Pipeline for rendering static images in UE5

lilweep

I am curious about using UE5 for rendering in the new Lumen render engine.

My main motivation for using UE5 is to take advantage of high poly world environments and not need to worry about asset budgets as much. I have a RTX 2080TI and constantly run into render issues with Iray if i make environments too complex.

Guess main questions I have are:

• What are the limitations of bringing Daz Assets over to UE5 (E.g., Figures, Props, Environments from Daz Library)?
• Does the new Nanite virtualisation of meshes mean we basically have unlimited geometry?  Are meshes we import from elsewhere (e.g., content from Daz) eligible to be virtualised into Nanite meshes?
• What does the pipeline look like for doing static renders?

Ellessarr

lilweep said:

I am curious about using UE5 for rendering in the new Lumen render engine.

My main motivation for using UE5 is to take advantage of high poly world environments and not need to worry about asset budgets as much. I have a RTX 2080TI and constantly run into render issues with Iray if i make environments too complex.

Guess main questions I have are:

• What are the limitations of bringing Daz Assets over to UE5 (E.g., Figures, Props, Environments from Daz Library)?
• Does the new Nanite virtualisation of meshes mean we basically have unlimited geometry?  Are meshes we import from elsewhere (e.g., content from Daz) eligible to be virtualised into Nanite meshes?
• What does the pipeline look like for doing static renders?

so far the only limitations are the same as ue4, things like dforce fur,hair can't be exported, stuffs like fibermesh have a chance of can't be exported or don't work, overal most of the props can be exported sometimes some stuffs will bug like not proper export the texture or when exporting a full scene some cases can happen of not export correctly the scene like missing stuffs overal i thing is that.

about the nanites limite i thing what is matter is "your pc" so far i saw peoples using nanite to export billions or even trillions of polygons, it can bug unreal like it can't proper count too big numbers bring numbers errors, but it still work, however remember most of the times we are talking about you place in the scene the same high poly object multiple times, which is different from place multiple different high poly objects, but overal nanite can handle big number what is matter is your pc, if you have the famous "NASA" pc, which can anything at 500fps then you are ready to detonate your machine otherwise i would recomend you don't abuse too much, remember we are still in earlly acess and it's can be bug trying to "play too much", also nanites only work with static meshes not skeletal meshes, you can do some trick if you know how to do and make a dumy skeletal mesh and attach to it all the "static meshes" like the unreal exemple titan character it was made by attaching many static meshes in a dummy skeleta mesh.

i'm not good at stati render then on that i can't help but without any doubts the light of lumen is much better than the previous one. 

Senor_Monkey

One of the things both UE4 and UE5 allow you to do is take a HD screenshot of your scene. This can be as either a single image, or as a few higher detail images that you can then stich together in an art program. The biggest benefit of this is that the screenshot is instant. - there is no rendering time whatsoever. For producing a comic book or the likes, this would be undoubtely an important feature.

Using Render Queue gives a higher quality image though, and will allow you to produce custom passes, so if you want to produce a specific layer, such as ambient occlusion, you can do this. This is better for designers, who may need specific details bringing out on an image.

As Ellessarr said, the limitations of UE5 for Daz products is basically the same right now as it is for UE4. The biggest issues for me in porting over are the quality of meshes - the FBX format downgrades them somewhat, and they never appear as sharp as they do inside Daz Studio, the quality of Hair when it is ported over, and the lack of Geoshell support.

Having said all this, Daz were awarded an Epic Megagrant, so I would assume that things will only improve going forward, and Daz are holding a Facebook live event this weekend, which may or may not have some kind of announcement in it regarding this. 

People are doing exciting things with UE5, but these things are not aimed at the casual hobbyist. Some guy on youtube duplicating the same object thousands of times to build a polycount might make an interesting couple of minutes, but it's not actually anything useful. 

Ellessarr

Senor_Monkey said:

One of the things both UE4 and UE5 allow you to do is take a HD screenshot of your scene. This can be as either a single image, or as a few higher detail images that you can then stich together in an art program. The biggest benefit of this is that the screenshot is instant. - there is no rendering time whatsoever. For producing a comic book or the likes, this would be undoubtely an important feature.

Using Render Queue gives a higher quality image though, and will allow you to produce custom passes, so if you want to produce a specific layer, such as ambient occlusion, you can do this. This is better for designers, who may need specific details bringing out on an image.

As Ellessarr said, the limitations of UE5 for Daz products is basically the same right now as it is for UE4. The biggest issues for me in porting over are the quality of meshes - the FBX format downgrades them somewhat, and they never appear as sharp as they do inside Daz Studio, the quality of Hair when it is ported over, and the lack of Geoshell support.

Having said all this, Daz were awarded an Epic Megagrant, so I would assume that things will only improve going forward, and Daz are holding a Facebook live event this weekend, which may or may not have some kind of announcement in it regarding this. 

People are doing exciting things with UE5, but these things are not aimed at the casual hobbyist. Some guy on youtube duplicating the same object thousands of times to build a polycount might make an interesting couple of minutes, but it's not actually anything useful. 

for the geoshell you have a work around, in some cases of geoshell if it follow the "UV" of the mesh part then it can be in some cases direct applied to the material, you just have to blender the geoshell texture with the base texture, it's possible in many cases, you just ignore the geo shell and apply the texture direct to the character, ofcourse it will be good as long you don't do "close ups" otherwise will be visible which the texture is painted in the main mesh unless you proper generate a "normal map and tesselation/ ambient occlusion maps which it would make those areas look less painted" in more close screen, but still better than nothing.

 

the issue with geo shell is the same issue as the deforce hair/fur they are stuffs "created specifically for daz, they don't really work outside daz as they work inside, be unreal or any other place the result will be the same, you need to create a pluging for the engine or improve the pluging to it also "export the geo shell as it was supposed to work outside daz, which would need direct help from daz software developers team with david then they have enough knowledge in how to make it work inside daz or even others programs, sumarying it is really complicated, i'm not saying impossible but very close. 

Ruphuss

is there something in ue4 thats compareble with the scalability option in ue5 ?

for me its helps a lot to use ue5

Senor_Monkey

You mean this?

 

Ruphuss

never noticed this before

thanks for this senor_monkey