Megascans in UE4: Photoreal Environment Creation | Unreal Engine

Video Statistics and Information

Video
Captions Word Cloud
Reddit Comments

This looks amazing! I had to watch the video with sound off because I have my daughter sleeping next to me, but did they mention anything about restraints about using these assets in game? I would guess these textures would be very taxing on the system which is what has kept it out of modern games so far. I wonder if the new technology in UE5 would help bring these Megascans into higher use within next generation games.

👍︎︎ 2 👤︎︎ u/UnoriginalGinger 📅︎︎ May 21 2020 🗫︎ replies
Captions
>>Galen: Hey, guys. Thanks so much for joining the Learning Theater today. My name is Galen from Quixel at Epic. And today, we're going to be doing a full ecosystem walkthrough of everything that's available to you as an Unreal Engine user. I'm going to be using this scene that my colleague, Isaac Crawford, actually created as the vessel for all the information today, and it's available for download in the Marketplace. So we'll put a link for that down below. We'll be going through Bridge, Mixer, and a couple other tips and techniques for working with Megascans inside of Unreal Engine. So let's go ahead and jump in. So if you aren't familiar with the Megascan's ecosystem, this is Quixel Bridge. And a Quixel Bridge is a content management solution. And what I'm going to do just to start is log in using my Epic ID. And after I go ahead and accept and enter my credentials, I'll go and click Allow. And now as an Unreal Engine user, I have full and complete access to the entire Megascans library. So this means that every single day as the library continues to expand, I can download the highest resolution versions of these assets and just use them immediately in the scenes that I'm creating at home. So as you can see here, you can browse the library in a couple of different ways. And here I'm just going through a couple of different collections and using some basic search terms to isolate what it is that I'm looking at. And as you can see, there's a wide variety of different asset types here. Be it 3D assets, surfaces, decals, atlases, and everything you could possibly need in order to assemble the worlds that you're creating. I'm also able to browse each individual asset here in being able to isolate the individual channels, be it albedo, roughness, normal. And I can also 3D preview any asset here. And I can also view the wireframe here as well for each individual LOD. As you can see here, we're given a couple download settings. And we'll be using Unreal Engine, obviously, for this example. So I'll be using that material preset for anything I'm going to be downloading today. So as you can see, I can actually go in here and customize this experience a lot. I can have each individual LOD depending on the needs of my project. And I can use the Cinematic High Master Mesh in the event that I'm going to be using this for maybe a high end cinematic. You also have access to Global Download Settings here where if I want to go and download an entire Eco-region, I can set all the parameters for my downloads and then just indicate on a per asset basis what it is I'm looking to download. Let's start by installing the plugin for Unreal Engine. And what I'll do here is just for any asset that I have downloaded, I'll just go to my Export Settings tab. And as you can see, we'll be using Unreal Engine as the target for our export. Now, we do support a wide variety of different DCCs and renderers, so it's important to know you can view all of the documentation for this just in our Help tab. Installing the Live Link is incredibly simple and all you need to do is make sure, with the Unreal Engine closed, that you go and download the plugin from this tab below. After downloading the plugin, you simply need to indicate where Unreal is actually installed in your machine. I'll tab on my machine to C, Program Files, Epic Games, and drill down to the Plugins folder, as this is where we're going to be nesting the plugin for our use. After indicating where the plugins folder is, you can see at the top of the UI we're actually getting a flag from Bridge that indicates that the plugin was successfully installed. And lastly, I'll just find the project that I'm going to be working inside today. Quickly before we export, we can go to our Advanced Settings here, and if I want to make any changes to the names of the assets as they're going into Unreal Engine I can do that here. We also have channel packing which allows me to customize my experience even more and optimize my shaders and engine. If you have a specific setup in mind, you can do that here inside of this tab. So let's find some assets to actually go ahead and export into our scene. And I'm just going to go through and start to browse here briefly. And the scene, as you saw at the beginning, is kind of an abandoned apartment of sorts. And we really want to clutter this thing up and add in a couple different pieces that might give us some variety in the set dressing. Again, I can sort and preview all different types of assets here in Bridge-- be it surfaces, 3D assets, scatter, and I can go and filter by a ton of different parameters here at the top of the UI. I think this old metal pot is perfect for what I'm looking for, so I'm going to make sure I have a couple different LODs checked on just to make sure that we're keeping performance top of mind for this example. And I'll just be using JPEGs here for this example. So as long as we have the Unreal Engine material presets setup, I'll just go and click download here and we can see the progress in screen ahead. After I reopen Unreal Engine, you'll see at the top of the UI we have the Megascans plugin, actually, right between Settings and Blueprints. This just shows to me that the plugin was successfully installed. So why don't we take a look at the UI briefly? As you can see, there are a couple of features here for overwriting materials, in case you're using your own master material for your project. It's important to note that we actually do ship with master materials for a wide variety of different asset types, but we do understand that various projects do have specific needs. And this plugin allows you to customize that experience fully. Let's bring our metal pot into Unreal Engine now. And just with a single click, I'll click Export into our project. As you can see, Unreal Engine is bringing in all the important information from what we downloaded, and it's assembling material instances and the LOD chains for the asset that we just downloaded. And as you can see, here's our metal pot. And we can start to inspect it briefly before we start actually including in our scene. Let's go ahead and drag it in now. And that's how easy it is to just start being creative immediately with the Megascans library. Performance is a massive consideration when we're working in real-time. So as you can see here, I've actually brought in the several different LOD levels that I can actually flip between here inside of my scene. At a minimum, Megascan's assets are LODed through LOD 5, but some actually extend that chain further. And like I mentioned, the Cinematic High Master Mesh is our gold standard for anything that's going to be able to withstand high polycounts. And here's the material instance that was automatically created when we exported it from Bridge. Our material instance comes with a couple simple features, but it's important to note that you can, again, customize this as much as you would like. I'll go in and start to make some simple adjustments to the albedo. Maybe feather the roughness slightly to where we get something a little bit different from what we were looking at before. Megascans assets are meticulously calibrated, but it's important that after you bring these assets into your scene that you have that control to dial it in for the project that you're working inside. Let's inspect the Master Material that ships with our plugin. So as you can see, it's a very simple material setup. Not really anything too complicated. But it's a good starting place if you're a new user to Unreal Engine. Let's make a simple modification to this material, as I want to maybe be able to desaturate this asset once I actually drag it into my seen. I'll hold down D on the keyboard to bring in a desaturation node, and hold down 1 to bring in a constant. After I convert that to a parameter, let's feed this back into base color. And this is something that will be exposed now in the material instance for the asset that we were just looking at. And there we go. I can just desaturate this and bring it right into the zone that I want to for my purposes. Let's take a look at some other asset types that were incredibly useful in building this scene. As we mentioned before, 3D assets and surfaces are some of the most prevalent assets in the library. Though we have some amazing decals and atlases that would be perfect for this scene. I'll type in leak and decals as my search parameters, and let's go ahead and see what the library has. Again, I can view the trending assets here in Bridge, as well as see some of the latest updates that have come in for this asset type. Isaac used a lot of these in order to create that weathered look on the walls for this environment. So why don't we bring in one of those now and see if we can't weather up some of the walls in this scene. And here's the material instance that we're using for this specific example of the decal. I've already sized up the detail here, so I'm just going to drag it into place and find an area where I think it would work for this specific wall. And we can also go in and start to adjust the roughness here in case I want to maybe have it look like water has been pouring down the side of this wall. And of course, we'll dial in the albedo here slightly to where we get the exact color that we're going for. Creating material blends is incredibly simple here with the Megascans plugin. So what I'll show real quick is just being able to select a couple different material instances. In this case I'll select these three assets, and select the Create Material Blend button with the Megascans plugin. If I go back into my Content Browser and I find the Blend Materials folder that's been created, I'll find a new material type here that the plugin automatically created for me. Isaac has already done a great job of painting this thing up, but why don't we make some simple adjustments here so you guys can see the functionality of the existing material. As you can see, I'm just painting on a per vertex level here in my Modes tab. All the channels that we're looking at, be it red, green, blue, or the alpha channel all store information on a per vertex level where we can go in and actually paint in various materials. We're only blending on a per vertex level here just to keep the math pretty simple for this, but it's important to note that you can actually go in and customize this even further. If you wanted to maybe have noise go in and break up the way that the transition happens between materials, that's something that's entirely possible. And again, this is just a very simple material, but you're given a whole slew of different parameters to play with to dial in the look of exactly what it is that you're building. So I can affect my roughness, my normal intensity, or maybe I want to affect the tiling to where I get the texel density that I'm looking for on this surface. These are just a couple of the basic techniques that Isaac was using in order to create this very weathered look for this environment. We also have a World Align Blend feature for this material. And this will allow you to pair up a surface and a 3D asset in the event that you might want, maybe, sand or snow to accumulate on the up vector of a surface. Let's take a look at some of the vegetation in this scene, as this is one of the most realistic elements that made up this environment. Our foliage material, again, is very basic in nature, but does allow you to have a huge amount of control to dial in the specific look of the vegetation that you're working with. Whether you want some color variation on a per instance basis or if you want to affect the subsurface scattering, this is all available inside the shader. We've also added some simple winds, and this will allow you to add in some subtle realism if you have a wind actor in your environment. I know that Isaac added in some very subtle movements to this scene and it really made it just that much more realistic in the renders. And again, here's the Master Material that we're using for the foliage which can totally be customized for your purposes after the fact. Our vegetation team is one of the most talented groups of people I've ever worked with. And you can see the attention to detail in all the scans that come out of our vegetation side. Creating realistic vegetation is one of the most complicated parts of being an artist. And with a wide breadth of vegetation actors inside the Megascans ecosystem, you can really skip all of the guesswork in crafting some of the most complicated assets for CG artists. Let's jump into Quixel Mixer now. Mixer is a standalone 3D painting application that will allow you to leverage the entire Megascans library and bring in your own custom assets, as well as retexture any Megascans asset you can imagine. It's a non-destructive workflow with a zero learning curve approach to the user experience. We have a huge amount of training content on our YouTube channel specifically for this application. So if you're interested in mixing new surfaces or some of the more advanced techniques for 3D painting, definitely be sure to check out our YouTube channel. And with Mixer 2020, we've made some massive improvements to this application. The first obviously being 3D functionality. Being able to bring in your own assets and texture them in this application is just a breeze. And again, having the full Megascans library at my fingertips just makes this such an enjoyable process. You truly are able to create endless variations of these different asset types. And with the dozens of smart materials that we ship with, you can quickly texture an asset just in seconds. Mixing surfaces has never been easier. And in an always-tiling environment, you're able to bring in your own custom assets, paint across seams non destructively, and again, leverage everything in the Megascans library to craft something completely new. We also have some procedural features inside of Mixer that just give you even more flexibility for some of the assets you might be looking to create. And with a fully revamped mask stack, the user experience has become even more deep while still maintaining a very simplistic approach to material authoring. And with full smart material functionality, you could retexture an entire Eco-region in seconds. So let's jump into our first example here. And the idea is really simple for this specific demo in that I want to ground this asset a little bit more than if I were just to drag in this clean cardboard box directly into my old abandoned environment. Before we start to weather this thing a little bit, why don't we take a look at some of the things you can do just out of the box? On a per-channel basis, we've added blending modes that will allow you to blend and mix and match all the different inputs that you might layer into a stack. Opacity and contrast have also been given their own sliders in the event that we might want to feather the effect of maybe just the albedo, for example. Browsing inside of Mixer is very similar to that of browsing inside of Bridge. So we're given the full Megascans library here, as you can see. but we can search in the exact same way. So if I want to maybe isolate just a surface as my category type but then type in a couple simple keywords, I can see everything that's available to me that I can start to just mix and match from my scene. I know that I want to start with some simple paper, and what I'll do here is just find a nice crinkly material that I think would make this just a little bit more weathered than it is. I'm able to go in here and make some modifications to my, albedo but I can also middle click on the swatch next to albedo and this will actually average the values of everything that's sitting below it. You can obviously punch in hex values and use the eyedropper sample if there's something specific in your environment that you want to sample. Toggling certain layers is also incredibly powerful in that you can go in and be able to very quickly just bring in maybe normal information from a specific surface. And I'm going to make some modifications to the roughness here as well, as we want this to feel a little damp. Maybe like it's been sitting there for a long time. Let's continue to weather this box a little bit more. And I know that I have some cardboard materials in my library, so why don't we bring in just a simple cardboard material on the surface? We've added in Hexaplanar Projection into Mixer 2020, which allows us to very quickly change the projection methods for the specific asset type. I'm given a radial slider on the side here, which will allow me to affect the way this material is actually projected on the surface of this 3D asset. I can also change it to a tiling method if I would like, and this just allows me to have the surface adhere to UV seams, as opposed to the Hexaplanar Projection. Affecting the scale of the projection is something that will be really useful in dialing in the look that I'm going for. Now, I don't want this effect to be completely uniform across this entire asset. So what I think I'll do is I'll actually maybe have this only be affected from the top down. And now we're able to isolate on a per-channel basis some of these individual inputs, why don't we dial down the normal intensity just slightly? And I don't want this effect to be completely uniform across the surface, so why don't we have this be something that might have a gradient? If I add in a mask component on the side here, I can add in a position gradient, which will allow me to feather this effect from top to bottom. Adjusting the range will actually increase the sharpness of that fall off. And I can also change the way this position is actually affecting either displacement or the mesh itself. Let's bring in some moss now, as I think some moss might have accumulated on the bottom of this surface if it had been left there for a long time. And I'll just adjust the scale here slightly to where I get the exact scale of this material that I'm looking for. Once again, adding in a mask stack, I'll go to my position gradient and invert it so that I can actually get this just to come from below. All right, so I think this is looking really cool. But one of the things that I don't like is just how uniform that position gradient is. So why don't we break up that edge a little bit here? As I mentioned before, we have some procedural components inside of Mixer that will give us a lot of flexibility in solving problems just like this one. I'll add in this perlin noise. And what I'm going to do is just affect the frequency and the amplitude here to where I get a nice uniform look here that will break up that surface a little bit more than what we have. I'll also need to add in a projection modifier. As this is a 3D asset, I do want the seams to be corrected. This takes a little bit of adjusting and playing with, so I'll just go ahead and get it to a point to where I feel like it's looking pretty good and start to mess around in some different projection methods just to see the different looks. And after I mess around with all these different effects, I'll kind of get it to a place that I like and then add in a blend mode. In this case I'll be using Multiply, as I want this effect to be multiplied onto the gradient that we already put down below. And as you can see, this just breaks up that surface a lot more to where we're getting something that just looks a little bit more natural than what we had. And on top of blending modes, we obviously have an opacity slider that will just allow you to really dial it in. Solid layers are incredibly useful for projects like this in that I can isolate individual inputs that will allow me just to create something entirely new. So in this case, I want maybe a soft gradient of maybe some moisture that's, again, collected from the bottom of the box. So I'll just add in a solid here. And then with my mask stack, I'll in and add in that position gradient as we did before, turn off my albedo and maybe some of other inputs, and then make it to where we have a nice gradient of moisture that's accumulating from the bottom. Playing with various blending modes here will really dial it in. So let's just find something that we like. You can also go in and preview masks as well as each individual map input just by going through the individual number keys. Let's pull the moss a little bit more into the range of what we just added in for our gradient, and then we'll move on to our next piece. As we mentioned earlier, decals and atlases are some of the most powerful assets that we have here in the library. We've got some pretty unique stuff, be it some tiling inputs that might scatter just some simple rocks or twigs and leaves on the surface, or if we want we can grab some of these more one off type pieces like this cardboard and tape asset. If I switch my projection method to free form, then I can go and actually offset this in x and y, as well as rotate or scale the asset appropriately for my purposes. I kind of like where that ones sitting, but let's add in another one here. I really like this one as it's just like another piece of cardboard that maybe has been taped on the top to repair some damage. And again, we'll just scale this appropriately to where we get it somewhere that we like. And again, I can dial in the roughness and the albedo here to where we're getting something that actually fits exactly for what it is that we have below. And the last thing I'm going to do here is maybe rough up the edges slightly. So I'll just add in another solid here and bring it into a range that I think would be nice. So in this case, it's going to be a little bit more desaturated from what we were working with before. And I'll add in the mask stack, and curvature is actually the input that we're going to be using for this example. So this is real-time curvature, and this will allow me to just make some simple adjustments to the way that the curvature is actually affecting the surfaces below. I can either have it rely entirely on the underlying mix, or I can have it just adhere to the mesh itself. I like a lot of the crinkly elements that we've added with some of the paper assets down below, so why don't we just play with the levels until we get something that we think would work for just beating up the edges slightly? There's also an anti-aliasing and soft mesh option here on the side, and that will just allow you to really customize the experience based on the mesh that you're using. So in dialing in this effect I'm going back through all my individual layers, be it the albedo channel, the roughness, and really just trying to find something that I think works well with the different blending modes that I have available here. Originally, I was looking at something that maybe was a little bit more saturated. But I landed here on maybe just a simple multiply, and I think that that gives me the exact effect that I was going for. And again, we have full channel packing functionality inside of Mixer, so if you want to have a more customized experience on export, you can do that as well. And here's our asset directly into our scene. I think that this just works way better than what we had before. We've got a nice grounded feel to it. And again, once I'm actually inside of the level, I can go in and start to adjust, again, maybe the albedo or the roughness to where it just fits with some of the other assets that are around it. Well, this was just a really quick preview of the Megascans ecosystem. And like I mentioned at the beginning of the video, I really encourage everyone to go over to our YouTube page where we have extensive learning materials. Whether you want a deep dive into what we have for Bridge, or you want to go through entire asset pipelines with Mixer, we have all these videos available. We'll be continuing to offer all of these different environments that you're seeing here for these examples available on the Marketplace for free for all Unreal Engine users. So definitely keep your eyes peeled on the Marketplace as we'll be uploading a lot of content over the coming months. And as always, we'd love to hear what our community wants as far as learning materials. So definitely feel free to drop as a comment below if you have any suggestions about future tutorials. Thank you guys so much for watching today. If you haven't already, make sure to check out some of our other Learning Theater presentations that are available on the channel. And we'll see you guys on the next one.
Info
Channel: Unreal Engine
Views: 474,707
Rating: undefined out of 5
Keywords: Unreal Engine, Epic Games, UE4, Unreal, Game Engine, Game Dev, Game Development
Id: adoQgoETRsQ
Channel Id: undefined
Length: 22min 21sec (1341 seconds)
Published: Wed May 20 2020
Related Videos
Note
Please note that this website is currently a work in progress! Lots of interesting data and statistics to come.