Efficient Character Rendering in UE4

Sungwoo Lee has recently released a new shading pack for Unreal Engine 4. The project focuses on making character shadings more efficient and offer some ideas on real-time character creation. We’ve asked the artist a couple of questions to see if the new product is worth your time. 

Introduction

These days, I was working on the hair shading, but I’m stuck at hair flowmap step. Unfortunately, I need to jump into another project in the next coming days, so I think it would be taking more time to finish.

I’n not sure when the hair shading will be finished. Therefore, I decided to release the shaders that I have now. The pack mainly contains Skin, Eye, Eye Occlusion, Tear-Line shaders.

The assets in this case are from here. 

Really appreciate people who provide such high-quality assets for free.

The Purpose

This shading pack is designed for making character shadings more efficient and offer some ideas of real-time character production. Generally speaking, it can’t reach extreme quality without your upgrade.

Preparing Assets

There are some differences between pre-rendering and real-time rendering assets. Especially, the hair and eyes. In this case, we ignore the hair. After loading downloaded meshes, I replaced eyeball mesh and added eye occlusion mesh and tear-line mesh.

The eye occlusion mesh provides fake eyelid shadow and occlusion shadow for eyes, this is the key to making the eyes look more natural. The tear-line mesh blends eye and eyelid more natural and it also provides the wet effect.

Note: When you are looking at the eye occlusion shader, please check the UV of this mesh.It will help you understand why I did it this way.

Conclusion

I have written descriptions for all parameter nodes, I hope they are easy enough for you.

Sungwoo Lee, 3D Environment Artist

Get the pack