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Apartment

About the Project

OVERVIEW:

The 'Apartment' scene primarily served as a study in lighting and texturing, utilizing UE5's Lumen system and Substance Painter. I also undertook the modeling or adjustment of several assets, which provided an opportunity to explore UE5's new modeling system alongside Maya. Most assets were sourced from Quixel or the Marketplace.

 

To construct the scene, I initially referenced an online interior schematic for structural guidance, then reimagined and reconfigured it according to my own design and vision. The objective was to create an architectural visualization project, and while there is room for further refinement, I am happy with the current outcome.

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Moving forward, I'd like to address issues related to color/light bleed, and flickering in reflective surfaces, which through my research appears to be common challenges with the Lumen system. 

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Process:​​​​​​

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  • General-

    • For this project, I used UE5's Lumen light system, light linking, material networks, and implemented custom sky cubemaps. I also utilized cinematic cameras with the Movie Render Queue plugin. Throughout the project, I frequently switched between Maya for adjusting models and creating new assets, and UE5's modeling editor for asset generation. I encountered several challenges, particularly in troubleshooting the postProcessVolume in conjunction with the Lumen vs. Raytracing project settings and the camera. This was key for achieving the desired look, while also minimizing light bleed and noise in reflective materials and surfaces. I still have some smaller things to cleanup, but overall, I'm happy with the outcome. ​​​​

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  • Candlelight Flicker Effect-​

    • This was achieved with emissive materials and an animated material funneled through a point light.

Software Used:

Candle
Animated Material Graph - Point Light

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  • Lighting & Sky (Unreal Engine)-

    • I had a few options for lighting the exterior. Initially, I experimented with the HDRI Backdrop plugin, which allowed me to use high-quality HDRI images through the Skylights cubemap setting. This plugin offered convenient controls for how these images appeared through the camera. However, I didn't get the desired result that I was after, so I reverted to the traditional method of using a sky-sphere with an emissive material map. I intend to revisit the HDRI plugin for further exploration. Additionally, I'm interested in experimenting with and manipulating the UltraDynamicSky asset, as it offers such a wide range of options and controls. The HDRI that I used, was from "50 HDRI CityScape Panoramas" on the marketplace. ​​

HDRI Material Graph

Lighting Studies:

  • The below images show some of the lighting schemes I was experimenting with along with the errors. Ultimately, I decided on warmer tones, with a late afternoon/early evening timeframe for the look/feel, though I liked the cooler color palette as well. At some point, I would like to circle back and create a night version of this that highlights the physical interior lights as well as the city lighting.

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  • Custom Material Graphs -

    • Depending on the surface and the material I like to have control or finite placement and real-time adjustment using material instances. Below are a couple examples of how I set those up. ​​

    • In addition, the wall art is AI generated based on my text prompts using RunwayML. I envision this space to be a high-rise, hi-end apartment rented or owned by a successful artist or musician in the city - making just enough to afford a top floor unit, but not enough to exceed a single bedroom or studio apartment/condo. I wanted to art to be reflective of that as well as provide a little color pop in the scene. 

Wall Art:

Kitchen Tiles:

Kitchten Tile Material Graph

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  • Background Assets -

    • The scene assets were acquired via Quixel and the Marketplace. Building structure, floor, ceiling, baseboards, crown molding and oven hood were modeled using UE5 and Maya. The bedroom door was from an asset pack but was significantly adjusted.​

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  • Rendering (Unreal Engine/After Effects/Motion Array/Media Encoder)-

    • I used a PostProcessVolume and a Cinematic Camera Sequences to provide the lens settings and Depth of Field. Renders were created using Sequencers and then imported into After Effects. Audio is from Motion Array.

    • Final renders were generated from Media Encoder​​​

    • The scene is 3rd person "playable", though it wasn't built with that as an end goal. 

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