Engagement 200k+ views, 80+ comments

Topics Included Datasmith, DirectLink, Lumen, Quixel Bridge, templates, sample projects, and modeling tools

During Sam’s time at Epic, she produced multiple webinars, including Unreal Engine for Architecture. This webinar explores how to use Unreal Engine 5 for architectural projects looking to enhance visual fidelity from CAD data, as demonstrated here with Revit. With a focus on lighting, rendering techniques, and helpful tips for architects, Sam takes a model from Aerial Genomics and utilizes an array of Unreal Engine tools to produce high resolution renderings.

Credit Epic Games

Model BIMstream and Boch Center’s Wang and Shubert Theatres

3D Environment Sam Anderson

Script Sam Anderson

Voiceover Sam Anderson

Editing Sam Anderson

Tools Autodesk Revit, Unreal Engine, Adobe Premiere Pro, NVIDIA A6000, Ninja Atomos, Apollo Solo, RE20

Transcript

00:00 Introduction

00:50 Getting started

02:10 New UI

03:00 Level templates

05:50 Template water material

07:05 Template Post Process Volumes

10:00 Template spline tools

12:46 Other template tools

13:05 Import projects using Datasmith

23:52 Lumen

33:10 Direct Link interoperability

35:08 Modeling Tools

40:23 Create a still render

47:00 Conclusion

Introduction

00:00 Hello everybody, welcome to today’s webinar. Today we will be covering some features inside Unreal Engine 5 that could be helpful in architectural workflows. Leveraging the latest technology, Unreal Engine 5 empowers big and small teams to really push the boundaries for what is possible visually and interactively. Today we will be covering the latest updates and starting templates for the architecture industry. Then we’ll dive into setting up a project using Datasmith DirectLink with some new rendering features and then we’ll wrap everything up with some additional tips for utilizing Unreal Engine 5 for your architecture projects.

Getting started

00:50 So let’s start from scratch here. I’m going to open up the Epic Games Launcher. I’ll go over to the Library tab and if you do not have Unreal Engine 5 downloaded yet, you can get it by going to the + button next to engine versions, going down to the dropdown here, and selecting your engine of choice. Since I already have Unreal Engine 5 downloaded, I’ll launch it here.

Now if you’ve previously worked in Unreal Engine 4, you may notice this window looks a little bit different. There’s now an architecture page here. So you’ll see that we have a couple of different templates that we can start with.

Architecture templates

01:28 If you’re looking to do multi-user, Collab Viewer is great. If you want to move more into augmented reality, this handled AR template is going to be a nice starting point. I’ll be working through this Archivs template, showing you some of the latest updates for the template itself. Now this might be a really nice starting point for if you are brand new to Unreal Engine. I’ll go ahead and select that project. You can pick a project location here. Hit Select. Now I’m going to name my project, and then select Create.

New UI

02:10 Now once again, the screen might look a little bit different if you are familiar with Unreal Engine 4. The user interface has been updated to help improve usability and speed. I won’t be covering all of the updates here, But I will be pointing a few out as I go. So the first thing you might notice is that the Content Drawer is down here at the bottom of the screen. So in order to bring up that Content Drawer, I can select the folder here. And you’ll see that it pops up and then as I start working again and select something in my project, it disappears. Now this is helpful if you like working with that larger viewport. However, if you want to dock it, you still are able to do so. So I’ll select Content Drawer here, go up to the top right hand side, and select Dock in Layout.

Level templates

03:00 Now in order to get started I’m going to create a new level. The level is essentially a scene that we will be developing our project in. In order to create a new level, I’m going to go up to the left hand side, select File > New Level. Now you’ll see that there are a couple of different level templates we can start with here. Now we have two interior ones, the one on the left is going to be great if you like to work with Lumen. I’ll go into the details of Lumen a little bit later in the presentation. And then on the right hand side we have our interior Lightmass. This is the template if you would like to bake your lighting. For this project, I’m going to work with this Exterior template. So I’ll go ahead and select Create. And then I’ll save my file name as Webinar.

Now one nice thing about these templates is that you can really curate your templates as you go. For instance, say as you start working, you realize that you like to start off your projects with a base template that you know you’ll be able to use in the future. These templates that we provide are a starting point for that. So in order to take a look at those base templates, I’m going to find where they live inside of my project. In order to do that, I’m going to use this Filter icon in the middle of the screen in the Content Browser. Now, the Content Browser contains materials, textures, tools, levels. So sometimes it’s helpful to filter as you’re working to speed up the process. So I’m going to hit this dropdown and these are all of the filters that you can apply. For now, I’m going to apply this Level filter. Now you’ll see, we have our Exterior and Interior levels, as well as the Webinar level I just created.

Now, say I would like to make some changes to that Exterior template so that when I create new projects, it’s going to draw from a template that I have curated. So for instance, I'm going to open up this Exterior template. I’m going to remove this geometry, we don’t need it in our project. Perhaps the background as well. And I’m going to hit File > Save All. Now when I create a new level, it automatically creates a new level based off the curated template. So essentially this is allowing you to be able to make edits to those templates that best fit your workflows. But before you can know what you may want to make changes to in the template, you first need to understand what’s currently in that template. So let’s take a moment to walk through some of those features.

Template water material

05:50 Today I’ll be focusing on the Water, the Toon Material, and Spline tools. Now you automatically see the water when you open up the level. This water was included by the team so that you have easy access to a water material. If I go to the right hand side, underneath the Details panel, you’ll see that we have our materials listed here. Now, underneath the MI_WaterPond, I can select the magnifying glass here to pull up that material. Now the MI stands for Material Instance, which is a part of the naming structure that the Unreal Engine Start Materials are set up on. When I double click this material, you’ll be able to see some of the options that we have for editing this material. I’l go ahead and drag out this Details panel, and let’s play around with some of these settings. So you’ll see the changes that are occurring inside of Unreal Engine as I make those changes. So I’ll go ahead and save it and close out of that, But any time I'd like to use it for a project, I can drag and drop this material onto any element. So now, let’s take a look at some of the other objects in here.

Template Post Process Volumes

07:05 So you’ll see that there are two boxes here that have outlines. So these are going to be the Post-Process Volumes. Post-Process Volumes allow you to set post processing materials within a certain volume. So this can include tone mapping, color correction, lens effects, and rendering features. This can be particularly helpful in architecture when you may want to control the settings for different rooms, floors, or buildings within your project. Now, you’ll notice that the small one includes an NPR effect and that when I go inside of the volume, a Toon material pops up around those trees. So NPR stands for non-photorealism. So you start to see that Toon material pop up around the exterior of the geometry. As I go outside of the box, you’ll see that the Toon line diminishes away and it’s focusing on the other Post-Process volume we have inside of the project. So this is a great example of how you can apply a different rendering setting for different rooms. Now, the bottom one is contained to that box. So perhaps I want to actually apply it to the whole scene. In order to do that, I'm going to go into the search tab, type Post Process. Select the NPR_PostProcessVolume. Then down in the Details panel, I’m going to type in Extent. And I’m going to select this Infinite Extent. So now it’s applied to the entire project.

So I’m going to clear this Extent here, scroll down, and you’ll see all of the options of things that I have control over. For now, I'm going to go over to this Global setting, Select the check mark next to Saturation. I’ll hit the dropdown here and I’ll change this to zero. So now it’s similar to a tonal sketch that you may want to use early in a project. And then later, you can always switch in between the two. So if you are working towards realism, you could develop with the Post-Process volume, then if you want to take screenshots for a client where the materials aren’t quite ready to show, you can turn on this NPR_PostProcessVolume. Now if this is interesting to you, you could even create an Editor Utility Widget to create a user interface that has buttons that will switch between the two easily. Now, we won’t be covering that today but I did want to make you aware that there are options for creating your own user interface in Unreal Engine. So I’m going to go ahead and actually delete this because we’ll be working with this Post-Process Volume.

Template spline tools

10:00 So now, one of the other things that I want to showcase are the street lamps in this project. So you’ll notice that when I select one of the street lamps, all of the street lamps are selected and look like they are aligned with a spline here. So if I go over to the notes associated with that spline, it lets me know that these meshes are instances along a spline. Now our team has made this a blueprint that we can take and create our own blueprints from.

So let’s take a step back and first talk about blueprints. Blueprint is Unreal’s visual scripting system that provides the ability for designers to create custom gameplay, tools, and scripts within the project. This can be helpful when creating customized interactive elements or workflow tools for building out scenes. So this template provides an example here so I can take it and expand on it. So let’s take a look at how to do that. I’m going to first go down to this Content Drawer, I’ll go back to the Content folder. And I’m going to search for BP, which stands for Blueprint. Now you’ll see that we have the Blueprint Spawn Mesh Along Spline. I’m going to drag and drop that into the scene. So now that I’ve brought it in, you’ll see that there is a note here with a little spline attached. So this spline is going to be the line that dictates where the meshes lie. So if I go over to the right hand side and scroll all the way up, you’ll notice that we have our Blueprint SpawnMeshAlongSpline. We have our spline in an HierarchicalInstancedStaticMesh. So the Static Mesh is something that we can apply here. So I'm going to hit this dropdown under None and I know I have a pillar in here. So I’m going to type in Pillar. I’ll select this pillar frame and you’ll notice that they automatically populate along the spline. But it looks like there’s some overlapping happening here. So we will need to increase the distance between instances, which can be found right below that Static Mesh in the Details panel. I’ll increase this to 25. Now it looks like we’ve got some space in between each of those now. But say I wanted this to be a railing along the walkway. I’ll need these to be a little bit smaller. In order to do so, I can use the Instance Scale here. So here, I’ll type in .25 for each one. Move it around so you’ll see how the mesh follows along the spline. So you can see how easy it can be to create an array of any kind in your project.

Other template tools

12:46 Now there are a few other examples here that I won’t be covering but I do want to bring them to your attention. So you’ll notice that we have the sidewalk here, as well as trees and some scattered foliage in this project. So I encourage you to read all the notes in your project if you’d like to learn more.

Import projects using Datasmith

13:05 So that covers the basics of the Architecture Template. Now I want to bring in my own geometry. To start off, I’m going to delete some of the elements that are in here that I will not need. And I’ll switch over to a different camera as well. Now before we go any further, I’ll save this as Wang Theatre. So let’s first take a look at the geometry that I will be bringing in. So I have two Revit models that were graciously shared by Ariel Genomics for the Boch Centre Wang Theatre. The space was scanned with the P40 Leica Terrestrial Scanner, as well as the GeoSLAM Revo RT. These scans inform the production of the Revit models you will see today. We will be linking the building file with a MEP file in Revit as well as a 3ds Max context model. So this is a great example of how you can aggregate models of different types inside of one Unreal Engine project.

To bring in these assets, we will be using Datasmith. Datasmith is a collection of tools and plugins that bring entire, pre-constructed scenes and complex assets created into Unreal Engine. This includes lights, textures, metadata, and more. Now what we will be working towards for this portion of the presentation is getting these models set up using Datasmith Direct Link. Now in order to use Datasmith, we will need to download the Daamstih Plugin for Revit. You can do this by opening up your browser and going to unrealengine.com. In the search bar, you can type in Datasmith Plugins. Now here, I’ll go to the Datasmith export plugins, and you’ll see all the different programs that we can choose from. For this one, I downloaded the Autodesk Revit Exporter. So once you have this downloaded you can restart your Revit project and a new toolbar is going to be embedded into the user interface.

So let’s go take a look at that. We see here, I can go over to this Expansion button and select Datasmith here. Now I’m going to work backwards through these settings to explain some of the new features that have come with the latest DirectLink plugin. So first, we have our Settings cog here. You’ll notice that we have the ability to change the level of tessellation. Now this is set to default at 8. Now you could lower this number if visual fidelity is not important to your project. So for instance, if you had a lot of columns in your project that did not need to be perfectly round, you can lower this number of tessellation and it’s going to allow you to bring in an optimized model. So you could play around with the number and see what works best for your project. I’ll be keeping this number at 8. Now we also have the ability to curate our metadata here. Now you see, I could remove the dimensions if I wanted to. Or I could add a new metadata group that might be important to the project. So for instance, say constraints are important. You could select Constraints and hit OK. So I’ll go ahead and close out of the settings. Now let’s take a look at the messages. Currently there’s nothing in this window, but as you’re working, if you start to experience any errors, the text will pop up in this Message window.

Now, we have two different Datasmith functions here. We have this File Export as well as the Direct Link. Now what this is going to allow you to do is export your Revit file as a Datasmith file that you can then import and bring into Unreal Engine. Now, this might be helpful if you are working with a team, where the person working in Unreal Engine may not have the same Revit version as you do. You could export that Datasmith file, and they’ll be able to import it on their end without ever opening up Revit. However, if you are the person that’s working inside of Revit and Unreal Engine, you could utilize this DirectLink Datasmith option. So in order to do this, I’m going to hit Synchronize. Now you’ll notice a Status bar pops up at the bottom letting you know that it’s exporting the Wang Theatre. And if I go over to Connections, you'll see that no connection is found. So what we will actually need to do is to embed the connection inside Unreal Engine. So in order to do that, I’ll open up my Unreal Engine project. I’lll go over to this green + button. This is the Content icon where I’m able to bring in any geometry. Now I’ll go down to Datasmith and select Direct Link Import. Now you'll see that it’s already recognizing those two Revit models I have open. So I’ll first bring in this Wang Theatre. I’ll hit Select. Now I’ll be bringing it into my Content folder. I’ll hit OK. In here, we're able to control which elements we bring into our Unreal Engine project. Now you see, you do have the ability to bring in lights. For this project, I’ll be setting up my own lights, so I’m going to turn the lights off. I’ll go to Select Import. So now you’ll see that the project has been brought in. I'll go ahead and go inside to take a look at what the interior looks like.

Now I'm going to delete this floor and the sidewalk path here, as well as all of the notes. So you may notice that there is quite a fog in the space. So since this project is set up for exteriors, and the project I’m using both has interiors and exteriors. I’m going to go through and lower the ExponentialHeightFog. So here, I’ll change this density to 0.001 for now.

Now, let’s go ahead and add that MEP file as well. I'm going to go over to my Revit project, I’ll go over to the Datasmith tab, I’ll hit Synchronize. Now, I’ll add this one into the project as well. So now we have the MEP elements in here also. Now I know that there are situations in which you are getting multiple models from different teams or consultants. So I’m going to showcase bringing in a Datsmith file that was exported and not using DirectLink. So this time I’ll go up to that Get Content button. Go to Datasmith and go over to the simple File Import. Now here, I’ll be bringing in the Wang Theatre context. I’ll keep the settings as is. So now, if I want to take an easy look at the project, I could go down, select one of the elements in the Outliner, hit F on my keyboard, and it’s going to focus it on the geometry. So now, you'll see that the context model has indeed been brought in. Switch over to one of the cameras here. And you’ll see that the camera came in that was established inside of Revit.

Now let's take a look at the difference between some of these Datasmith files. You’ll notice that if there is an Update and a Re-import for the 3dsMax file, I could re-import it here. Now I’ll navigate to the MEP file here, which was set up using DirectLink. You’ll notice we have a green icon here that is letting us know that DirectLink is enabled. If I right click, you’ll see that you have the ability to turn that Direct Link off and on for auto re-import. Now I think this is a good spot to jump on over to the project fully built out to showcase some of the Unreal Engine 5 features further. I’ll take you through how I built out the project. I’ll showcase Lumen. Then I’ll go through some of the workflows that enable you to make progress on your model without losing the edits and lighting that you have in Unreal Engine. Lastly, I’ll show you a few modeling tools that will give you some flexibility for how you work between your Revit model and Unreal Engine.

City Sample buildings

21:26 So as you can see on the screen here, we have the project built out. We’re looking at the exterior here, where I’ve added some materials. And I've also added some surrounding buildings to help build out the context for reflections. Now all of these buildings are available to Unreal Engine users. In order to get them, you can go to the Epic Games Marketplace. Go to Free > Epic Games Content. And you’ll be looking for these City Sample Buildings. So you can add these to your project and drag and drop them into your scene.

Quixel Bridge

22:08 Now I’ll go back to Unreal Engine and you’ll see that I don’t quite have the streetscape built out yet, so I’ll cover some of the new features within Unreal Engine 5 that makes populating the scene a little bit easier. So I’ll be showcasing Quixel Megascans. Quixel Megascans is a part of the Epic Games ecosystem that uses photogrammetry to produce assets that Unreal Engine creators have access to. So with your Epic Games account, you’ll be able to go up to this Get Content button. Go down to Quixel Bridge, and you’ll notice that a window pops up that has 3D assets, plants, surfaces, and more. Now what’s new with Unreal Engine 5 is that you’re able to dock this inside of your window and bring assets into your project from here. So I'll make this a little bit bigger. I’m going to go to the 3D assets, I’ll go down to Street. Now I’ll take a look here. I’ll go further to define that and say that I’m looking for some props. Now say that I want to bring in some street signs. So I can select this. It looks like I’ve already downloaded it. So I can hit Add here. It’s going to bring it into my Content Browser here. Now all I need to do is drag and drop that into the scene. So you can imagine how I could quickly start to populate this scene with all of those Quixel assets. So now that we have all of the geometry in and a little bit of behind-the-scenes for some of the context.

Lumen

23:52 I’ll go ahead and go into the scene and let’s take a look at Lumen. So now we’re in the interior scene. I’m going to go ahead and minimize the side window here and close that Bridge, since we won't need it. And we're going to talk a little bit about Lumen now.

Since I started this project with the Archvis template in Unreal Engine 5, the Global Illumination is set up with Lumen. So Lumen is Unreal Engine 5’s default global illumination and reflection. It is fully dynamic, meaning no baking or pre-computation is required. It provides infinite diffuse bounces, which means it’s great for architectural objects that may have bright diffuse materials, like a white wall paint. Now it’s good to know some of the limitations of Lumen. So you’ll want to understand the use case for your Unreal Engine project before you start developing all of your render settings. It could be helpful to think of the end use. Will this be used for Virtual Reality? Will the main use be Path Traced still images, or are you looking to create real-time walkthroughs? Lumen can be used for the highest fidelity in real-time which includes interactive experiences and animations but does not include virtual reality. In 5.0, Lumen delivers consistency between the real-time render and offline path tracing. So if you are looking to do high resolution imagery, you are able to start with this as well. But please be aware that there are some nuances for Lumen in 5.0. You can read the Lumen documentation for more information.

Now as I mentioned, I started with the Archvis template, meaning that Lumen was already enabled in my project. But say you did not start with a template and want to make sure that Lumen is working inside of your project. You can go up to Project Settings, which are now on the right hand side, underneath the Settings cog. You can select Project Settings and here at the top bar, I'm going to type in Lumen. Now you’ll want this Dynamic Global Illumination Method to be set to Lumen, as well as the Reflection Method here. Now this is something that you have the ability to change later in the project you want a different reflection method. But you can start with Lumen first and make that change later. Now down underneath where it says Lumen, you’ll see that you have the ability to use Hardware Ray Tracing when available. So you can check this box if you have a DXR graphics card. So this is going to provide a little extra support for lighting calculations. So I’ll showcase that here in a minute. If you do not have a DXR graphics card, you will be able to still use Lumen using Software Ray Tracing Mode. So in order to use that, we will need to make sure that our project is generating Mesh Distance Fields. Mesh Distance Fields are an approximation of a surface to trace rays against for rendering. So that’s what Software Ray Tracing is going to use for its calculation. Now Lumen will trace against true geometry in Hardware Ray Tracing. So first, let’s make sure we have that Generate Mesh Distance Field turned on and then we’ll take a look at the difference between Hardware Ray Tracing and the Software Ray Tracing. So I’m going to go up to the top and I’m going to type in Generate Mesh. I’m going to want to make sure that this is checked here. Now if you need any changes during this process, you’ll want to restart your project and re-open it. Since I didn't make any changes, I’m going to go ahead and close out of my Project Settings.

Now let's visualize those Mesh Distance Fields we are generating. To showcase that, I’m going to go over to Show on the top left-hand side. Go down to Visualize. And select Mesh Distance Field. So you’ll see that for the most part, it’s getting the walls, the columns. So perhaps this is all you need and you could use Software Ray Tracing to get some nice Lumen lighting. However, there are some details that are being lost with this Mesh Distance Field. So this is the situation in which Hardware Ray Tracing would kick in if enabled and base the lighting calculation based on that true geometry. So I do have a DXR graphics card so it’s going use that Hardware Ray Tracing instead of these mesh fields.

So I’ll go ahead remove this visualization tool and let’s go ahead and take a look at the Lumen tools. So I’m going to go over to an area to take a better look at the Global Illumination in the project. I’m going to go over here to where we’re getting some light coming in through the window. So to better understand how we can change some of the Lumen settings to better the lighting in our project, I’m going to go up to Lit mode here. Go down to Lumen and select Overview. Now it's going to have three different windows of information. So here in this last one, you are seeing the Lumen Scene Surface Cache, which is an automatic parameterization of the scene’s nearby surfaces. It’s used to look up lighting at ray hit points in the scene. Now Lumen will capture the material properties for each mesh from multiple angles. So you’ll notice here if I zoom around a little bit, you’ll notice we're getting some pink and yellows within the scene. This is going to help inform us of any changes we need to make to our Lumen settings. In order to pull those up, you can go to the right hand side and you’ll be looking for a Post-Process Volume.

Now the Post-Process Volume I had set up is for the lobby space. As you’ll see, I have a few different volumes here, one for the exterior, lobby, and interior theater. So this allows me to have better control over the lighting in each of those spaces. So for now let’s take a look at the Lumen settings for the lobby. So I’m going to scroll down and you’ll see that underneath Global Illumination. I have the method set to Lumen here. And that’s because that is what is in the Project Settings. So if you’re getting pink or yellow, it’s visualizing the geometry that has not been culled. So in this case, this geometry may be too small to be considered for that Lumen calculation. So you’ll notice that here, the yellow is coming up black within the Lumen scene, meaning that it’s not a part of that Lumen calculation. What I can do is I can go down to the Lumen Scene Detail here and bump this up to 2. Now you’ll see the yellow disappears and that it’s now being included in the calculation.

Now you can go down to the right hand side and continue exploring other options or settings here. Now underneath Reflections, you’ll see that if I wanted to, I could switch up some of the Reflection options here. For now, I’m going to keep everything as Lumen. Now, in order to take a look at what Lumen is doing within our scene, I’m going to go back to the Lit mode here, I’ll zoom back into the project here and let’s take a look at this sun and how it bounces throughout space.

I’m going to go back up to my Outliner. Go to my SunSky and I’m going to play around with a few of the numbers here, and see how it’s populating throughout the space. So you’ll see how that light coming into the space is really bouncing around and increasing the indirect lighting here. Now let’s test out some of the other Lumen features. For now, I have a pretty basic reflective white material on the ground. Now I believe this is actually carpet. So if I wanted to, I’m going to go to my Content Browser, type in Carpet and I'm going to drag and drop this carpet into my scene. So automatically, you’ll see how it populates this view with some color. So what you’re seeing is some of that color bleeding. Now this is something that is really exciting to see in real-time rendering. You’re able to have some of that color bleeding without baking the lighting. Now you're also able to use emissive materials as well. So as you can see here, we do have some emissive materials that are going into the light calculation. Now there is a limit to how many emissive objects you can have before noise artifacts begin to appear. So it’s advisable to not fully rely on emissive materials, but placing light sources can provide an additional boost of light when needed. So now I’ve gone into a little bit about how I built out the project.

Direct Link interoperability

33:10 We took a look at the Lumen settings. Now let’s take a look at how we can work with that Datasmith DirectLink that we brought in early, now that our model has progressed. To showcase this, I'm going to take a look around and you’ll see that some of the geometry here could use a little more depth. So when I select this geometry, I go to the right hand side, select this Ornament_Type. You’ll see that it only has one material, but it should probably have a few in order to be able to get a little more depth to add a little bit more contrast to the geometry. Now, I can make this change in REvit so I’m going to pull up the Revit model here. I’ll select that geometry and I’m going to go up to Edit Family. Now here, I’ll select this back extrusion. I’m going to go over to Material. I’ll set it to default for now. I’ll hit OK and thenI’m going to load that into the project. So I’ll overwrite the existing version. Now I’m going to go back to my Datasmtih toolbar and hit synchronize. You’ll see that it’s exporting from Revit down here. Now when I jump back into Unreal Engine and I select that geometry you’ll see that we have two materials now and that extrusion now has that default material. Now this is one way of working with your Revit model, but we wanted to provide creators with different options for working with their models. So let’s take a look at how you can use some of the new modeling tools for working and making changes to geometry.

Modeling Tools

35:08 Now say I wanted to add another material to that geometry. I can do this in Unreal Engine 5 using the Modeling tools. So I’ll make sure that I have the Geometry selected here. So I’m going to go up to the left-hand side. Select Modeling Mode and you’ll see that we have a lot of different options here. And I’m going to be looking for a Material Editor. So this can be found underneath Attributes. It’s going to be this last icon. The tooltips are going to give you some ideas for what each button does. I’m going to zoom in here and I’m going to lower my brush size. So I’ll put this at .05 andI’m going to select this interior geometry here. Now what I can do is go to the left hand side and I can add in another material by hitting the plus sign here. It’s going to pop up with a new material slot called Index 2. Now I’m going to bring in a material to add in there. I’ll just use this base color here. Now I’m going to go up to this Materials and I’m going to assign my Active Material to be that base color. So this material that we just added is now the Active Material and I can scroll down and assign the Active Material to the geometry. So you’ll see that it has indeed changed and I can hit Accept.

Now, there are a lot of different edits that you can do to your geometry. Now one of the things you may have noticed is that I actually softened some of the geometry on the columns. So let’s take a look at how I did that. I’ll go over to one of the columns that I have not softened here. So you can see the difference. So this is how the geometry came in from Revit. Now what I’ll do is I’ll select this geometry. I’m going to go to the left-hand side and I’m going to look for the Subdivide Tool. So it’s going to be underneath Poly Model, it’s going to be this last icon here. I’m going to select this tool while I have my geometry selected. So we have a few settings here that we can change. But I’m going to keep all of these as is and hit Accept. So this may not be the look that you’re looking for but it does give you some idea of how you can really start to manipulate some of your meshes within Unreal Engine without going back to Revit.

Now one additional tool that I like to use a lot is the Bevel tool. So I’m going to jump to a piece of geometry that I want to soften up a little bit. I’ll go ahead and select that geometry. I'm going to go to the left-hand side, and underneath TriModel, I’m going to select the geometry here. You’ll notice that it triangulates the geometry and I can now use my brush to select the triangles that I want to create a Polygroup. Now you also have other edits that you can do here. You can Flip Normals, you can Delete triangles, you can Separate them. There’s a lot of different elements that are within the Modeling Mode that are at your disposal. So for now, I'm going to go ahead and accept that polygroup that I created and now I have the ability to edit that polymodel. So I’ll select the first icon underneath PolyModel. This is going to allow me to edit meshes viaPpolygroups, which we just created. Scroll up here. You can take a look at all the different options we have. So I’m going to select that polygroup. I’ll come over to the left-hand side and select Bevel. Now you’ll see that it bevels the geometry here. I’m going to go ahead and tone that down a little bit. So I’ll change that to 2, and hit Accept. Great, so this looks good for now. I may want to keep this, but there may be situations in which I actually need to jump back to the original geometry. So this is something that DirectLink enables us to do. So I’ll go ahead re-import the geometry now. To do so, I’ll make sure I have the geometry selected. I’ll go to the right-hand side to pull up the Static Mesh. I'm going to use the magnifying glass next to the static mesh to pull it up in the Content Browser. And now here, I can right click, and go to re-import. So now, you'll see that it successfully re-imported the project from Revit without losing that material.

Now, one wonderful thing with Unreal Engine 5 is that you have the ability to set up geometry scripting to any of these actions. So you can create a button or Blueprint that would allow you to utilize the Modeling Tools. So for now, I'm going to go ahead and close out of the modeling tools.

Create a still render

40:23 So now that we’ve brought in all of our geometry using Datasmith, we’ve built out some of our context in the project, we’ve taken a look at Lumen for lighting. Now let’s take a look at how we can create a still render of our project.

So in order to do that, I’m going to go into one of my camera views that I’ve placed. Now there are two different options for creating high resolution imagery. The first one I will showcase will be the quickest and easiest way to produce an image and then I’ll show you how you can use the Movie Render Queue, an offline linear render solution that will allow you to have greater control of your render such as Anti-Aliasing options, Motion Blur, and Tiled High-Resolution options.

Now the first method I mentioned is the high res shot. In order to get this, I will go to the dropdown button on the top left hand side. And I’m going to select High Resolution Screenshot. Now just for the demo, I’ll go ahead and keep this at 1, but you have a few additional options here. I’m going to go ahead and select Capture. You’ll see that it quickly produced an image in the scene here. So this is great, but I could probably improve some of the settings here. You’ll see there is a little bit of noise. The resolution is a little bit small. I think I could really take this to the next level.

So in order to have more control over those renderings you can use the Movie Render Queue. Now in order to bring that up, I’m going to use one of the widgets that's included in the Movie Render Queue plugin. Now if you’re starting with the Archvis template as I did this should already be inside of your project. If not, you may need to add in that plugin. To showcase it, I’ll close out of this High Resolution Screenshot. I’ll go up to Edit Plugin and I’ll be looking for Movie Render Queue. So you’ll see this is indeed, already embedded. Now what that plugin is going to allow us to do is to have access to a widget that the Epic developers have provided for us users. So in order to showcase that, I’m going to make this Content Browser a little bit larger here. I’m going to go to the Settings cog here. And I’m oging to make sure that the Show Plugin Content is checked. Now once it is checked, I’m going to go over to the left hand side. I’m going to go over to Engine, Plugins, and I’ll be looking for the Movie Render Queue folder. So there’s a couple here who'll be using this Movie Render Queue Content. Now within this, I’m going to go over to Editor, Stills, and I’m going to use this tool here. Now, this tool is great because it’s going to enable me to add my own cameras into the Movie Render Queue through an automated process. The Movie Render queue was originally created for animations or movies. However, we are still able to use that in order to produce a nice, still image. So this tool I’m about to show you is essentially a shortcut for creating that inside of the Movie Render Queue without having to fully learn how the Movie Render Queue works.

So in order to use this, I’m going to right click this Still Render Setup Automation and select Run Editor Utility Widget. Now we do have a Tips and Tricks video that covers this more in detail so if you’d like to learn more about some of these settings, please check that out on our Unreal Engine YouTube page. Now I’m going to scroll all the way to the top to select my camera that I will be working with. So I’ll select my still camera here and then I’m going to select Create Sequence For Selected. So you’ll see that I did perform an action and I’m going to find where this sequence was created. I’m going to minimize this window. Go up to Window > Cinematics, and select Movie Render Queue. You’ll see that I have the camera here underneath the job and underneath Settings, I have the Still Draft Setting that was automatically set up in that automation. If I click on this, you’ll see that I can actually go over to the right hand side and select another option. So I have a few here that I’ve created myself but if you're working with the Unreal Engine Archvis template, you will have access to the Still Ultra, which is what I like to use for projects. So you’ll see here that it comes in and it uses an EXR sequence as its export. If I wanted to, I could go up to Settings, I could add PNG, or JPEGs here. Now I’ll be using deferred rendering which is that real-time rendering that we were working with today. If you wanted to, you could also use the Path Tracer here as well. However, I won’t be covering that in today’s session. Now I’ll go back and take a look at some of these settings here.

Now these are the elements that I referred to that really take Movie Render Queue outputs to the next level. So here I’m able to control Anti-Aliasing, Game Overrides, and High Resolutions. Now the place that I see the most difference is with this Game Overrides. So I’m going to keep all the settings as is But I want to explain a little bit more about what this does. So as you're working in your viewport, the backend of Unreal Engine is doing some optimization for you so that your frame rate stays high. Now this Game Overrides is going to turn off a lot of that optimization so that it renders at the highest quality. Now I'm going to go over to Output here and you’ll see that I have the Output Directory where the output will be saved. I’ll save this to my Desktop for now, and then I have the ability to control the output resolution here. So I’ll keep this as is. Now I’ll go ahead and hit Accept. Make sure that I have my job selected, and I’m going to render this locally on my computer. So now, I’ll hit render and it’s going to give you some more information as it does render.

So the render been completed. So I can pull that up and you'll see that there is less noise in the image. The depth of field and blur is much nicer than the original and overall, a higher resolution render.

Conclusion

47:00 So I’m going to go ahead and wrap it up here. I know that was a lot that we covered in such a short amount of time. From our Datasmith DirectLink, to Quixel, to Lumen, to modeling tools, and lastly, rendering tools, we hope that something you saw today can be helpful as you are exploring Unreal Engine 5 with your architecture projects.

Now I didn't have time to cover all aspects in some of the rendering aspects, so I wanted to let you know that there are some great tutorials on our Dev community and on our Unreal Engine YouTube page. In those two places you can also find great information about Nanite and Open Worlds, which are two aspects that we did not have time to cover today, but can be helpful for some of your larger architecture or master plans. So please stay with us for the Q&A as we have some of our Epic experts here today to answer your questions. Thanks y’all.