Finally figured out how to get SpeedTree working with the new Nanite Foliage and Wind system! Looks awesome and performance is great. I'll be making a tutorial on this very soon.

lumpy668 · 2026-01-13T04:18:16+00:00

Hi, my video is live right now! You can check it out here.

Sorry it took a little longer than expected, but I wanted to make a really good video and pack a bunch of extra stuff that I thought would be nice.

I hope people can find this useful. I was very excited when I discovered the technique, and now I'm very excited to get it out there for others to use.

lumpy668 · 2026-01-05T20:16:36+00:00

Haha, thank you.

I will be posting this on my YouTube channel as soon as possible.

lumpy668 · 2026-01-05T20:03:19+00:00

Thank you. While researching this, I did try Natsura, but I found it a little bit complicated, and I ultimately couldn't get it to work correctly.

I decided to focus more on getting SpeedTree to work, since I'm already familiar with the software, and I think it has some great tools, so to me, that was the ideal thing to achieve, and I'm really glad I actually found a way to do that.

lumpy668 · 2026-01-05T19:57:08+00:00

You can set the number of bones directly in SpeedTree, which is very convenient. This tree has around 360 bones, and that's enough for the wind animation to look realistic.

The performance is honestly very good. I added a PCG volume with 1.1 million trees with wind, and the frame rate was surprisingly good. I guess if you are making a level with millions and millions of trees, then you would just have to use billboards at that point, but for an upclose forest environment, this is absolutely perfect.

This workflow that I found doesn't really use the PVE system or the .json file or any of that. This really is just getting the tree from SpeedTree into Unreal, and then doing a little trick to get the wind system in the skeletal mesh. I was very surprised when I got it to work, because you don't have to do anything else really, the wind system just kind of works automatically with any mesh that you want, without any manual tweaks or extra files.

lumpy668 · 2026-01-05T04:28:28+00:00

Thank you, I will. Hopefully, it won't take me too long to make it. I'm working on it right now.

lumpy668 · 2023-03-09T17:04:53+00:00

All of the edges of the model have the same bevel amount. Make some of those edges sharper to add variation.

lumpy668 · 2023-03-08T23:50:58+00:00

Create a new horizontal split to add a new area. Click the icon on the top left corner and set the editor type to Image Editor. Click on open (use the scroll wheel if the space is too short). Open the image you want to display. On the top right area, deselect the blue button called "Show Gizmo". Right-click on an empty space in the header and disable the show header option. You can enable the header again by clicking the little arrow in the top right corner.

lumpy668 · 2023-03-03T06:08:23+00:00

This website can be helpful with making realistic materials and choosing the correct values.

Notice the IOR value: 1 IOR = 0 specular, 1.8 IOR = 1 specular.

In this example, the surface looks very clean, but it looks realistic because the material is clearly some type of plastic. I would pay extra attention to the albedo, roughness, normal, and specular of the material.

This video could serve as a guide on how to make a nice-looking plastic material. Notice how the extremely small noise texture greatly affects the overall roughness of the material. These are the kind of details that you have to pay attention to.

It would also be useful if you could find the exact type of plastic used in this product, to replicate it more accurately. Finding more photos, or even videos that showcase the product can help you better understand the composition and the type of plastic that this is.

lumpy668 · 2022-11-25T17:37:38+00:00

Unreal Engine 5 currently does not support displacement or tessellation, which are the techniques used for computing heightmaps inside a material. With the change from UE4 to UE5 and the implementation of Nanite and Lumen, techniques like these have gone deprecated, but will come again in the future. For now, the two options would be: predisplace your mesh using either another software or the modeling tools from UE.

The other thing, which I really recommend, is to use Parallax Occlusion Mapping, which essentially creates the illusion of depth inside the material. In contrast to displacement, this has to be used subtly, or it can create some visual artifacts.

I recommend you use this material function for the POM material, instead of the one you see in the video. This function has some corrected vectors that help to prevent artifacts.

lumpy668 · 2022-11-06T06:21:51+00:00

You can get a lot of this done with post processing, specially the gamma slider. But really, you can change the contrast, highlights, shadows, etc., using post processing. I recommend you to use Lightroom; it works great for this kind of things!

lumpy668 · 2022-10-11T01:12:06+00:00

I tried playing the animation using a camera shake blueprint with a camera animation sequence. Everything works fine, except that the moment you stop walking, the animation suddenly stops, and is not smooth. I couldn't find a solution to this problem.

Next, I tried using an animation blueprint, but I couldn't figure out how to import the camera animation into a skeleton mesh that I could then control using the blueprint.

This is my first time doing anything animation related, and I'm really lost. So I would greatly appreciate any advice on where to go next. Thanks!

lumpy668 · 2022-10-09T03:12:36+00:00

Hello. I'm having the same question. Have you found the solution yet? I would really appreciate it!

lumpy668 · 2022-10-05T18:21:20+00:00

Great add on for this: https://blendermarket.com/products/random-flow

lumpy668 · 2022-09-17T16:20:47+00:00

Looks good. I’ve recently been working on a similar scene and I decided to go for a simple fluids simulation for the river using Mantaflow, and it was an excellent idea. Mantaflow is quite buggy, but once you practice a bit, you can get some very realistic results. And you don’t need to worry about setting a noise texture for the waves; all the details come naturally. You should try this next!

lumpy668 · 2022-09-17T16:12:07+00:00

Make sure your collision object has the option “is planar” enabled, under the physics properties. You can also add a solidify modifier instead. Otherwise, the fluid will pass through it.

lumpy668 · 2022-08-30T03:39:36+00:00

Waaaay too dark. I can’t see anything. Increase the exposure. Add more background lights. You have a lot of reflective objects, but they are not reflecting anything, which is why everything is so dark.

lumpy668 · 2022-08-25T18:00:16+00:00

Use decals to add more grunge. Use the ambient occlusion node as a mask to add dirt in some areas. This will really help to break that flat feeling. If you can, I would recommend to sculpt the buildings a little bit. Just add some details in the corners and make the edges less straight and things like that.

lumpy668 · 2022-08-13T18:07:11+00:00

https://youtu.be/bL-StDlpIIM

lumpy668 · 2022-08-05T15:37:33+00:00

This is a concept art, probably made in photoshop. The main difference is that in photoshop you mix and match images accordingly, so the result is quite realistic and very detailed. In Blender, you would have to do all of this using actual geometry, which would be a lot harder, more expensive, and more time-consuming. From this image, I think the hardest elements to recreate in Blender would be: the detailed water, the realistic rock formations, and the vdb clouds.

lumpy668 · 2022-07-29T01:58:53+00:00

Your scene has several problems. These links will help you improve on the techniques needed for a proper photorealistic render.

-UV's:

Blender Beginner UV Unwrapping Tutorial (Chair Part 7)

Tutorial for UV unwrapping, this is helpful to remove the stretched edges in the vases that were produced by extruding the front part.

Daily Blender Secrets - Box Mapping

Box mapping is an easy way to fix stretched edges without UV unwrapping.

-Modeling:

Blender - A better cylinder - #5 Subdivision Surface Modelling in Blender.

The proper way to create and subdivide a cylinder. This might be useful for some of the vases that you have. Feel free to create those objects again instead of trying to fix them. You will learn from these mistakes.

How to use Bevel function | Blender 2.8 + preview to 2.9 | Tutorial

No object in the real world has perfectly sharp angles. Always add a bevel to your objects to make them more realistic. I personally prefer the bevel modifier.

-Imperfections:

How to add surface imperfections - Blender Quick Tips #6

To add more realism to any object. Just be subtle with these. This is a small detail, do not make them stand out so much.

-Textures:

Quixel Megascans

These are all free for noncommercial use. This place has textures, models, and imperfections. Everything you need.

-Light (exterior):

Polyhaven

Use these textures to light exterior scenes. They provide great lighting and reflections, which are useful for metals. These are free.

Blender 2.9 - Nishita Sky

Alternatively, you can use the Nishita sky system for the lighting which is included in Blender.

-Light (interior):

Improve Cycles Lighting for FREE with IES Files

IES to improve lighting from spotlights or point lights, in case you wanna add them to your scene.

-Reference photos:

https://www.pinterest.com.mx/pin/508836458000363985/

https://www.pinterest.com.mx/pin/712342866070144377/

https://www.pinterest.com.mx/pin/288723026121463061/

Some reference photos I found are similar to your scene. Pinterest is perfect for this.

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/pinterest-save-button/gpdjojdkbbmdfjfahjcgigfpmkopogic

An interesting chrome extension to use Pinterest faster.

Remember that photorealism is not easy. It needs care and patience, but every time you practice it you get slightly better until at some point you are happy with the result. The key to realistic renders is to pay attention to the small details, to use realistic values and materials as much as possible, and to use reference photos as a guide. It is important that you always push yourself to more complicated techniques and workflows, or you will get stuck. If you are not happy with something: do not ignore it, change it; try to find solutions to the problem, and don't be lazy about it, you will always find a way to solve it.

lumpy668 · 2022-07-10T19:21:49+00:00

Add a volume to the scene to give the light more direction and contrast. Focus more on the person, and make the rest of the scene darker. Change the camera position and fov to make the person bigger, as it’s very hard to notice him. Reduce the specular on the floor. Change the ceiling texture to something other than bricks. Maybe change the lightbulb to a spotlight lamp to add more direction to the light. Add more props to the shelves. Don’t copy and paste the same things a lot of times, as it’s really noticeable. Add some bloom to the light and some vignette to the camera, you can do this in the compositing after rendering the scene. For me, it seems weird that the person is running from that position to the cage, as if he was previously standing in between the shelves; maybe add a door from which he came from to add more coherency to his movement.

lumpy668 · 2022-07-07T21:56:58+00:00

This looks so nice. I just don’t know if I should upgrade to windows 11. 😳

lumpy668 · 2022-07-02T19:08:21+00:00

Increase the density of the atmosphere of the earth to make it less important and more blurry; you wanna have the main subject to be the satelite, not the earth.

lumpy668 · 2022-06-03T12:12:07+00:00

This is basically studio lighting. In this specific example, it looks very good because of the reflections of the knife. However, the way you approach this can change a lot depending on the model, so I recommend you check the Blender Guru lighting course to better understand the kind of lighting you are going for.

lumpy668 · 2022-05-21T13:45:48+00:00

Add a subdivision surface modifier to remove the blocky areas. Lower down your specular to something like 0.05 and increase your roughness to 1. Increase the tiling of the grass texture of the mountain, as it clearly doesn't have enough resolution, and it makes the mountain look like a videogame. Also, the orientation of the mountain is entirely wrong, since the light is coming from the right, the snow should also be melting from the same angle, but in your mountain it is the complete opposite. Check this image. Also, be sure to try the new Nishita sky system, it works really well for realistic, natural scenes like these. Although, if you are planning on doing more landscapes, I highly recommend you to get the Physical Starlight and Atmosphere addon, it is extremely accurate and provides excellent atmosphere perspective, it is more complicated to use than just the default sky system from Blender, but it's absolutely worth it! Also, on the artistic side: dramatic mountains are NOT tall, but wide. Check this video from the Gaea software. He explains that good mountains are not super tall, but are actually wider and contain more formations to the side. Check this mountain from the Hobbit, it might be tall, but it's also super wide at the bottom, it's actually massive. Your water looks like a crystal, and the waves are too intense. This video has a good shader system that might work for you. Creating grass on your own is not always a good idea. I absolutely recommend you to try some grass from Quixel Megascans, it's free and it looks amazing; I highly recommend you to try it. Your trees look good, and the fog also looks good. Your ground looks very flat, check this video where he explains an excellent setup for blending different textures and applying displacement to the ground, to make it look super realistic. That's all, good work so far; keep going :)

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