The HIDDEN Settings for VDBs In Unreal Engine

Set Up VDB’s in Unreal Engine 5.3 Quickly, Plus the hidden settings that make your VDB’s cinematic quality.
PixelLab Link: www.thepixellab.net/products/...
Free VDB Shader: www.thepixellab.net/freebies/...
UPDATED Pixel Lab 20% Off Code: 6ZQ9VM2K
Free Shader 00:10
Pixel Lab Code 01:30
Import Animated VDB 02:10
VDBs In Sequencer 03:58
Translucency Problem 04:53
Dissapearing VDBs 05:15
Pathtracing VDBs 05:32
Final Renders 07:14
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[@daniellanekimball9956]

so thankful for your channel Josh, keep the great work going!

[@JoshuaMKerr]

Thanks so much. Just want the tech to get out of the way sometimes so we can spend more time creating.

[@gibgibGG]

Awesome Josh! 👍 Thanks for taking the time to show us this winding path. Very helpful 🤠

[@JoshuaMKerr]

Glad it was helpful!

[@azielarts]

Amazing Joshua!!! BEST VDB video ever. I have this permanently bookmarked

[@JoshuaMKerr]

Wow, thanks! Glad it was helpful

[@marcfruchtman9473]

Cool stuff. Sooo many console commands, glad you manage to solve those.

[@samuelculbreth7750]

Actual gold. Thank you!!

[@JoshuaMKerr]

Glad it was useful

[@WeareVRMUSIC]

I love vdb‘s from pixel lab and try a lot in Blender. Your video helps me a lot inside Unreal! Thank you!

[@JoshuaMKerr]

Thanks for saying! Glad my work is helping.

[@bornbrewedmusic9786]

Thanks Josh keep up the awesome work.

[@JoshuaMKerr]

Thanks! Will do!

[@aliamirian15]

man you are great . just great!

[@AharonRabinowitz]

This is great. Thank you. Just so you know you can right click on the VDB master material and choose create material instance. If you do that making changes material is much easier. You can easily drop in different VDB’s and make changes to all of the parameters.

[@JoshuaMKerr]

Sometimes this didn't work for me so I thought I'd do the foolproof way.

[@JasonKey3D]

good stuff 👍

[@JoshuaMKerr]

cheers

[@ChucxChuck]

Thanks Josh, this is very helpful. I love how your videos simplyfy setups. I have a special request, can you please make a video on setting up Vset3d and antilatency. Thanks in advance.

[@JoshuaMKerr]

Cheers for the kind words. Sorry Im not familiar with Vset3d.

[@Digital_Guerrero]

This is great thanks! have anyone run into VDB disappearing at close range in Path Trace mode? I can't seem to find a solution.

[@johnsonchan9708]

Well，I got a issue, in lit mode, the VDB does not quite contact with UE exponential fog, which is quite dissapointing when I have VDB far away the camera ,with scene fill with dense fog.

[@lotteche7399]

Do you have a solution?

[@JoshuaMKerr]

I'm not sure what effect you're after. Maybe join my discord and post in the support forum with pictures.

[@fnordcorps2552]

Hi - any idea why my VDB is appearing as a cube using the Pixelab shader in UE5.3.2? Tried playing around with the instance settings but it does not seem to solve the problem. This happens with the VDB shader that comes with out of the box

[@ContentMonsters]

⭐

[@chriswong225]

thank you for your great tutorial. however i have one more issue I cannot fix myself for VDB. i would like to set VDB as a separate render layer but its always storer nothing on that layers...

[@JoshuaMKerr]

That sounds like Unreal being buggy

[@fabiofernandes1580]

Awsome tutorial Josh! For me, everything is working perfectly but when I try to focus on a VDB next to a mesh (both exact same distance from camera) , only the mesh gets in focus. To focus the VDB I need to pull up the focus distance very far away. DO you know what's causing this issue?

[@JoshuaMKerr]

This might be an issue with VDBs at this stage. I know it works in Pathtracing, but I may need to have a mess around with lumen

[@armondtanz]

im kinda having problems looping these in sequencer? theres a looping option but i have no luck? any help?

[@JoshuaMKerr]

Is the sequence set to loop?

[@copperband43]

Hi! I'm a subscriber who is watching your videos hard. I'm studying vdb while watching your videos. But I have a question. I'm using lumen and I'm making a scene with glass behind the vdb, where vdb and glass overlap, the vdb disappears and only the glass is visible. But there's nothing wrong with pathtracking. How can I use vdb in lumen without any problems?

[@Kiezly]

Pixelated fire might actually be a cool idea for a music video or something like that 😅

[@JoshuaMKerr]

Cant Argue with that

[@LoganVFX]

Hello, I'm having a problem with the vdb visibility when I am using Path tracing. I made sure to use each command you showed in the video but nothing seems to be helping.. It works in lit mode but once i move to Path tracing everything is gone.. I noticed that tweaking the material temperature is making red pixels/artefacts appear but it clearly isn't smoke :x Would you have an idea?

[@JoshuaMKerr]

Hmm, I'm not sure. I haven't had that happen to me. Maybe start a new project or try a different vdb.

[@LoganVFX]

@@JoshuaMKerr I think it has to do with the projet itself yea. Thx for the reply 👍

[@JoshuaMKerr]

@LoganVFX anytime

[@kickheavy8982]

I'm having the exact same problem. Did you ever figure it out? I'm going nuts.

[@faradaysinfinity]

I am having this problem as well @JoshuaMKerr

[@visualstoryteller6158]

Does fire can interact with a camera footage? Asking from the sense of photorealism

[@JoshuaMKerr]

If I understand your question properly, the fire animations are 'baked in' so they dont interract with other things. The idea is to use vdbs that look correct depending on what your scene requires. Does that help?

[@marcogrob3899]

Joshua! where is the link to your patreon and were you able to import the pixel lab vdb's as hires? My Unreal crashed over and over (Rtx 4090 Threadripper etc) Mine look like crap in lumen too ! Best Marco

[@JoshuaMKerr]

Hi man, yeah I had trouble with one high res asset which was the nebula but haven't solved why just yet (I'm on a 3080). The mid quality was more than enough though. I think lumen needs some updates to shadows and translucency to work properly but asside form that they looked prety good on my end. If you'd like to join my patreon here's the link. Woudl be good to have your support. bit.ly/3pcBuBn

[@marcogrob3899]

Thanks for the link! Thanks very helpful as per usual. It actually works now!! I left everything as is when I imported. But my shaddows are still off..... THANKS ! I will become a patreon@@JoshuaMKerr

[@JoshuaMKerr]

@marcogrob3899 Amazing, glad its working too. But yes I think shadows are a future update. Works nicely in pathtracer

[@AnimationSimplified]

Great video! But the discount code doesn't seem to work?

[@JoshuaMKerr]

Looking into this now

[@JoshuaMKerr]

You can try again now. Should work

[@isancreates1258]

Hey, PathTracing option not showing for me, ive read that they denied path tracing for old cards. Do you know the solution to make PathTracing show again?

[@JoshuaMKerr]

What version of Unreal are you in?

[@isancreates1258]

@@JoshuaMKerr 5.2.2, why? I didnt use path tracing in 5.1.1 so i dont remember if i had the option over there. Anyways, i opened 5.4 and there is no path tracing either. I have a very bad card anyways, Quadro P600, but i dont know why epic changed that.

[@JoshuaMKerr]

@isancreates1258 Hmm not sure if that card is supported.

[@isancreates1258]

@@JoshuaMKerr If i can`t render path tracing, Is there any other way to make the vdb emissive ?

[@JoshuaMKerr]

Can it not be done through the material options either in details or the material graph itself?

[@spencerking857]

Does this work in 5.2.1?

[@JoshuaMKerr]

It was a new feature in 5.3

[@jysn101]

any of this written down? all those console commands...

[@davidratajczak8408]

Cool video but at some point nobody is explaining how we can use VDBs.. with a Lumen environment, and why high res (50 Gb) vdb sequences can't be display properly with high resolution, but looks super low inside of Unreal Engine

[@JoshuaMKerr]

VDBs should work natively in unreal with lumen. Im not sure about the low res issue.

[@davidratajczak8408]

​@@JoshuaMKerr Cool to know for Lumen, because I saw a lot of persons on youtube talking about path tracing exclusively so I thought it was part of the problem Basically I got a super high resolution atomic explosion vdb sequence from The Pixel Lab, and the look in the viewport + after a sequencer render is pretty "ugly" because kind of blurry and low poly And it's like there are some hidden parameters or missing steps to increase the vdb resolution ? I see a lot of import settings in 8 bits, so, I guess importing a VDB in 32 bits should help ? (the pixel lab tutorial I watched was with a low res vdb, and 8 bits import) I'm quite desperate because the VDB looked soooo cool in their renders on their website ! haha

[@JoshuaMKerr]

@davidratajczak8408 It really does depend a bit on the quality of the vdb. The pixel lab vdbs are very good, but not all can stand up to close scrutiny. It's hard to know if it's your settings or the vdb. I have a discord server with a support forum if that's of any use.

[@davidratajczak8408]

@@JoshuaMKerr Oh for sure will join your Discord thanks a lot !

[@JoshuaMKerr]

@@davidratajczak8408 No worries

[@UE_5_beginner]

crash on 5.2 and i can't use 5.3 cos it mess all my meshes and textures :/

[@AharonRabinowitz]

Unfortunately, VDBs only work natively in unreal engine 5.3.

[@UE_5_beginner]

shoot! -_- thing is 5.3 mess al my shaders and meshes . I've seen people working on 5.2 with VDB just fine :/ how is that?@@AharonRabinowitz

[@JoshuaMKerr]

Have a look in project settings to see if substrate is enabled. Ive had that cause big problems for me.

[@AharonRabinowitz]

@@UE_5_beginner There is an external plugin for VDB's in earlier versions but they are complicated to use and use a different material system. kzbin.info/www/bejne/n3bGnayurKiKl7s

[@akiAlex]

Thanks! Very helpful! BUT WHY!!?? Why does every KZbinr who shows the console commands in UE, that they have already typed during the video BTW, do not post them in the video description? Is this some kind of code or religion that denies doing it? I swear, every single one! =))

[@JoshuaMKerr]

I usually do. Mustve missed it on this one. Thankfully, Unreal's Output Console now works like a search box, so just type part of the cmd in, and the rest will come up. Not as annoying as it used to be.

[@akiAlex]

@@JoshuaMKerr Yeah, and now you can save them and just push =) BTW, do you know, is it possible to make VDB emit light in UE in lumen?

[@faradaysinfinity]

@@akiAlex came for this. i thought emissive VDB were available but it seems not

[@akiAlex]

r.PathTracing.HeterogeneousVolumes - no such command in 5.4 r.HeterogeneousVolumes.MaxShadowTraceDistance r.HeterogeneousVolumes.OrthoGrid.ShadingRate 1 r.HeterogeneousVolumes.FrustumGrid.ShadingRate 1 r.HeterogeneousVolumes.FrustumGrid.MaxBottomLevelMemoryInMegabytes r.HeterogeneousVolumes.OrthoGrid.MaxBottomLevelMemoryInMegabytes

[@JoshuaMKerr]

Heterogeneous volumes may be enabled by default in 5.4

[@akiAlex]

@@JoshuaMKerr Probably.

[@vincelund7203]

Good god! Why's it gotta be so COMPLICATED?!

[@JoshuaMKerr]

Oh, believe me... this is the easy way. Try building the shader from scratch.

[@AharonRabinowitz]

It’s even easier if you right click on the master material and choose create material instance. I designed it so that if you worked with a material instance, it was easy to drop in different VD B’s and also to make changes to things like color intensity. Try it out!

[@kickheavy8982]

@@AharonRabinowitz Thanks for this Aharon! Extremely helpful material for new Unreal users like myself. Do you have any tips on how to get the scale and position of the imported VDBs to line up with where they were in C4D? For example, inside C4D, if you had a pyro sim of fire spreading across an object, how would you get the same vdb and object to line up properly after importing into Unreal. Trying to do it by hand results in things not lining up right because the size and positions are way off from the original scene.