Real Wall Experiments

I would like to add more realness to my galleries and I figured I could do this by obtaining more realistic materials for the floor, walls and ceiling. I am not interested in recreating a real gallery, but I do want to use real attributes to create the illusion of realness.

I have tried a number of wall materials, both free and paid but they are relatively small and in areas larger that a couple of metres one starts to see repeating patterns which kills the illusion and therefore the immersive realism of the experience. This is a particular problem if I want to create a long approach to an artwork or utilise an expansive space in my design.

So, I have decided to create my own... and it turns out to be fairly easy. My background is in technical photography so taking good, sharp, exposed, colour balanced photographs of walls and ceilings is fairly straight forward for me. The floors are proving to be a problem, but I know someone with a drone who may be able to help. The main idea here is to capture very large area photographs and create materials that don't have to be tiled so much in the simulations.


Image captured through the Oculus Quest.

I made the above example to test the creation of a normal/bump map. It turned out to be dead easy as there is a filter in Photoshop and piecing the texture and material together is very straight forward in UE4. The biggest problem I've been having is the LOD in the Quest which does not seen to be working as it should, but it could have something to do with the 4096 tile size. However, the initial results are promising.

What should I do next...

• Find and photograph large area surfaces (no mean feat)
• Colour balance and equalise exposure
• Resize to 4096 squared
• Alter to smoothly tile
• Create a normal map
• Partner new material to project (or the other way round)
• The floor is a problem as ones feet, tripod, scaffolding or building are always going to be in the way, but if I find some appropriate floors I may be able to enlist some help form a friend with a HQ drone.

I created this floor a couple of weeks ago but was unable to get the height to capture a large enougth area so it is easy to see where it has tiled... the smudgy repeaters are a dead giveaway.

If you are reading this blog and feel you can add something to my research then please comment… even if you are correcting me or don’t agree with something that I say.