Presentation Tool

The Presentation Tool is aimed at 3D artists wanting to quickly create good looking images of their character and prop assets without having to learn the technical ins and outs of lighting in Unreal Engine.

The tool is still in Beta but I decided to go ahead and release it for free to let the art community use it and get as much feedback as possible. Although there is a roadmap of features already planned, I would love to hear what artists out there think of it. If certain features turn up to be in high demand, I will give those a high priority over the originally planned features.

The tools have not been tested with any ray-tracing features because up until recently I didn't have a RTX graphics card. As soon as time allows, I'll test the tool with ray-tracing to see what needs to be changed in the tool or what extra features could be added.

The tool comes with 15 HDRI sample images to use for lighting. These images are from https://www.deviantart.com/zbyg/art/HDRi-Pack-1-97402522, under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License

FEATURES v0.45

• Added support for UE5.
  

FEATURES v0.4

Tool Top (Video)

• Add/Remove Presentation Tool from the scene

General Settings (Video)

• Background Image (openEXR format)
• Background Rotation
• Background Blurriness
• Light Intensity
• Light Color Tint

Lower Hemisphere Settings (Video)

• Lower Hemisphere Type (None, Hard, Smooth)
• Lower Hemisphere Height
• Lower Hemisphere Color

Background Plate Settings

• Plain Color (Video)
  • Color
• Linear Gradient (Video)
  • Linear Gradient Offset
  • Linear Gradient Contrast
  • Linear Gradient Rotation
  • Gradient Color 1
  • Gradient Color 2
• Radial Gradient (Video)
  • Radial Gradient Offset
  • Radial Gradient Contrast
  • Linear Gradient Size
  • Gradient Color 1Gradient Color 2

INSTALLATION / USAGE

• Unzip the file and copy the Presentation Tool folder into the Content folder of a UE4 project, then launch the project.
• To load the tool, go to the Presentation Tool folder, right-mouse-click on the presentation_tool_bp and from the pop up menu click on the Run Editor Utility Widget option.
• Click on the [+] button to add the Presentation Tool lighting to your scene. Make sure you don't have a skylight and Post Process volume already in the scene as these will conflict with the Presentation Tool's Lighting.
• To take a screenshot, see Unreal Engine’s documentation for reference.
• When importing your own HDRI images, their format must be .exr (openEXR)and they need to be power of 2 at a 2:1 aspect ratio. The recommended size is 2048x1024 as it is a good compromise between resolution and memory consumption. Besides that, the image compression settings in UE4 need to be as follows:
  • Compression Settings: HDR (RGB, no SRGB)
  • sRGB: False
  • Mip Gen Settings: Blur5

RELEASE NOTES

• Project Versions: 4.26, 4.27, 5.0
• Distribution Method: Asset Pack
• Intended Platforms: Windows
• Platforms Tested: Windows

UPCOMING FEATURES
Listed in no particular order. This list may change depending on requests from the users.

• Exchangeable image plate with options to change the type of tiling, fixed/maximized or tiled (with options to change tiling and offset).
• Save user settings with a map file (.umap) or as an asset (.uasset).
• Add portrait lighting setup templates so there's no need to do that manually (Rembrandt, Split, Loop, Butterfly, Clamshell, Badger and 3 Point). Although these light setup configurations are usually used with people in the real world, and characters in the virtual world, these can also be used with props.
• Post Process options such as Vignette, Chromatic Aberration, Lens Distortion, Contrast, Brightness, Saturation, Exposure, Gamma and Grain.
• Turntable options to be able to rotate characters/props and export out videos.
• Add a model inspector to be able to see different view modes such as Base Color, World Normal, Metallic, Roughness, Ambient Occlusion, Emissive and Wireframe.
• Quality of life improvements and bug fixes that may be required along the way.

FEATURES v0.45

• Added support for UE5.