Turn Your Vray Scene To Real Time In Minutes With Datasmith and Unreal Engine

Do you think it will work to just translate a huge Vray interior scene directly into real time with Unreal Engine 5 (and Datasmith)? Check out the video to find out!
This is Part 1 of hopefully many videos following this project, which I'm calling Gable House. In this one, I am just trying to transfer my Vray project into Unreal Engine 5 via Datasmith. Later, I have lots of plans for this project inside of Unreal Engine, so stay tuned for that and make sure to subscribe.
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OTHER VIDEOS OF INTEREST
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FULL DESCRIPTION
Follow along in this video as I attempt to take a professional Vray interior directly into Unreal Engine with basically no adjustments. I use Datasmith for this process, and it usually works quite well, but I'm not sure on a file this big. Once I have it in there, I am going to explore making interior scenes look really good inside of Unreal Engine. I'm hoping that making things really nice with Vray will give me a big head start. That is assuming that everything translates nicely. Check out the video to see exactly how it goes, and stay for the results at the end. Subscribe for more of this project.

[@willembuiting]

I use the datasmith livelink with Sketchup all the time but i do the lighting and camera's within Unreal.

[@BarryLester]

This is what our team has been doing over the past few days, converting our old vray scenes from max to UE5. We are using max 2022 and the datasmith exporting process is really smooth. We have some problems like it creates lots of master materials, not material instances, and scalar data like glossiness and specular maps are mistakenly labelled as sRGB. We also have some weird problems with glass materials. I have a scene where a glass material lights up the whole scene even though the emissive socket is empty. In another scene, a glass material has no translucency, even when I use the glass material that comes with the starter content, which feels like there is something wrong with the mesh.

[@Learn-archViz]

That's awesome feedback! Yeah, I have definitely encountered lots of weird little things when doing this. You still have to know your way around in Unreal Engine 5 in order to get things working properly, but it can give you a big head start. It is especially useful if you already have a fully developed Vray scene and you don't want to start from scratch on materials. It is a workflow that I think makes a lot of sense for archviz, where there will often be a need for both polished final Vray renderings, and a real time walkthrough. Thanks so much for your feedback. All good info.

[@chrisharris_arizona]

@BarryLester Are you using Nanite? Nanite and transparency do not work...if I'm understanding your issue correctly, I might not be.

[@BarryLester]

@@chrisharris_arizona I actually tried enabling and disabling nanite on one of the troublesome meshes where glass materials are not recognized but the problem is still there. I think it has something to do with how many materials are there on that mesh, not necessarily the type of the materials.

[@chrisharris_arizona]

@@BarryLester interesting. Sounds almost like uvw mapping and/or material ID isn’t being understood in UE for what to do with that mesh, but hard to troubleshoot blind haha. I’ve had to troubleshoot materials so much in UE that I’m sure if I sat in front of the machine I could see the issue quickly. One other thing I’ve noticed that will wreck VRay/Max materials is while in Max in the material editor if you manipulate a map’s colors via the output tab, enable map color….DON’T do that haha. UE will not recognize anything you do in that output menu. If you need to adjust something, put it in a color correction map to adjust it and then in UE it’ll look exactly like what it does in Max/VRay. Just thought of another option, If you can find the material in UE that is supposed to be on that mesh, would be interesting to see if you enabled 2 sided in the material and see if that does anything. 🤷‍♂️ Anyway, curious to hear how you solve your issue with that problem mesh.

[@chrisharris_arizona]

I do civil engineering visualizations and have a decent workflow (in my own mind haha) for Max to UE5, with camera matching. As you learned, naming, naming, naming is very important. I don't know how those objects that were giving you trouble were made, but if there's a lot of stuff in the modifier stack, sometimes that will cause some issues so copying-collapsing down to an editable poly/mesh helps. Also, if using RailClone...you'll definitely want to copy the RC object and then convert that down to an editable mesh/poly. I had an actual railing and when kept as a RC object it brings it in as a billion little pieces and that will bog it down HUGE, so collapse those down. I tell people that while UE is faster at rendering (exponentially), its actually MORE labor hours because it'll take you a few hours to days to get all the lighting and materials to where you want it to be, project size dependent, but its worth it in the end because of the faster render times will get your project delivered quicker (in my case for large animations). Any updating you have to do, it's easy because you've already dialed all your materials in so importing the objects that need updating is quick. I guess that's another tip...I just import the object that needs the update, rather than re-exporting out the datasmith file of the whole project in the hopes that it understands and keeps everything. I think it works, but I'm not doing that for projects that are sometimes miles long.

[@chrisharris_arizona]

Here's a couple examples of built in 3ds Max and rendered in UE5: Buffalo: kzbin.info/www/bejne/nHjKf5Z-obeAbacsi=LUE_58fqB7OAAQzI Ramsey: kzbin.info/www/bejne/mpzCkn-eqJ6Fmq8si=QmP3WThu9jsUr8Jp

[@Learn-archViz]

Yeah, this is really good feedback. I'm not sure what was causing the specific issue for me, but I have isolated the specific object that is doing it. Everything else has been exported successfully now. It's absolutely true what you say about Unreal Engine and render times. People don't often understand this point. For me, architects tend to think that faster (real time) rendering means everything is instant, when in reality the render time is only a small fraction of the overall time spent on a project usually. But yes, if you take the time, it will pay off when you go to export animations, because render time will be reduced VERY dramatically as compared to Vray or similar.

[@chrisharris_arizona]

@@Learn-archViz to illustrate the time savings. The link of the Ramsey project above…that was similar to a project that actually connects to it. That sister project was rendered in VRay. Which took 5 computers a full 30 days to render out running 24/7 (there was like 12 animations in total for final video). The Ramsey project, essentially the same kind took me under 2 days of rendering in UE for 10 animations on my ONE computer running dual 2080’s. If you’re doing static renders, better off keeping it in VRay. If you do almost any animation, you’re making your life more difficult by not bringing it into UE, no matter how small the animation is because when you inevitably have a change or you missed something and have to re-render, the re-rendering will be minutes to hours instead of days to weeks.

[@Learn-archViz]

@@chrisharris_arizona Yep, I'm familiar. The time difference in computer time spent rendering is astronomical when it comes to serious animations. I have used Vantage a lot for this purpose as well. It's render times are more similar to a high quality Unreal Animation, but the translation from Vray to Vantage is much easier and more accurate. There are some shortcomings to that workflow as well, though. Vantage certainly cannot do all the same things that Unreal can.

[@erik8136]

Great stuff, literally just watching you for 10mins struggling

[@Learn-archViz]

You know, some people learn from watching me troubleshoot, and others already know everything 😉

[@BertoBeats]

Meandered my way to this corner of KZbin as a game developer purely out of curiosity, very cool to see how people from totally different backgrounds use Unreal.

[@BertoBeats]

Fun tip - you can scroll up or down while moving the camera to increase or decrease the camera speed, rather than going and clicking the camera slider at the top

[@Learn-archViz]

That's why you're the game developer, and I'm just here fumbling around in Unreal Engine 😉 Thanks!

[@Learn-archViz]

Awesome to hear. Thanks for watching.

[@philipkelly9521]

15gb...........Thats were is falls down for me. Why would you want to have a file that big.......... its nutts.

[@Learn-archViz]

Obviously, that is not ideal, but maybe I am used to just hogging tons of disk space. 15gb, represents my entire project folder, which includes all the history of my saved .max files (I save+ A LOT in order to make sure I can always go backwards if needed). When brought into Unreal, the file so far is about 2.5gb, which isn't as bad but still isn't super efficient. I doubt bringing things in from a full Vray scene is the best for optimizing a file, but also, that isn't usually a huge concern for me. I should be much better about disk space, but I am used to working on servers with humongous amounts of space available, so it creates bad habits 😬 Thanks for watching.

[@mae2309]

rule number one.. DO NOT BRING CAMERAS OR LIGHTS.. you still have to lite everything inside unreal.

[@Learn-archViz]

That's how I always do it, but I wanted to give it a try here for demonstration purposes.

[@mae2309]

Why would you want to export everything at once.. NO GOOD... that is why you create a datasmith for every objects.. for example.. all DOORS datasmith. All Windows. ALL WALLS. . ceiling and floor should go separetly incase you want to change or move your ceilling or flooring. all separate. never export everything at once. thats suicide...

[@Learn-archViz]

I have had decent success with exporting all at once, but obviously this time I have had some issues. I'm interested in the process you describe...exporting different objects intentionally on their own. I'll have to evaluate the benefits of doing it that way. Thanks for feedback.

[@mae2309]

@@Learn-archViz the benefit of doing it that way is that. your scene is lighter. yes, you will be ending up with 10 different datasmith files. but at the end is very convenient why? (Changes). you do not want to bring the entire scence over and over if you have changes.. you just want to bring that specific objects.. for example I was doing this interior and I had to modified my flooring and move some walls.. it was easy. I went back to max. modified my walls and move my flooring. re-datasmight my separate walls and floors and viola.. every object changed appeared where they meant to be... without having all my sence import as one.. give it a go.. yes. it may take you an hour more to have your project prep. but at the end. no headaches and faster workflow..

[@Learn-archViz]

@@mae2309 Well...as you know, changes are inevitable :) Definitely sounds like a good way to go.

[@chrisharris_arizona]

@@mae2309 I do the first datasmith import all as one, then when updates happen, datasmith updated individual objects only...so basically same method. 100% agree, don't be re-importing things that are working in UE!