How to achieve realistic graphics

Unity Engine
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Hi, I would like to ask if anyone has dealt with photorealistic graphics. With the release of UE5, I’m trying to achieve similar results in Unity HDRP but personally, I don’t know what to try anymore. I installed UE5 and in 2 minutes I created in it what I did in Unity in 10+ minutes and of course, it turned out the way it did, so I’m wondering if you have any advice on how to achieve a similar quality of models or light.

Both scenes were created using Quixel

Unity 2021 LTS

8564909--1146233--Unity_JL67eLUc5y.jpg
8564909--1146233--Unity_JL67eLUc5y.jpg1920×939 345 KB

Unreal Engine 5
8564909--1146239--ISkDNheu8F.jpg
8564909--1146239--ISkDNheu8F.jpg1898×1036 302 KB

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Hello,
I’m not a lighting expert and just trying out HDRP recently.
But still hope my post can help a little bit.

If youre’re new to Unity or HDRP, I highly recommend you watch this very informative video guide by Unity.

And make sure you read this thread,
** HDRP Sponza, learning about HDRP **
pierred_unity and other user had some very useful conversation we can learn from.

After watch the above Youtube video guide.
I download the sponza scene, use APV(Adoptive probe volume) to light the scene, The scene of below screenshot only took me 5 min to setup (I’m not even enable SSGI or whats so ever yet, with SSGI its event better).

Which may still not look prefect in artist standard. but the out of box result are still way better then I expected.

8564954--1146248--image.png
8564954--1146248--image.png1250×700 1.21 MB

It’s made a while ago so I may not remeber all steps, but the key steps I took are :

  • Setup HDRI sky inside volume settings
  • Setup APV(which will just automatically setup those light probes for you) / Or setup lightmap
  • Setup Reflection Probe (This is important)
  • Adjust exposure inside volume settings (Or just be lazy and use the auto exposure mode)

For APV, please check this thread
** Adaptive Probe Volumes (APVs) experimental release for HDRP in 2021.2 **

lastly you can get the sponza test scene from here
[Sponza Scene Download ready for HDRP]( Sponza Scene Download ready for HDRP ?gq=Sponza%20)

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Also maybe try out the latest beta with new graphical features and/or ray tracing?

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Truth be told I tried the Beta version, but for my part, the engine couldn’t handle it the scene had over 800k of geometry and the engine couldn’t even run, on the current photo in the 2021 LTS version I have over 5Mil and the engine doesn’t even feel it. However, with the new features, I tried everything regarding light is already pretty good, unfortunately, this is not the case with the quality of the models.

Thanks for the great advice however I have been familiar with HDRP since its inception so I already know about all this stuff. I’ve used almost nothing in the scene except slightly adjusting the scene to make it look like that and turning on path tracing, so there’s definitely a lot more room for improvement there. However, I quite like the scene I’ll definitely download it and try to make the most of it for fun. Rather, I was mostly concerned with the quality of the models here. Photoscanned models look really bad compared to UE5

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