Possible 3DC to Unreal 5 Nanite workflow

[digman]

I've been exploring a 3DC to Unreal Nanite 5 workflow. 

The basic workflow. 

Sculpt your mesh.

Manual or autopo your sculpt with more than the normal amount to get a good full coverage of the sculpt object.

Bake to the Paint Room using "Bake into Scene/ Micro Vertex" for your displacement map. Subdivide the retopo mesh when baking.

Paint Room: Convert your displacement map into real geometry which is located under the File menu / Export.  This is not export object and textures but exporting real geometry. 3DC uses the Displacement map to create real geometry with  3 selections of subdivision you can choose from.

The above does not include all the methods and things to watch out for to get a good displacement map. A video tutorial is needed for that.

First pictures shows the result. 

Left side----2,000,000 exported real geometry quad polygon model created from the displacement map.

Middle---- The subdivided bake model with displacement map in the paint room, 500,000 polygons.

Right---- 12,000,000 million sculpt room object.

Second pictures show the uv set. It could have been cleaner if I had a manual retopo for this sculpt room model but still it so much better than trying to use the UV map tool on a high triangulate retopo mesh. 

You loses a little amount of fidelity but not much at all.

I so far am happy with the result. This can method can be uses on many types of assets, not just what is shown here.

No normal maps or displacement map used on the 2,000,000 exported model to make it clear.

[digman]

The method is different than using a decimated sculpt mesh ( no uv set) with vertex colors.

The method I am testing uses a uv set mapped model. You can use tiling detail normal maps on larger assets if needed. That is what they did in Unreal 5 Nanite demo.

Both of the above work according to the asset you are using, only the choice of which to use how the asset is used in the scene.

In my method, you can import the model for Per-pixel painting as you get higher quality painting in Per Pixel painting than vextex colors plus roughness and metalness as well. 

It is not which one is better.  Which method to use depends upon the asset.

What is great is that 3DC offers both methods for creating assets for Nanite. 

[digman]

This video about Nanite goes with the method I explored.

He used blender and or Zbrush but  some of this can be done in 3DC too. 

3DC use of creating real geometry from a displacement map is a form of re-projection. 

Main reason I posted is that Nanite does not remove all uses of Uv mapped models. 

 

[Ratchet]

Good topic.

Yes Nanite is not the ultimate solution as advertised "get your Zbrush vertex painted model directly to Unreal" lol

There is still some UV mapping and some baking needed, also Nanite requires heavy polycount models.

Big disapointment is the Unreal 5 demo is 100 Go, just for static rocks and two characters, that's just ridiculous.

And i guess same approximative results using LODs and normal map baking could be achieved using lot less disk space, for now i'm not very convinced about Nanite Vs LODs, until you don't want no more to bother about LOD so go Nanite.

 

Outside of Nanite and Lumen, i think the most exciting Unreal new feature is the full support for open worlds like triple A game engines, but with easy tools out of the box for anyone even newbbies.