Displacing Geometry: Creating ‘Ninety Days’ in Unreal Engine 5

Join Quixel's Wiktor Öhman to get an in depth look into the workflows and processes used in the making of the amazing environments you see featured in the Ninety Days showcase - including the use of modeling tools to create unique geometries from scans data.
Watch the full Ninety Days showcase video: • Ninety Days in Unreal ...
Full playlist of Creating ‘Ninety Days’ in Unreal Engine 5 tutorials: • Creating ‘Ninety Days’...
Read all about the Ninety Days project on our blog: quixel.com/blog/2022/5/12/nin...
For more art from the Ninety Days project check out our Art Blast on ArtStation: magazine.artstation.com/2022/...
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Creating ‘Ninety Days’ in Unreal Engine 5 Series
Part 1: An Overview - • Overview: Creating ‘Ni...
Part 2: Displacing Geometry - • Displacing Geometry: C...
Part 3: Destroying Buildings - • Constructing Destroyed...
Part 4: Animating in Sequencer - • Animating in Sequencer...
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#quixel
#megascans
#ninetydays
#unrealengine
#UE5

[@quixeltools]

Creating ‘Ninety Days’ in Unreal Engine 5 | Complete Playlist: kzbin.info/aero/PL5uQePynMSiJ687OW13gNSN5JEShvs72Z Watch the full Ninety Days showcase video: kzbin.info/www/bejne/mZKVfnhqjN5jm68

[@12345ches]

We need displacement and tessellation for landscapes! This is NOT an alternative to the old workflow! UE5 needs a solution to this problem ASAP.

[@Starlingstudio]

Exactly, this is very resource intensive and time consuming

[@AliHamza-sv4ni]

Is it really all that graphically intensive even with nanite?

[@hbonin]

With you 100% on this.

[@12345ches]

@@AliHamza-sv4ni It's not about how intense it is in terms of geometry, but more about how it destroys the workflow and techniques that were used for the old method. Currently, there is no way to use displacement after blending materials inside the material editor. You would have to manually place each of these planes on top of a terrain, now imagine doing this for a 25km terrain. Making these pieces takes a lot more time than just adding some textures on top of a plane. It would be hard to hide the seam between each of these pieces, and they would never be accurately connected. And there is no way of automatically applying different materials based on masks or slopes. So you would have to hand place all of these pieces, they would not look good and would create a lot of problems, they would not dynamically react to the shape of the landscape and they would be very expensive. It's just a disaster! We need a solution to this!

[@AliHamza-sv4ni]

@@12345ches not necessarily true though. They never claimed this was a replacement. It's a great set dressing tool. The normal landscapes in ue end up looking fairly bland . If these displaced planes are used they can be placed under the landscape mesh to add a bit more variation to the landscape by breaking the shapes . Im thinking of them more as high level decals than a replacement for landscapes .

[@dimitriskoutris6139]

Wiktor I hope you're doing well! Thank you and the team for committing the time for a swift tutorial!

[@giiipfel]

More of that kind of videos please. And mabye a tutorial on creating Landscape Materials, where you can't see the texture reputition and so on.

[@proevilz]

That's all well and good for planes, but how do we apply it to a landscape? Are we supposed to be creating landscapes from planes now? I heard about virtual heightfield meshes but they do not support collision... which means a characters foot will just ghost right through any of the displacement, so it doesn't seem like a solution. Please give us a solution for landscape!

[@jeanbigiovideoproduction6712]

Fantastic! Hope there's more comming, Thank you!

[@mrantssfpv]

So glad I found this. Wiktor you are my idol.

[@KhalilArafan]

This is so much radness on so many darn levels

[@Blastphemer]

The final and perfect solution would be a landscape or a huge nanite mesh with billions of triangles where you can paint on with blending your biomes with your displacement maps.

[@MR3DDev]

Does no one at Epic saw this as being double the work instead of using Displacement like we used to?

[@ryanwilkerson2479]

Agreed, I went back to 4.27 . I would have been happier with maskable tessellation areas on a landscape .

[@LivingRealms]

A displacement alternative that actually works with nanite and lumen is being developed. This is just a solution until it is implemented into the UE5 engine.

[@angius]

@@LivingRealms you got some link where I can read/hear about it?

[@12345ches]

@@angius The only thing I could find where they mention anything about tessellation is this video, in the Q&A section: kzbin.info/www/bejne/bIiUdXmagc6KhJo

[@RmaNYouTube]

@@LivingRealms They should have kept UE5 in preview state until that crucial feature was finished developing.

[@KD9-37]

SECOND VIDEO AND I ALREADY LOVE THIS SERIES!!

[@margaretappleton3437]

2:30 You don't need to open the model window to turn on Nanite. You can right-click the model in the Content Drawer and there'll be an option to turn on Nanite.

[@andrenft]

You wont be able to reduce the triangle percentage, i was doing that way but watching the video i noticed that i can reduce the triangles and actually get still good results on the mesh

[@marshal487]

Thank You😍

[@Ahivo]

This is amazing thanks

[@mrantssfpv]

Wiktor please show us how you made your terrariums for the 90 days. Please please.

[@seehr]

I dont understand how are we going to do modular mesh work with a workflow as rigid as this one. How do you duplicate a wall, add different types of dirt/cracks/noise/plaster on it and then duplicate it again and have another different variant? Or how are we supposed to blend multiple materials nicely? In the past, a proper shader setup could give is a very similar result than what the video showcases and at the same time extensive control on blending, duplicating and adding variation, and what not. This workflow seems rigid, unfriendly... and it's all just for one single plane mesh that you wont be able to do much with. (I have a ton of materials that I can surely transform into cool plane meshes but what the hell do I want that for?) I mean, the Ninety Days results speak for themselves and they are incredible. With a million meshes and amazing details. But I feel I'm missing something. So just to get it straight: the new workflow idea seems like wont be too friendly for layering materials. The new workflow is all around creating very simple base meshes that you transform into complex highpoly-nanite assets with amazing details inside the engine directly? Later we create a shader for the nanite-asset that has some basic layering of materials without any displacement for stuff like dirt and moss or you directly tackle this through more geometry/decals ?

[@daniel6sharma]

I'm guessing at some point they will integrate Mixer into UE5 too.

[@WarriorOfModernDeath]

@@daniel6sharma With the current state of Mixer it seems like the next big thing will be a seamless export to Unreal Engine. So I agree with you!

[@christophlechlerenvironmen5298]

Hey I have a question to the modular stuff you said. You said in would not match seamlessly, but if you create your material and displacement map in Substance Designer, then the displacement map should be seamless right? So this should mean the mesh which will be created with this displacement map should also be able to duplicate seamless around each axes or not? When i am am thinking now about a modular house with brick walls and i have a straight wall piece and a corner wall piece and both have the same material and the same displacement map, then they should snap together without problems or not?

[@tony_cgivfx]

Awesome, I was giving up hope thinking I had to do it externally, so glad it can be done internally!

[@shivendrapawar9618]

Awesome..unreal is just amazing

[@dossantos_films]

Can we do this with displacement maps coming from World Creator?

[@joanafrc]

Can't we achieve the same result using the quixel mixer? Os is it not enough?

[@xianyu4310]

Wow, found a treasure, even have Chinese, that's awesome, thanks🥰

[@MatthewRumble]

I wish quixel made more city environments or buildings in bridge

[@doomgb4994]

I want to know how to apply this new displacement to my vertex painting... I cant find a solution yet so I give up using displacement in vertex paint material :(

[@nhrlyn]

what info is stored in the rgb channels? sorry newby here

[@gearsofwarfenixedition601]

But wouldn't using the method shown In this video increases download size because it was making new textures?

[@DaddyVader87]

The environment you show at the end is pretty much my goal as a game designer..any idea of a direction to go using this workflow to get that type of environment? also props for revolutionizing making games.

[@MurattiOmer]

Hows your work going mate

[@kiantales]

megascans and quixel mixer is a god gift for such purposes

[@angius]

Aight, now how to use it with landscape materials? With blending between layers and all?

[@vladimirkhadyko8304]

Virtual height field. But only for landscapes, not a static meshes and that is VERY sad.

[@Itsme-wt2gu]

Can use parallex onclusion for this ?

[@alxleiva]

How can we use this in landscape materials? I still don't know what's the official workflow. RVT is buggy.

[@laultimacena2595]

I don't see the select mode option. It always has to happen to me...

[@musicdudem6673]

so is this then better for performace because nanite makes up for the extra detail, and theres no extra shader work?

[@lenstobrush7266]

I displaced a roof to have tiles and when the camera/viewport pulled away nanite put holes in the mesh and made it totally disappear the further away I got. How can I stop this from happening?

[@JaydenX]

This is crazy I never knew

[@Niribu]

How much does nanite impact size of project?

[@StephaneCharre]

Too much, sadly. Not really game ready right now.

[@leon.3d]

@quixel did they remove the modeling mode? I don't see it and sift 5 is tied to fracture mode now...

[@g10118]

It's there. Just use the dropdown menu, the shift+num functions are acting weird. The modeling plugin should be enabled by default but perhaps yours got disabled, so check that.

[@dyroth]

Just wow

[@3xchris]

How would you get puddles in this if vert paint doesn’t work on nanite?

[@AlessandroSchiassi]

With a decal.

[@Dux_Sux]

This is huge.. I mean really HUGE

[@axad8604]

I don't see the virtual streaming button

[@axelglobalmusic]

why when i tried to simplify the plane its stay loading and dont let me apply ?

[@soundhunter846]

Is there a way to make the plane tileable (most of the time after simplifying the object (for example in Blender) the sides of the plane have a different amount of verts, which causes seams when duplicating the mesh)? And while this is a great workflow for concept artists who could slap millions of faces on an object, I am concerned if this workflow is viable for gamedevelopent. I mean the end user would not want to download a huge game and fill half of his harddrive with geometry data. I would really like to use a similar workflow without worrying about that (since im quite new to gamedev some guidence on these subjects would be really nice :) ). Btw the results of the ninety days challenge were extremely awsome :) .

[@sephtv2759]

The engine compresses the files really well on packaging your game, as long as you don't go overboard and keep the geometry within exactly needed amounts, it shouldn't be that big in the end. For example the matrix demo they released, the project itself is 100gb whilst the packaged version is 25gb so it's reasonable to expect quite the heavy compression.

[@soundhunter846]

@@sephtv2759 Thx for the answer. I've read a bit through the documentation and if nanite is enabled the meshes are getting a 7.6x higher compression(for now) than standard static meshes. However this would not enable us to use millions of polygons instead of a few thousends and expect a similar data size... Allthough I should mention, that in the documentations example they managed to make the finalized filesize of a mesh with 1.5 million faces smaller than a mesh with 19k faces by cutting away a few textures (like normal and displacement)... But if your models are not dependent on individual textures (for example when working with trimsheets) this trick would not work to reduce the filesize of each asset... All in all I think that some mesh displacement will be used at a macro level as well as a rebaked detailed normal map. But how to do that in a streamlined workflow would be nice to konw. My idea is so far that you work with tiling strips of geometry, which than get bend and booleaned to form the desired structures. A bit like trimsheets but at a mesh level...

[@KaiCreative]

I don't have modelling mode as an option? Am in UE 5. I've got every other option on the dropdown. Any idea? Sorry I'm a complete beginner 😁

[@pietlebrun5943]

You need to enable it in Plugins first (Modeling Tools Editor Mode)

[@josefelix7491]

Going to have to agree with other people here, how is this usable with other than cinematics in reduced spaces. How do we apply this to big landscapes, what about blending, layering and automaterials. This looks cool but sounds kindof not usable outside these controlled cinematic projects. Thanks for the cool tip tho.

[@EMNM66]

NO, thank you so much ❤️

[@InternetAliass]

does anyone know the skybox they used here?! its gorgeous. 😍

[@MakotoIchinose]

Bog standard Sky Atmosphere and Volumetric Clouds. It's physically based so it's not just skybox

[@InternetAliass]

@@MakotoIchinose the exploding planet? defo not bog standard but a hdr

[@johnronald5960]

Wow

[@Joana-dz4sc]

Sorry guys I am just starting, can you please let me know how should I do for bigger than 2x2m? Like 20x20m? Should I stretch this plane already done or should I create a huge plane first and do all the steps next? In that case 1 million would be too low, right?

[@buddhikajayashan3179]

you should use landscape for huge things .

[@Joana-dz4sc]

@@buddhikajayashan3179 ok thank you!

[@daniel6sharma]

The inbuilt version of bridge doesnt download/import the displacement map last time i checked. Is/will this be updated now that we know we can do displacement in engine?

[@g10118]

Yes it does. It's a channel-packed texture, displacement is in the blue channel, exactly as shown in the video.

[@daniel6sharma]

@@g10118 Ah didnt notice that my bad. I had just skimmed through the video earlier. Thanks.

[@adekolapelumi1217]

The only way to tell between this and reality is just the characters and ai

[@Reflective-Matter]

Has anyone tried this? I followed this tutorial exactly as shown with the exact same textures and got totally different results...

[@alxleiva]

I got the same results, make sure you select the blue channel

[@Reflective-Matter]

@@alxleiva Thanks for the response. I can't see the channel selection, does this have to be enabled somewhere?

[@itscoldcoldwinter]

i will love to learn from people that work on fortnite rx580 4gb my game runes 240+ fps and i open unreal engine 5 only 30 fps people that work in that game must be next level

[@2011manbeast]

Wierd. I can't find the Check box for the Virtual Texture

[@sanrasuzumaki942]

As a noob, how can I do this with my own textures, like taking a picture and using that picture as a texture and having it pop up like this? thanks for any information on this.

[@isoslow]

UE5 workflow without tesselation is just plain BROKEN. Please at least make some announcements that you are working on the issue in any direction. The only solution as of now is not to use UE5.

[@vladimirkhadyko8304]

Yep, waiting for such announcement as well)) But sadly the only advice I see is to use nanite... Can I use nanite to improve my cloth sim for example? Rhetoric question of course))

[@hrisogona9330]

million triangles? really? it is not a miracle. it would be miracle if you do the same with one triangle

[@Red_Paper6495]

This is not a geometry shift. It's just an imitation. Firstly, this is only for static meshes. Secondly, this “displacement” does not constitute a collision. In the end it is a useless thing.

[@RmaNYouTube]

This, Virtual Heightfield Mesh and all other tricks to replace tessellation are shitty as hell. just bring back the old tesselation & displacement in material and we're okay with it if displaced meshes/landscapes don't support nannite.