Overview

It has been a little over a year since I last covered architectural visualization in Unreal Engine 4, and quite a lot has happened in the meantime. One of the main trends this year is the transition from pre-rendered sequences to interactive virtual reality experiences, made possible by the availability of affordable head-mounted displays, such as the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift.

On the Engine side, several features were added that may be interesting for ArchVis projects. In 4.12 we released support for real-time planar reflections and clear coat shading models that work great for shiny surfaces. In 4.14 we added a forward shading renderer with MSAA. It is particularly well suited for VR applications due to its performance characteristics for stereoscopic rendering. In 4.16 we introduced volumetric fog, which some users already started to utilize for impressive ambient lighting effects.

Sequencer has also seen some great improvements over the course of the last twelve months, and we have another major feature update scheduled for the upcoming 4.17 release. Many users asked for better integration between Media Framework and Sequencer for rendering ArchVis videos with embedded movies. This is something we’re still working on.

Gallery

Apartment July 9th

Artist: Carlos Bayer

ArchInterior Conversion

Artist: Guilherme Rabello

Archviz Interior Interactive

Artist: Roy Fredy

Basic Interior Lighting Setup

Artist: Rag3DViz

Bathroom of Hexagons

Artist: Tomasz Muszyński, Gosia Muszynska

Beyond Architecture Project

Artist: Beyond Architecture

Casa FWH Interactive

Artist: Tsukat

Chen3D Various Projects

Artist: Chen3D

Child Room

Artist: Tomasz Muszyński

CraftMesh Teaser

Artist: CraftMesh

Exterior Light Studies

Artist: Guilherme Rabello

Frigid House

Artist: MOOKCHING

Interior Scene with VXGI

Artist: MonkeyRED

Lucid Arch Dreams

Artist: Benoit Dereau

Nexity Saint Didier

Artist: Benoit Dereau
Client: Nexity

Offise NutsNuts

Artist: Nuts Nuts Design

Photographer’s Loft

Artist: Rag3DViz

Pitch House

Artist: melvixo

Royal Sutton Place

Artist: Benoit Dereau
Client: White Crow Studios

SalonPorti

Artist: Tomasz Muszyński

Scandinavian Apartment

Artist: Hoanganh Ho

Sun & Tales

Artist: Benoit Dereau

Unit 26

Artist: Benoit Dereau
Client: VMI Studio

Unreal Engine 4 Archviz

Artist: Roy Fredy

White Marble Apartment

Artist: CarloAlt

Related Resources

Several of Benoit Dereau’s excellent projects are listed above. For one of them, Lucid Arch Dreams, there is a short technical breakdown on Ronen Bekerman’s Architectural Visualization Blog. The 80 Level website has two interviews with Rafael Reis Saliba and Patrick Chamberland discussing some aspects of their workflows. Raghu from Rag3DViz, whose outstanding work I have featured several times, shared some lighting tricks on his blog.

There is a growing number of free tutorials for architectural visualization in UE4. The Unreal Archviz Video Tutorial channel on YouTube covers several topics. The video streams created by Evermotion are worth a look as well.

There is also a lot of new paid training content, such as Craig Barr’s tutorials on lynda.com, Easy VR for Arch Viz on udemy.com, lessons on mykajabi.com and learnarchviz.com, and a training program on 3D Virtualand. I haven’t tried any of these myself, so I can’t say whether they’re useful. If you have any experience with them, I’d love to hear from you!

The Unreal Engine Marketplace is seeing an increasing number of asset packs with architectural visualization content and complete scenes. Need some book cases, modern paintings, parquet textures or furniture to populate your own scenes or throw together a quick prototype?

Different artists use different 3D editing tools for creating architectural visualization content. If you happen to be a fan of Revit, take a look at Farshid’s Revit 2017 Tutorial for Unreal Engine 4.

Lastly, make sure to swing by the Architectural Visualization section of the official Unreal Engine community forums. There you can discuss your ideas, ask questions, find tutorials, get constructive criticism and learn about other people’s work and techniques. Many of the artists shown in this post are sharing their progress and knowledge there as well.