VDB are changing Unreal Engine 5 FOREVER!

[@rachelrunner8948]

Thank you so much for this! It’s easy to find tutorials that show off a lot of breaking glass, not so much the ones that give true performance tips. I was curious to know what GPU you are working on?

[@ArghanionsPuzzlebox]

Glad you found it useful! I'm using a 4090 and also testing stuff on a 3070.

[@JasonKey3D]

good info, thanks for sharing 🙏

[@ArghanionsPuzzlebox]

Thank you, Jason. You guys rock!

[@ChaojianZhang]

1. Pls remove that post processing volume 2. It’s an eagle, why everyone keeps calling it a dragon 3. Best detailed walk through so far.

[@ArghanionsPuzzlebox]

Haha. ok!

[@nathanielacton3768]

One thing I found to be hard is to prevent the sunlight from discolouring the smoke. If you want stock standard light grey smoke and use a proper sun colour skylight or ultra dynamic sky you'll end up with all the smoke being a weird light brown colour. I'm sure there is a way to do this but I'm not sure it'll be simple.

[@marcogrob3899]

THANK YOU! Your tutorials are amazing! THANK YOU! I will become a patreon...I was checking and could not find the VDB samples you refer to in the video....

[@ArghanionsPuzzlebox]

Awesome! Thank you! Really sorry about this, I messed up with the Link. Should have been this: we.tl/t-xIu7O6qmLz

[@importon]

Very cool! Would love to see your take on optimizing a vdb for a projectile dirt impact. For example, how would you go about authoring that VDB using flame only even though the final effect is more of a smoke/dust effect? And from there I would love to see the workflow for triggering it on projectile hit. Also, would it be more performant to author the effect using niagra fluids and cache the sim vs importing an extrenal vdb from embergen?

[@ArghanionsPuzzlebox]

Great suggestion! Sorry for replying solate, thought I already did. The Niagara method is most likely less performance cost after baking it into a VDB but the quality will most likely not be as good as what Emebergen Produces. The dynamic control in the Embergen Program is a lot better. I'll have a think how to proceed for your suggestion, the main thing for me is how I have managed to use the Flame Output from Embergen to create a good effect at a far lower disk space cost versus using the Density feature.

[@AndyWalsh]

they're broke AF in UE 5.3 as far as I can see. They don't receive light, which is pretty essential. And my volume keeps disappearing when it's far away from the camera.

[@ArghanionsPuzzlebox]

You can increase the vdb trace distance with a console command. But yeah, lights are buggy.

[@evenskiped6135]

I love vdb great video

[@ArghanionsPuzzlebox]

I do too :) What are you using VDBs for?

[@evenskiped6135]

@@ArghanionsPuzzlebox for unreal engine cinematics with embergen and houdini and a good comp on after effect

[@photobrandon]

This is great, thank you! Have you had issues with the pathtracer being extremely slow when using it with VDB?

[@ArghanionsPuzzlebox]

Yeah it's slower than usual but I think that's because of how intensive it is.

[@hytalegermany1095]

Is there a way to transform a niagara smoke animation into a sparse volumetric texture?

[@ArghanionsPuzzlebox]

Yes, in 5.3 any Niagara Fluid sim can be turned into that. The process is called "caching" and it has been showcased in the newest VDB tutorial from Epic themselves on their channel

[@jreamworks]

when i try to move the vdb in scene its just kinda slide around or tiles ive tried switching it to clamp tiling method

[@Blender_Max]

can i stop the animation of the cloud?

[@ArghanionsPuzzlebox]

Yes. You can freeze it with a key

[@Blender_Max]

in time line? can u tell me the way?! i'm a noob in unreal engine :D @@ArghanionsPuzzlebox

[@piker78]

huh, on 1.32 your vdb has a shadow on the floor, how did you do that?

[@ArghanionsPuzzlebox]

Unfortunately that is in Embergen. I alternate between unreal engine and Embergen at the start.

[@piker78]

@@ArghanionsPuzzlebox aaah, I see, hope they fix that in unreal in the future

[@ArghanionsPuzzlebox]

@piker78 definitely possible. I've seen some guys on artstation that have a custom solution to get shadows. Oh and path tracing does have shadows on vdbs.

[@piker78]

@@ArghanionsPuzzlebox hmm I rather need an RT solution. Care to make a video on the custom solution, or point me in the right direction?

[@ArghanionsPuzzlebox]

@piker78 oh I don't have one yet working. I saw some people on artstation showing some results but not the process.