Nanite meshes in Unreal 5
Nanite Meshes in Unreal 5
To say I fully understand the subject would be a lie, however after doing some research I am coming to understand this interesting advancement in mesh rendering within engine and the possibilities it shows for the future of gaming and 3D artists.
A really good video to get started with is from the Unreal Engine YouTube channel itself, where they break down the benefits and implementation of nanite meshes;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUUSsXswyZM&ab_channel=UnrealEngine
A really good video to get started with is from the Unreal Engine YouTube channel itself, where they break down the benefits and implementation of nanite meshes;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUUSsXswyZM&ab_channel=UnrealEngine
So what are Nanite meshes? Well from my limited understanding it is a way of rendering virtual geometry within the engine that allows 3D artists to import higher density meshes without impacting the performance nearly as much as it would have in previous engines without Nanite technology.
In a nutshell it is quite similar to LOD generation in the way it seems to work, and looking back at my older post on Simplygon from the other day I can see some similarities in the thought processes behind the two methods of rendering models in engine. Nanite works again based on player draw distance and adapts the density of static meshes depending on how close the camera is to viewing them.
I won't be able to go into too much detail since this is a relatively brand new technology and I have yet to utilise it myself but what it means is that games will be able to manage even more collections of high quality assets without being as expensive on the performance which in turn will shift the graphical fidelity and level of detail within games to new heights.
It also means that the workflow for 3D artists can adapt and whereas most high poly meshes were simply used in the baking process for texturing and then discarded afterwards, they can instead be utilised further down the pipeline within the engine, creating much more realistic and impressive results depending on the game.
One thing to note is the method of UV unwrapping is one of the issues it faces at the moment as you need to attempt to have the high poly model unwrapped, however even in the video from Unreal they provide a variety of solutions for this which seem pretty straight forward, even going so far as to showcase a method of not even unwrapping the model and using Unreal's engine to mask out and fine tune textures procedurally using vertex colours.
With anything new though I expect it will take a few years for everyone to fully adopt Nanite as an industry practice, simply because most studios tend to have their own in house engine that may not even be connected with Unreal and as such they don't even have access to this feature yet. Most games are in development for years and they start on the engine that was available at the time and some companies make the decision to upgrade the engine throughout the process or they wait until that game is finished in development. Either way it is time consuming and costly to upgrade or switch engines and this will put a hold on some developers switching to Unreal 5 and utilising Nanite for some time.
In a nutshell it is quite similar to LOD generation in the way it seems to work, and looking back at my older post on Simplygon from the other day I can see some similarities in the thought processes behind the two methods of rendering models in engine. Nanite works again based on player draw distance and adapts the density of static meshes depending on how close the camera is to viewing them.
I won't be able to go into too much detail since this is a relatively brand new technology and I have yet to utilise it myself but what it means is that games will be able to manage even more collections of high quality assets without being as expensive on the performance which in turn will shift the graphical fidelity and level of detail within games to new heights.
It also means that the workflow for 3D artists can adapt and whereas most high poly meshes were simply used in the baking process for texturing and then discarded afterwards, they can instead be utilised further down the pipeline within the engine, creating much more realistic and impressive results depending on the game.
One thing to note is the method of UV unwrapping is one of the issues it faces at the moment as you need to attempt to have the high poly model unwrapped, however even in the video from Unreal they provide a variety of solutions for this which seem pretty straight forward, even going so far as to showcase a method of not even unwrapping the model and using Unreal's engine to mask out and fine tune textures procedurally using vertex colours.
With anything new though I expect it will take a few years for everyone to fully adopt Nanite as an industry practice, simply because most studios tend to have their own in house engine that may not even be connected with Unreal and as such they don't even have access to this feature yet. Most games are in development for years and they start on the engine that was available at the time and some companies make the decision to upgrade the engine throughout the process or they wait until that game is finished in development. Either way it is time consuming and costly to upgrade or switch engines and this will put a hold on some developers switching to Unreal 5 and utilising Nanite for some time.
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