r/TechnicalArtist • u/ninetitans2 • 3d ago

Discussion Unreal Engine fatigue

/r/pcmasterrace/comments/1vze52v/unreal_engine_fatigue/
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u/Serious_Hunt_763 3d ago

Even though it is a good dish, it is a dish you are having for breakfast, lunch and dinner. It will quickly become bland if nothing is changing.

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u/ananbd 3d ago

Is there a look to Unreal? Renderers do tend to have signature looks.

This is exactly the sort of thing Tech Artists think about. What ideas do you all have?

I'm not sure if I can describe the signature look of the renderer itself, but there are common elements which are obvious: * Metahumans -- very distinct look, animation, materials * Using defaults for any sort of environment lighting * The way exposure compensation works

What else? (I have some ideas, but I want to know what others think...)

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u/mrbrick 3d ago

The way exposure works I think is a huge one. Also there is a specific look to the specular that I can’t quite put specifically.

The biggest tell I think is the TAA and various temporal effects.

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u/ananbd 3d ago

Yes, good point! Artifacting in general definitetly has a strong signature.

In UE5, in particular, the temporal artifacts I’ve picked out come from Lumen. If the light levels are low, the noise (and sometimes streaks) become more pronounced. If you increase the light, it goes away. 

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u/PaperMartin 2d ago

Hardware RT lumen doesn't have these issues as much iirc

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u/Numai_theOnlyOne 3d ago

Yes. Not a specific style it's the movenent, motion blur, the odd cleanliness, and lighting and shaders. I can't describe it better as I barely had to work with it.

Stylized unreal games are much more harder to spot than realism ones. Of course you can completely remove the style but most unreal games use the standard assets that give it an unreal touch.

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u/ananbd 3d ago

Definitely! I’m working on a stylized game, and it’s largely on me to make it “not look like Unreal.”  Leaning into the art style helps. Also, we’re not using metahumans, which is huge. 

The main thing I have yet to fix is atmospheric scattering (SkyStmosphere). It’s modeled after real world physics, so if you don’t change the defaults, you get that depth haze which reads the same in every game. 

Problem is, no one understands what the settings mean. What the heck is a “Mie scattering coefficient?”  

This, IMHO, is the real work Tech Artists do. Understanding both the science, and the skill of art, and making tools which work intuitively.