Hi guys,
I’m just starting some archviz projects and wanted to know if you got any tips for super realistic renders inside unity, what tools are you using etc. I will share my work flow later and my own personal archviz tips and tricks.
Essential tools, MOST all free to use.
- Blender + archpack addon + booltools addon
- Crazy bump
- Post processing effects
- Affinity photo (not free)
- CGtextures (tiled seamless textures)
More detailed explanations
#1 With blender there are some essential plugins, I’ve updated to the latest version, so go into preferences and enable bool tools (this helps with much easier Boolean operations, sure UVW for automatic geometric uv unwrapping and the arch plugin. You can download free models of the internet for archviz, but preparation of these are key. Normally they come as .3ds files so sometimes the bits aren’t all together, to fix this normally clearing the location works. Second not all have nice topology but that doesn’t matter so much. The key is to REDUCE the number of vertices and faces. Otherwise unity has a hissy when when trying to apply uvs. So use the DECIMATE modifier liberally. I normally crank it down to a stage where I feel it is still ok looking but not too bad. Then I apply the modifier and do convert tris to quads. Sometimes but not always the LIMITED DISSOLVE works to further clean up the mesh. If you have problems with the mesh baking as black in unity you need to FLIP THE NORMALS in blender. Also make sure to uvwrap your model, smart project normally works but not always, some free models are already uvunwrapped some are not.
Do I model everything inside blender?
That’s a good question, but I wouldn’t. Even though the navigation and quad view is great, when you’re adding props like cabinets, bed etc, you will want to add them as prefabs inside unity, mainly because you will set all the materials and normal maps and apply uvs before, if you only do this inside blender it will slow down the work flow because you’ll have to do this for EACH object inside unity.
#2 Crazy bump is a wonderful tool for quickly getting your floors or brick textures to pop, I just save out the normal map and that seems to do the treat, I’ve never tried the other ones but it is something to look into. Again, most of these can be found on cgtextures, and if you register an account you get 15 free credits every day. I keep a library of all my textures anyway. Personally, I don’t think you need something extravagant like substance designer for archviz, you can get away without using it.
#3 Post processing effects are key! They make the scene pop, sadly on my mac I don’t have access to the eye adaption effect, I’ve seen some youtube vids and I’m sure they’d make the scenes stand out! I just use anti-aliasing, contrast in the colour grading and exposure and saturation. Also a little of chromatic aberration and bloom with dust particles for that cool light beam on camera effect (not too much though)
#4 I use affinity photo for tweaking my textures by apply colour grading or rotating the textures. It is also great for creating seamless patterns.
#5 Yeah cgtextures you can grab most if not all your textures you need, again using crazy bump to make them pop.
Next I’m going to go over the most important stage lighting. . .
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Lighting
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The Post effects stack
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This is a great way to derail discussion into oblivion.[/quote]
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Lemme just stop you here.
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What do you mean?
I’d just like to add this isn’t a discussion about blender vs 3dmax or please try to keep it on topic if you have any lighting or graphic improvement tips for unity I’m all ears. Thanks.
Also there’s this free plugin I am using with blender 
So meh.
spoiler
Keeps saying there’s missing pre-fabs for me, also will you take out the post processing stack?
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I would have expected to see a lot more pictures on a thread with such a title.
You might want to ask this artist what he’s using, because it’s by far the best archviz I’ve seen in Unity.
https://www.artstation.com/jerycedia
EDIT: In fact, you can get the package on gumroad if you want for five bucks:
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Longer than what? Also, more-than-decent textures can be found everywhere on the internet these days.
In any case, I think it looks fantastic, and IMO the post process v2 has a lot to do with it. I’ve put v2 in my game and it looks far better than it ever has before, and probably could be much better still once I get the hang of twiddling the controls.
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So I bought that package off gumroad to try it out. EDIT: nevermind, hadn’t read the instructions. Still doesn’t quite look the same, a bit of bleeding and blurriness, not sure what to do about that.
As Advertised
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Updated, didn’t read the instructions. Still doesn’t quite look so good though, blurriness especially.
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Well I’m testing out Unity’s SRP / HDRP, I have an arch viz package anyway so I’ll post soon…
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What if I don’t consider lighting box realistic or desirable? Also why would I want Unity to be better than Unreal? That would mean Unity has to become Unreal since Unity can’t be better than Unreal. It’s totally different to Unreal, and will pretty much always render differently, no matter how slight.
For arch viz you need some serious GI bake settings, which I’d argue are more important than the renderer used even.
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I think this is a good idea but I’d suggest you don’t give tips until you actually have the results. Some bits of your current renders look good, others very unrealistic. Once you get photo-realistic results then post the tips. For now these are ideas
@hippocoder - Maybe better to name this post how to get photo-realistic ArchViz, I wouldn’t expect its the go to to use either Unity or Unreal for ArchViz unless there’s a need for a user to have fine grained navigation through the space. Probably be more usual to use tools like 3DS, V-Ray, Corona, etc.
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Good idea, renamed it.
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Maybe “better than ever” would sound better than “better ever” 
Then you’re in the wrong thread 
Personally I think Unity’s looked better than Unreal for some time now, issue is it’s rather inconsistent… I noticed there’s still alot of Temporal AA Jitter etc.
Actually no, you don’t really need “serious” bake times, with UE’s photon mapping you can do like a hundred bounces in ten minutes top quality (then again 60 texels in Unity’s progressive takes about the same)… I’d say you need a serious machine though…!
P.S I noticed you changed it but Unity’s HDRP looks fantastic (even at this stage) and has real crap like lumens, *dances and wiggles in joy… SSR is only a touch up not a fix for a bad scene.
Although I couldn’t spit out the image, it seems the screencapture command takes it from a different buffer to what the HDRP line is spitting out… So everything looked real weird.
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Yeah I thought it would cause a lot of people to rush off and break it and post up glitchy blotchy images of it that made no sense. You know how people get sometimes.