Popular Post User-B Posted January 9 Popular Post Share Posted January 9 This video is an excellent starting point and I've been able to go a long way with the workflow but am ready for some additional education on the Unreal Engine side. Patrick Wambold is available to go beyond what is shown in the video but like all of us needs to make a living and has a day rate. It might be a long shot but if enough people are interested I will coordinate a session with Patrick. Before going to far down the road with this I just want to gauge interest. Best Regards, Steve 4 1 Quote Link to comment
User-B Posted January 15 Author Share Posted January 15 Looks like there is not enough interest right now so I will put this on the shelf for the time being. If anyone want to collaborate on this feel free to DM me and we'll see where it goes. So far I've migrated a project from Vectorworks to Unreal Engine with large LED screens playing live content, DMX controlled lights while in VR. Just needs some UE tweaking. It's always the last 3% that costs the most time. LOL Best, Steve Quote Link to comment
Jesse Cogswell Posted January 15 Share Posted January 15 I'm very interested in the Vectorworks to Unreal workflow but unfortunately don't have the time to devote to learning Unreal Engine enough to make an honest go of it. I am frankly not doing nearly the level of previs work that I was pre-pandemic, and the work keeping me occupied these days wouldn't benefit much for this level of previs. As a longtime (and often disappointed) user of Vision, I spent some time researching alternatives (Capture, L8, Depence2, WYSIWYG), and was very intrigued once they introduced DMX control into Unreal Engine, and the work I saw at Carbon looked really promising. I hadn't realized that they had introduced GDTF into Unreal, so I very much appreciate you sharing the video. If the winds change and I go back to needing previs in my workflow, Unreal is likely the avenue I would pursue. 1 Quote Link to comment
grant_PD Posted January 16 Share Posted January 16 I would love to get some training on how to integrate Unreal into my workflow, sorry for the late response, I just saw this post. 1 Quote Link to comment
User-B Posted January 18 Author Share Posted January 18 Jesse, I tend to agree with your assessment of the previs alternatives even though I have only dabbled with them. Carbon is doing good work inside UE but the price point is pretty steep if you aren't making money using it. GDTF comes into UE very well but one of the things I need to learn is how to handle the lighting device functions that come in from the lighting device GDTF. UE has a generic set of DMX light fixtures so not all the functions from the GDTF will map. Overall UE provides a plethora of tools to do almost anything and it renders beautifully. The flip side is that UE is not a purpose built tool so the learning curve is challenging. Fortunately I mostly enjoy this kind of learning but it can be frustratingly slow at times. Quote Link to comment
Jeff Bonny Posted January 18 Share Posted January 18 With the film biz going through major changes Unreal Engine has been a consideration. I'm all ears for this conversation. 1 Quote Link to comment
VIRTUALENVIRONS Posted January 18 Share Posted January 18 My last project was finished in Unreal Engine. Although all the heavy lifting was done in Vectorworks, the end product was Unreal Engine. I was one of several people across the globe involved. There were problems using any export from Vectorworks. The solution was to send everything first to CINEMA 4D (C4D) and then to Unreal Engine. I took it to C4D and then sent it on. Using C4D as the translator had advantages. I had received a large venue file (see first image below) that was many millions of unconnected polygons. The venue was missing the ~25000 seats. My part was to connect the polygons in an organized fashion and add the seats. Even though I was able to separate the parts into 37 classes, they were still individual polygons. In C4D, I used the Polygon Reduction tool to cut the polygons down by half and "connect them by colour" so they were single surface objects. In the end I sent them 37 objects to create the C4D file shown below. (second image) The Unreal people then just read the file in without any problems and went to work finishing it. I have never seen the final work. 1 Quote Link to comment
User-B Posted January 18 Author Share Posted January 18 (edited) That is a pretty cool project! I am guessing the object(s) being translated were nurbs based? It is not exclusive to VW to have translation issues from a nurbs based to a polygon based model. It just the nature of the beast. I have had good success out of VW into UE using datasmith but always with pretty standard solids. The VW objects need to be textured before output to generate usable UVs in the imported models. I haven't had to do it yet but I am definitely aware that at some point I will need something like Blender or C4D to address either UV or polygon issues. Edited January 18 by User-B typo Quote Link to comment
User-B Posted January 18 Author Share Posted January 18 13 hours ago, Jeff Bonny said: With the film biz going through major changes Unreal Engine has been a consideration. I'm all ears for this conversation. UE is playing a big part in virtual production for film and video. As virtual production becomes more of an out of the box solution the technical knowledge is becoming less of a hurdle. I suspect that DMX controlled lighting inside UE will play a bigger part moving forward as well. Software like VW is a natural part in the process as UE is not purpose built for set design. Bringing in VW sets with full lighting designs and DMX patching seamlessly will be a leap forward. Quote Link to comment
Jeff Bonny Posted January 18 Share Posted January 18 1 minute ago, User-B said: UE is playing a big part in virtual production for film and video. As virtual production becomes more of an out of the box solution the technical knowledge is becoming less of a hurdle. I suspect that DMX controlled lighting inside UE will play a bigger part moving forward as well. Software like VW is a natural part in the process as UE is not purpose built for set design. Bringing in VW sets with full lighting designs and DMX patching seamlessly will be a leap forward. I wonder if Unreal Engine will ever include .vwx imports? While AutoCAD and Solidworks are the standard in most industries VW has been the entertainment biz benchmark for set and lighting design. What settings did you guys use exporting to Unreal Datasmith? Did you set up your builds in VW any differently to accommodate Unreal Engine? Quote Link to comment
User-B Posted January 18 Author Share Posted January 18 2 minutes ago, Jeff Bonny said: I wonder if Unreal Engine will ever include .vwx imports? While AutoCAD and Solidworks are the standard in most industries VW has been the entertainment biz benchmark for set and lighting design. What settings did you guys use exporting to Unreal Datasmith? Did you set up your builds in VW any differently to accommodate Unreal Engine? All the objects I exported from VW via Datasmith were nothing special, just various solid objects and symbols. The only thing that was required was that a texture be applied before export otherwise the UVs were a mess. The challenge initially is understanding the UE interface, terminology and outliner tree. It is a bit intimidating at first. All I can suggest is to do some importing and exporting to get use to the idiosyncrasies. 1 Quote Link to comment
VIRTUALENVIRONS Posted January 19 Share Posted January 19 (edited) 16 hours ago, User-B said: I am guessing the object(s) being translated were nurbs based? They were polygons from the beginning. The file that was sent to me without seats was probably 20 years old. There are lots of issues with CAD programs to Unreal, TwinM, Maya, 3D, or even C4D. The "Send to C4D" command does not automatically fix Surface Normals, etc. Although I take on contracts occasionally to keep my skills up, I am twenty years retired and shrinking my 3D world, but if I was a young person using VW's and looking go into high end visualization, I would still acquire CINEMA 4D. C4D is a portal to gaming, movies, event planning, etc. and its claim to fame, "Motion Graphics". Lots of $$ in Motion Graphics. Edited January 19 by VIRTUALENVIRONS Quote Link to comment
User-B Posted January 19 Author Share Posted January 19 Makes complete sense. I had a mesh that was imported into VW and it had UV issues when imported into UE. Just curious if you tried some of the other programs for polygon modeling like Blender, Maya, Max, zBrush etc. and why you prefer C4D over them? I've used quite a few CAD programs and when I first ventured outside of those Lightwave was my first polygon based modeling software. Need another one but trying to shortlist a few before diving in. Just not enough time/money to try everything out there. Quote Link to comment
VIRTUALENVIRONS Posted January 19 Share Posted January 19 1 hour ago, User-B said: why you prefer C4D over them? CINEMA 4D is part of the Nemetschek group. That is why there is a "send to C4d" command. No other program will work like C4D like Vectorworks. Once you become familiar, they are one program, not two. Below is something I worked on a while ago for a gaming group. The city is a hybrid of VW's and C4D. The towering building was built in Vectorworks. I could not really make this as well in C4D and without question as easily. All I did with this is animate the meteor to hit the building. The rest is all Dynamics programming. Watch the entire video even though it appears to stop. It is under a minute. 1 Quote Link to comment
Jeff Prince Posted January 19 Share Posted January 19 (edited) 1 hour ago, VIRTUALENVIRONS said: CINEMA 4D is part of the Nemetschek group. That is why there is a "send to C4d" command. No other program will work like C4D like Vectorworks. Once you become familiar, they are one program, not two. Below is something I worked on a while ago for a gaming group. The city is a hybrid of VW's and C4D. The towering building was built in Vectorworks. I could not really make this as well in C4D and without question as easily. All I did with this is animate the meteor to hit the building. The rest is all Dynamics programming. Watch the entire video even though it appears to stop. It is under a minute. That is certainly “Unreal”istic, but not really on topic. Edited January 19 by Jeff Prince Quote Link to comment
Ben3B Posted January 20 Share Posted January 20 8 hours ago, VIRTUALENVIRONS said: CINEMA 4D is part of the Nemetschek group. That is why there is a "send to C4d" command True but unfortunately no C4D import command 😕 Hello , I have a big interest to work with unreal ( carbon) but no time to learn ... For now I work with twinmotion it works well for a single focus of light 1 Quote Link to comment
VIRTUALENVIRONS Posted January 20 Share Posted January 20 14 hours ago, Jeff Prince said: but not really on topic. @Ben3B You may find this Twin Motion Video useful. Hi Jeff. We have been discussing C4D as a portal to all things good and wonderful in the Visualization pipeline. Even in smaller studios there are multiple people in the pipeline, a modeller, a texture mapper, texture artist, renderer, animator, non-linear editing, After effects, etc. The group I made this for just wanted the Dynamics programming. I could have given it them in shaded view. They may have rendered it in all glass for all I know. My part was building in a way that the building would react in a sliding domino effect. Although complex, easier in Vectorworks and then send to C4D. From there….Unreal…..Twin…..don’t know. Further to my point. I gave that city, minus the Dynamics building to Jonathan Reeves in England (Vectorworks Reseller/Trainer) who took the file and produced this great tutorial on how to import C4D into Twin Motion. 1 1 Quote Link to comment
Ben3B Posted January 20 Share Posted January 20 Video4.mp4 This is an exemple of what's possible with vectorworks and twinmotion 4 Quote Link to comment
Ben3B Posted January 20 Share Posted January 20 Next step is to work with unreal to have lights movable I dont know if it will be easier to pass thri twinmotion to texture thé file and then to unreal , or all doing in unreal ...? Quote Link to comment
VIRTUALENVIRONS Posted January 20 Share Posted January 20 @Ben3B This is very nice. Is this your work, either way very cool. Quote Link to comment
EAlexander Posted January 20 Share Posted January 20 28 minutes ago, Ben3B said: Next step is to work with unreal to have lights movable I dont know if it will be easier to pass thri twinmotion to texture thé file and then to unreal , or all doing in unreal ...? From my experience - the fewer programs you can go through the better, but I haven't tested Twinmotion up to UE in a long time. Probably easiest to apply basic textures in VW just to get them created and applied to the correct objects, and then once in Unreal, work on the textures dialed in to get the right color, glossiness, normal maps, etc. There is DMX support in UE and templates with moving lights and lasers. My tests showed that if you are running just a handful of lights, it works okay, but if you are trying to cue a song through a big rig, you're going to want to look at Carbon for Unreal to do that effectively. To the OP: I spent a few months last year learning Unreal in 2024 and it is amazing and frustrating at the same time 🙂 My stuff was coming from Cinema4d, but I'd be interested in learning more about VW directly to UE. I think for quick fly thrus and reviewing design with creative directors and artists its valuable. That said - I never found going through Cinema4d difficult or a lot of work to prep for UE, but a direct workflow in some cases could be better. Following with interest. 2 Quote Link to comment
Ben3B Posted January 20 Share Posted January 20 21 minutes ago, VIRTUALENVIRONS said: @Ben3B This is very nice. Is this your work, either way very cool. Yes this is m'y work, all drawned in vectorworks and texturing in twinmotion Quote Link to comment
Ben3B Posted January 20 Share Posted January 20 7 minutes ago, EAlexander said: want to look at Carbon for Unreal to do that effectively. Yes this is exactly what I ve in mind For now I put texture in VW without care about how it looks, it only have to bé différent texture for each stuff were I want différent look in twinmotion, and then replace VW texture by twinmotion Texture in TM🙂 What is loosing time is that lighting source isnt a part of lighting fixture in TM , so I need to rename it, in order to set thé color, intensity, zoom beam in TM I want to look in carbon side , because the VJ in our team are using unreal in live for motion, and we want that the lighting guy control real light in the same time as virtual light inside the unreal motion 🙂 1 Quote Link to comment
Ben3B Posted January 20 Share Posted January 20 15 minutes ago, EAlexander said: From my experience - the fewer programs you can go through the better Totaly agree!!!! Quote Link to comment
VIRTUALENVIRONS Posted January 20 Share Posted January 20 9 minutes ago, Ben3B said: Yes this is m'y work, all drawned in vectorworks and texturing in twinmotion Excellent work, beautiful. 1 Quote Link to comment
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