Simeon Balabanov, Chaos Group V-Ray for Unreal's Product Manager, spoke about the product’s newly released capabilities to what is said to be the only production rendering workflow designed for real-time.
V-Ray for Unreal Update 1, has new support for native Unreal materials, which enables designers to ray trace every part of their scene from their existing Unreal projects. Viewport rendering has also been added, making it easier than ever to produce photorealistic beauty shots and reference checks from within Unreal. The Update is now free for existing customers.
How is the V-Ray for Unreal valuable for architects?
V-Ray for Unreal consolidates two workflows (visualization and real-time) into a single pipeline, without making archviz artists learn a new workflow. Since V-Ray is the industry standard, these teams already have a lot of V-Ray scenes and knowledge on hand. Now, they can bring those scenes, created in 3ds Max, Rhino and SketchUp, into the Unreal Editor.
Once there, users will have access to the full power of V-Ray Next technology, making the process of creating accurate ray-traced visuals possible directly from Unreal Engine. V-Ray’s renowned lighting abilities are also integrated for both rendering and as a light baking engine, ensuring high-fidelity stills and animations.
How might your new release benefit the design process?
Most times, designs come in from a supported V-Ray application (like 3ds Max, SketchUp, Revit, or Rhino) with V-Ray materials, lights, etc. already embedded into a scene. But there others out there who have always approached real-time through an Unreal-based pipeline using Epic’s own materials, or are coming to Unreal from a tool where V-Ray isn’t (e.g., ArchiCAD, Vectorworks, Allplan, MicroStation). Until today, the materials resulting from those paths had not been supported by V-Ray for Unreal.
With this new support, rendering and baking non-V-Ray assets – e.g. those imported through Datasmith, a custom pipeline, or from the Unreal marketplace – is now a simple process. Now, thousands of new people will get access to V-Ray quality, without having to change their workflow.
Who are most of your users?
Predominantly archviz artists.
What do you mean by using Viewport to do reference check for within Unreal?
Interactive rendering is essential to the creative process. When users can see their changes depicted in the viewport in real-time, they can make better decisions about where they want to go next. Some designers specifically want to use V-Ray as a reference check on their scene or objects within it to see how they would look in a real-life environment. Because V-Ray lights and materials are both physically based and ray traced, we can provide the 100% accuracy they are looking for, so they can make better decisions faster.
The second piece of this is more technical. By improving our light baking, which has long been associated with longer rendering times, we’ve given users access to even more realism within the viewport. In general, light baking is much faster, only taking a few seconds of an artist’s time. In addition, the tone mapping and post processing effects available for Unreal are different from our own. With viewport rendering, users can finally see the V-Ray result with Unreal’s tone mapping and post processing effects applied. So better visualizations for more workflows.
What are the various starting places in a project that you’re referring to, when you say the V-Ray quality is always available and can be applied to all workflows?
This goes back to the native support for Unreal materials. The first release of V-Ray for Unreal was aimed at current V-Ray users, which happens to include 92 of the top 100 architecture firms. We wanted to make sure they were covered.
The second release was about bringing in everyone that uses Unreal, but doesn’t use V-Ray. And that required us to support Unreal’s native materials. So now whatever path you are taking into Unreal, we have you covered. Once in, V-Ray is also going to be available across the entire design process, so if someone wanted to see how their real-time experience is going to look as an animation or as a still, they can do that anytime they want. Same story for reference checks or final renders. The artists will ultimately decide what makes the most sense for them.
Are the renderings based upon actual 3D model calculations, or used in pre-BIM?
V-Ray will render all of the data (i.e. models, materials, lights) that is in Unreal. This is usually non-parametric, polygon-based geometry. However, all of the materials and lights will be converted to physically correct ones when rendered with V-Ray.
Features from Company Materials:
Unreal Materials
With V-Ray for Unreal, Unreal materials are automatically converted into V-Ray equivalents at render time, allowing all projects to use V-Ray from the Unreal Editor. Now, thousands of new users can access V-Ray quality and light baking without adjusting their established workflow, blending the best of real-time and ray tracing into a single pipeline.
Viewport Rendering
Users can now render interactively as they iterate, seeing the results of changes to lights and materials directly in the Unreal viewport. As looks develop, users can activate V-Ray to produce beauty shots or cycle through options at the highest fidelity possible. Physically based lighting also allows V-Ray for Unreal to act as a reference tool, providing designers with the most realistic view of how their assets will look in a real-world situation.
A Better Bridge
With new 1:1 support for Datasmith material translations, Update 1 makes it possible for CAD designers to utilize the full power of V-Ray technology and its physically based materials, giving them a ground truth representation they can rely on.
Speed and Memory Optimizations
Numerous optimizations have been added across the board, including better memory usage around large data sets and scenes with millions of polygons. Light baking is also now up to 60 percent faster without sacrificing quality.
To see V-Ray for Unreal’s full capabilities, please visit the product page.
Pricing/Availability
V-Ray for Unreal Update 1 is free and available now to current customers. Update 1 also adds support for Unreal Engine 4.22. New seats can be purchased by a variety of methods including monthly ($80), annual ($470) and education pricing, which comes as a flat $99 fee for students, educators and universities. Interested parties can also visit the website for a free starter’s guide
_______________________________________________________________________
Congratulations to the winner of the AECCafe/GISCafe Sweepstakes held at SPAR, Chitwan Saluja!
As Platform Technologies Manager for the North Region at Jacobs, Chitwan Saluja manages the company’s Building Information Modeling (BIM) and technology implementation in the North Region while contributing to business development efforts, community outreach and the cultivation of an environment of innovation. Chitwan is a graduate of The Pennsylvania State University (PSU) with a Master of Science (MS) in Architectural Engineering. She brings over 10 years of experience in the construction industry specifically focused on technology implementation in the AEC industry. Her background is in development, implementation, and management of technology environments for the design, construction and operation of large facility programs. Chitwan’s primary responsibility is the implementation of Building Information Modeling (BIM) during the lifecycle of the project.
The post Chaos Group Releases V-Ray for Unreal Update 1 for Archviz Users appeared first on AECCafe Voice.