Vray being integrated into UE4

Makes me wonder why Vray and not Cycles…

What do you mean? It is Chaos Group presentation so that’s why VRay. Looks intriguing, thanks for the link.

I wonder what the point is having non-realtime engines being integrated into game engines (other than having it there to bake lightmaps for actual games)?

Raytracing isn’t quite fast enough yet to do 60 frames without noise (especially with caustics), and having it in a game engine adds the extra step of needing to import every change you make to the scene (not to mention that they are still a ways behind DCC apps. in areas like posing, animation and simulation).

Sure, maybe it would be useful if Unreal for instance also had a modeler (and it does seem like it’s possible), but the only threads on their forum is either about a plugin that died or the mystical geometry editor that Epic doesn’t seem to have any priority towards.

My guess is Architectural Visualization houses are going to jump on this really quick as UE4 became a fashion in that industry since it came out and VRay is religiously used as well. Obviously, they will have libraries of assets with blueprints and all that jazz ready to be used for other projects.

I dont get it…

What’s the point?
the whole idea of using UE4 is to render in real time
why not cut out the middle man and render in max?

I like it. Depending upon resolution limitations, UE4 could be a standalone renederer for stills, or short video clips.

why not cinematics for instance …
You can produce a game and have better quality for movies in between scenes.
And even as said before, people using it for archviz can also get maybe a frame or two with better quality.

What if used by games to dynamically alter texturing content? Imagine settlement building in Fallout 4 where you could force a lightmap rebuild saving the updated lighting information to baked textures. Not saying that is where it’s going, but could be nicer than their current system.

Curious, are there any games out there that dynamically changes textures based on user input?

UE4 - as well as many other game engines - may be “real time” but as far as I recall good-looking lighting is baked (pre-rendered), and many high quality light sources take time to bake. Perhaps this is something that will extend/augment that process?

Exactly, instead of baking all the huge maps, it might be used to render just the current view to get a good impression. Once the desired look is achieved, the more expensive bake process can be started.

As mentioned, it can also be used for cinematics, but it is also an investment into the future. Raytracing is getting faster every year and I don’t think it is that far away that it can be used in realtime with the appropriate portion of cheating that is usually used in games. If the people implementing them already have a decent understanding of the technology, it will help them to get it quicker and better, because of their knowledge and experience.

This is much bigger than just baking better maps.

Coming from an archviz perspective, you have a library of assets that you import and assemble, you can do that in UE just as well as in a 3D package, probably even more comfortably and with a better experience than in 3D DCC suites. And then you can simply render a high-res high-quality VRay image or export to an interactive app or VR app without any overhead (more work). That’s genius!

Compare that to preparing assets for Cycles renders and then exporting to Blend4Web and/or Unity or Unreal. You have to do most of the work over and over! From my experience nearly every second customer realizes the need for realtime assets as well as offline renders after some time. On- and offline rendering are converging (see Eevee)

For Blender a PBR shader export / import based on the Principled shader would be a first step (Modo has something like this I believe)

There are a lot of really unimaginative people here for an artist’s forum… You really can’t see why this is useful?

I think the point is you need to bake the light, with current default setting without any source code level hack, as far as I know, Unreal can only do 1 bounce or so, so its kinda a big deal to those archviz guys, though not as big as VXGI I guess.

Just imagine all those Arch Vis studios with all those Vray files. Now they can all have completely interactive real-time walk-throughs of those scenes. Sounds like winner winner chicken dinner to me.

Also, you won’t (if they do it correctly) have to futz about with converting settings, lights and materials. Import and go. Boom!

Otoy is also integrating Octane into Unity.

What does it mean ? Vray in source code ? or from sdk to source code ? O.o

Perhaps this would make 3D visualization even more portable and affordable for more people.

For example Unreal 4 provides a more streamlined and limited approach, which is enough for specific usages to compose scenes out of pre existing assets.

This is a different approach than you would get from creational programs such as Maya or Blender, where you get to actually have to deal with much more details and features that you won’t actually need.

e.g. An interior decorator would throw some assets and hack some scenes and then deliver the result. Without getting deep into workflow pipeline of a creational suite.

There will be a Blend4Web presentation at the upcoming BCON2017 covering this trend. 100% agreed that EEVEE is a clear example of what is going on recently.