[UDK/CRY] Real-Time Architectural Visualization (fancy name for Environment Art)

Chrisis

Hi guys and gals,

Just wanted to share some work I did recently. It's pretty much environment art, except it was done for the architecture field, meaning the overall style had to be different.. and maybe less exciting.

The first project was done in CryEngine3 and was build according to client specs. It had to have a custom menu, cameras which you could watch, walk mode (collision everywhere), and decent vegetation. Most of the vegetation is cry assets (deadlines, lol). The rest of the project was custom made (3d, mats, textures); with the exception for few cry assets here and there maybe. My now-ex-colleagues did part of the modeling, I did the rest and the cry part..

Video: [ame=" Time Architectural Visualization in CryEngine 3 - YouTube[/ame]

The second project was a tech demo I did fro my previous employer. It was an interior scene in UDK. Again, build to certain specs and had to resemble a Vray render. I.e. the GI (lightmass) was, like, totally pimped, though it's still not quite there. Some of the 3d modelling was done by my colleagues; I've done some of it and the UDK. Really wanted to get that Mirror's Edge look.. my boss didn't quite like the ME style though.

Vid: [ame=" time architectural visualization in Unreal Engine 3 / UDK - YouTube[/ame]

Hope you like!

David_Sola

Looking nice.

e-freak

rendering and time of day setup in the exterior scene is really neat! good job

EmAr

Wow, these look so believable. Congrats!

BTW, the reflections can be reflection captures too. Really would like to know which one was used.

Sharvo

Love this. Looks really good! Crazy what people can do in these engines!

minorthreat

wow that was really impressive, I can't even begin to imagine how you mapped out that first scene. You must be really good with finding a productive workflow.

Chrisis

Thank you guys! Really appreciate the feedback!!

@ProjectEagleeye & @EmAr floor reflections are indeed a SceneCaptureReflectActor. As far as I remember there were 3 actors total (floor, kitchen counter top and kitchen counters side, behind the sink). The actor outputs a texture and you can do pretty much anything to it.

@ProjectEagleeye that's an awesome video from the link! There was an older project in Unity, where I did the Vray magic. But for the UDK map, that was UDK lightmass, because it allows quicker editing, you can keep your materials and textures. Honestly, I wish I knew a way to import vray lightmaps and use them the same way as the beast ones, but so far I don't know how to do that. As for lightmass tweaks, you have to disable lightmaps being compressed and then tweak the production quality settings. There are no settings that work every time, but what I did was double every number in production settings, which is dividable by 2 and half every number that is under 1 (.5 for instance). There is scarce info on what these do, so this was all guesswork. But yeah, baking takes, like, forever..

@minorthreat Thanks. But, errr.. mapping it out? Dunno, it was all built according to architectural plans. Even the road had to be exact, with some crazy elevation info. Some of the buildings had some geometry info provided by the client.. made with revit, but revit and cryengine, those two just don't go together..

minorthreat

oh i see, I was under the impression you had designed and laid out the environment from scratch lol.

Chrisis

Yep Wish I were given that kind of freedom, but then again it's cool to work with real life info too..

S2Engine

Looking great! Especially love the Cryengine scene, what were some of the settings you tweaked to get the render quality?

Chrisis

@S2Engine Thanks!
I followed the info from this thread at crydev: http://www.crydev.net/viewtopic.php?f=326&t=72419 It is mostly the shadow settings in cryengine that need tweaking, I suppose very high spec takes care for the rest. And also, there were no lod-s for the meshes works well for custom vegetation..