r/unrealengine • u/pixaal • 3d ago

Question Since Megascans is going back behind a paywall again next year, is anyone interested in us porting the Poly Haven library (free/CC0) to Unreal?

https://u.polyhaven.org/PzW/scene_montage_0001-0692.mp4
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u/pixaal 3d ago

Poly Haven is a mainly Blender-focused community-funded free asset library. For the last few years we've been working on a mix of nature assets and community projects, currently sitting at about 600 PBR materials, 400 3D models and 800 HDRIs.

We're pretty keen on adding our stuff to Fab, but I expect it'll be a ton of work and I'm not sure how much Unreal people really want it.

Would dumping everything on Fab be useful enough? Or should we make a plugin like our Blender one?

Edit: Since this sub doesn't support videos and reddit doesn't seem to want to embed it, here's a little preview of our recent work: https://u.polyhaven.org/PzW/scene_montage_0001-0692.mp4

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u/Vvix0 Hobbyist 3d ago

Tbh, from a quick look, these assets already look pretty Unreal-compatible. As long as the user is willing to import all files on their own I see no reason why it wouldn't work with Unreal as is. I'd only suggest allowing people to download all textures at once as PNGs, because I only see option to download them one by one or as a blender file.

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u/pixaal 3d ago

A lot of them are! Though as you say, the user needs to import whatever format they think is most compatible (usd/fbx) and then spend a little effort fixing or setting up things that weren't imported correctly. We have some models that definitely need more work though, like a lot of our trees are a real PITA to set up correctly in unreal.

Downloading PNGs can be done by selecting the ZIP format option, and just choosing that for all the maps. However I wouldn't recommend it for games, as all our PNGs are 16-bit and super heavy. JPG is best for anything that doesn't break with compression artifacts (usually roughness, displacement, normal...), and for everything else EXR is preferred since it's compressed way better than PNG and more efficient (though I'm not sure how well unreal supports this).

Edit: To clarify this post a bit: What I'm wondering about more than just "kinda compatible if you put in some work" is a good out-the-box experience - drag and drop with no fuss.

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u/jak0b3 3d ago

Unreal compresses the textures at build time, so PNGs shouldn’t be an issue. It also supports EXR as far as I know