Enhanced 3D Display with Unreal Engine

2022.1 and Newer

The integration of the Unreal engine enables very fast ray trace rendering and an improved 3D display with high quality shadows and reflections in real time.

Unreal is an advanced 3D engine, created to serve the needs of high-quality video games, it provides a more realistic 3D display than OpenGL.

OpenGL is an open-source 3D engine. It provides a 3D environment that can showcase 3D objects with lighting and 3D navigation in real time. It also provides API to connect with application that needs to present 3D information.

Note that Unreal with Ray trace is dependent on Nvidia RTX.

OpenGL is still supported, you can switch the settings in the preferences window, in case you find the Unreal display is consuming too much memory and resulting in slow processing. Refer to Preferences to learn more.

The following image and GIF show the differences in the multiple 3D displays. You can see that the OpenGL lacks shadows and there is no emphasize of layering. The Unreal without ray-trace have some emphasized shadows and reflections, and the Unreal with ray-trace is adding realistic shadow. V-Ray provides more shadows, color bleed and more articulation for nuances like a natural behavior of colors transmitted from one surface to another.

Real- Time Ray Trace Rendering with Unreal

The integrated Unreal engine allows fast, high quality ray trace rendering. The Real-time ray trace checkbox is enabled by default for users with a graphics card from Nvidia with RTX support. Real time ray trace rendering option is disabled for users without a graphics card from Nvidia with RTX support. For more information, refer to the Hardware for real-time rendering section at the bottom of the page.

To do ray trace rendering with Unreal:

1. Open Lotta.

2. Open VStitcher.

3. On the Main menu, click:

   • Edit (Windows)

   • Lotta (Mac)

   • VStitcher (Mac)

4. Click Preferences. The Preferences dialog box is displayed.

   

5. Click the Rendering tab. The rendering options are displayed.

   

   VStitcher 2022.1.5 and newer

   

6. VStitcher 2022.1.5 and newer

   Select which 3D display engine to use for rendering (Unreal/OpenGL).

   Note that Open GL does not support real time ray trace rendering. When you switch to the Open GL option, the Real time ray trace rendering option is disabled.

7. Check the Real time ray trace rendering box, then click OK. (Optional)

8. Toggle the Enable Displacement in production render checkbox to use displacement. V-ray render does not show displacement, the Enable Displacement in production render option will be disabled.

9. Restart VStitcher.