plugins/VRayForUnreal/ThirdParty/vrayappsdk/bin/), The beta does not create such folder. Instead, it creates “C:\Program Files\Epic Games\UE_4.18\Engine\Plugins\VRayForUnreal\Binaries\Win64”

[anonymous_user_0dafa81b]

Using V-Ray plugin, I can render photos in unreal editor. Is it possible to render via blueprint or any command?

[Jimjams17]

This sounds interesting. For me the biggest issue including datasmith is that it doesn’t seem an easy process to render or screen grab from what a particular camera sees without some form of blueprint. I wish this could be simplified then I would be using it more in my production workflow.

Currently there seems to be a lot of hacks to achieve this but no definitive answer. Until then my stills will still be rendered out of max where I can lock my cameras down.

[dustintinkler]

@Jimjams17

This sounds interesting. For me the biggest issue including datasmith is that it doesn’t seem an easy process to render or screen grab from what a particular camera sees without some form of blueprint. I wish this could be simplified then I would be using it more in my production workflow.

Currently there seems to be a lot of hacks to achieve this but no definitive answer. Until then my stills will still be rendered out of max where I can lock my cameras down.

You can right click on any camera and select pilot which will look through the camera, with that you can lock the camera. Also you can create bookmarks by hitting ctl and any number key, then in the viewport select the arrow and chose high res screenshot.

Hope those help

[Joseph_Vasko]

Does anybody know why sometimes The plugin stops working for no apparent reason? I start the project, It works fine, I create the scene(It’s a big scene) but I try the plugin as I’m building it up, but then at one point the I try it and the render output is all black,( Since the start I did not change any of the settings). then no matter how long I leave it it’s black and doesn’t do anything.
Please help!!!