Best 3d software for realistic rendering

iamheretolearn

Hi Guys/Girls,

I hope you guys can help me out as I am really new in this field. I am a AI researcher looking to quickly set up realistic looking environments with minimal artistic effort. In these environments we will try some simple scripting (e.g. like automatically taking screenshots, moving objects around, and changing lighting/weather conditions). I've dabbled a bit using Unity and the scripting side looks really nice but I have not achieved realistic looking scenes yet.  We're really looking to make environments looking as realistic as possible (not as aesthetic as possible). Could you guys give me an opinion as to which 3D environment (that allows for simple scripting) would be suitable to let us generate realistic environments (while being non-artistic geeks). Are there big differences between Unity5/UE4/Cryengine?

We should note that we don't care so much for FPS as we are starting off by only considering static environments, but maybe we would like to incorporate moving objects at a later stage so. We also don't mind paying for assets.

Thank you very kindly for your expert input

prixster

Unreal, in particular, looks best when it can use its baked-lighting deferred rendering pipeline, which generally isn't suitable for games without static environments. If you're truly comfortable learning the ins and outs of any tool, I might actually suggest Cryengine (or perhaps Lumberyard nowadays, being based on Cryengine tech). Cryengine has always been focused on real time lighting, massive view distances, and large environments.
With that said, where Cryengine really lacks is tooling and documentation, for which both Unity and Unreal are far superior. They have larger communities as well, which means that those docs are supplemented by the huge knowledge base of forum posts, walk through, Youtube videos, etc. If none of that concerns you, however, I think Cryengine or Lumberyard are probably the best fit for your technical needs.
And what Unity doesn't do well is automatic multithreading.
 
If your production supports ray-tracing rendering then use Arnold / Vray / Corona / Redshift.
Few months ago Epic Games demonstrated real time ray-tracing feature in UE4 collaborated by ILMxLAB, check it out.

musashidan

iamheretolearn said:

Could you guys give me an opinion as to which 3D environment would be suitable to let us generate realistic environments (while being non-artistic geeks).

That's exactly what I'd love as well. Then we wouldn't need unbelievably talented environment artists who spend years perfecting their skill and knowledge in the pursuit of such environments......

But seriously mate, I know you've said you're new in this field, but it takes teams of the best artists in the world years to create the most realistic environments you see today in games.

A starting point for you might be to look into Quixel Megascans. This will give you a (limited to the library)headstart on out of the box realism, but if you think you can side step the artistic/tech art requirements altogether, then I'm afraid you'll be sorely disappointed.

If you're not looking to do animations then why not look into offline path-tracers? I maybe I misunderstood you and there is a reason you want to use an RT engine specifically.

throttlekitty

What kinds of environments do you want? Megascans would be a good start if you're looking for organic stuff like forests. Look into sites like turbosquid to get a feel for the kinds of assets you could buy. The downside to buying assets is that not every creator is working toward the same common goal or using the same texture/material techniques; be prepared to tweak them to make a mishmash of assets look good in a scene.

Getting high levels of realism is a long and difficult task in any software. I'm not trying to deflate you here, just helping setting an expectation for someone who is just starting out. This is certainly doable in Unreal/Unity, just understand there is no clearly labeled "make it look good without any problems" button. I personally can't point you to any good tutorials, not having spent much time in either.

What are the goals with your presentation? Guessing that you're wanting to show off some of your AI work. You could cut a lot of corners and jump straight into pretty nice looking renders with Image Based Lighting (IBL). With some well-photographed panorama photos to be the scene, characters can be shown off quite nicely. But the background is simply an image, which may be a downside depending on what you're after.