Supercharged
Bachelor’s thesis
For my Bachelor’s thesis, I conducted a comparative study of Redshift3D and Unreal Engine, focusing on the central aspect of real-time versus offline rendering. The goal of this research was to gain a deeper understanding of the technical details and differences between these two approaches to rendering.
For the comparison I created a shortfilm inside Maya 2023 with Redshift3D aswell as Unreal Engine 5.0.3.
The story is about five toy cars which get electrified and come to live. One of turned out to be evil and tries to eliminate the others.
Project Breakdown
For a comparative study, it was important that I got everything matching as close as possible between two render engines which fundamentally work differently. To do so, I used a PBR-Workflow as well as textures for every object in the scene.
For the environment, I used the “Grandpa’s Attic” environment from Maarten Hof which I set dressed to fit the short film. All the car models are purchased as well in which I re-did the textures to give them a more cohesive look.
The most challenging part of all was to match the lighting. The same type of light with identical settings yielded different results in the lighting which forced me to eyeball every light as close as possible.
For disclosure, the fireball for the explosions is not the same, since Unreal Engine 5.0.3 did not support VDB-Sequences.
The comparisons below show the raw renders.
Through this project, I was able to explore the strengths and weaknesses of each render engine, and how they impact the workflow and final results. I discovered that real-time rendering in Unreal Engine can be incredibly efficient for previsualization and on-the-fly changes. It allowed me to experiment with different camera angles and lighting setups more easily and effectively. On the other hand, offline rendering in Redshift3D allows for more detailed and photorealistic visuals, which are ideal for movie and animation production.
Overall, I’m glad I chose this topic for my Bachelor’s thesis. I gained valuable knowledge about the differences between Redshift3D and Unreal Engine, which will help me make informed decisions in future projects.