A5 Cabriolet model courtesy of Audi Business Innovation
Automotive Configurator sample—available now!
March 23, 2021
Over the past few years, there have been some incredibly impressive real-time configurators revealed by leading automakers such as Pagani, Audi, BMW, McLaren, and Mercedes. Leveraging powerful rendering techniques like ray tracing, these configurators are becoming more and more photorealistic—as well as providing greater levels of interactivity.
How do you set up experiences like this with Unreal Engine? We wanted to give you a jump start and reduce the initial steps required to build your own version—that’s why we’ve released the Automotive Configurator, a complete real-time configurator sample. The project shows off a completely interactive Audi A5 convertible model provided by Audi Business Innovation GmbH, set in an all-new immersive salt flat environment.
How do you set up experiences like this with Unreal Engine? We wanted to give you a jump start and reduce the initial steps required to build your own version—that’s why we’ve released the Automotive Configurator, a complete real-time configurator sample. The project shows off a completely interactive Audi A5 convertible model provided by Audi Business Innovation GmbH, set in an all-new immersive salt flat environment.
A5 Cabriolet model courtesy of Audi Business Innovation
This sample is free to download and provides the opportunity to dive under the hood of the technology used in today’s most advanced interactive digital showrooms. It enables you to explore all the different components of Unreal Engine that make up the project, from the Blueprints used to the Variant Manager. Importantly, there’s no custom software and no C++ coding used—virtually everything you see can be achieved in regular, vanilla Unreal Engine 4.26.
Our goal with this project is to demonstrate how the standard feature set that exists in Unreal Engine can be used to achieve stunning results. All materials come from the Automotive Materials Pack and the project uses existing lighting scenarios, along with in-engine features like ray tracing, Sequencer, Volumetric Cloud system, and Control Rig.
You can customize your car with different paint colors, and change features that you’d expect to find in a dealership configurator, such as the wheels, trims, seats, interiors, and other standard variables. When you’re done, you can render out a short commercial using the Movie Render Queue.
Our goal with this project is to demonstrate how the standard feature set that exists in Unreal Engine can be used to achieve stunning results. All materials come from the Automotive Materials Pack and the project uses existing lighting scenarios, along with in-engine features like ray tracing, Sequencer, Volumetric Cloud system, and Control Rig.
You can customize your car with different paint colors, and change features that you’d expect to find in a dealership configurator, such as the wheels, trims, seats, interiors, and other standard variables. When you’re done, you can render out a short commercial using the Movie Render Queue.
A5 Cabriolet model courtesy of Audi Business Innovation
The Automotive Configurator is the latest in our ongoing effort to build an ecosystem of resources that empower the automotive industry to explore real-time workflows. These include environments to showcase car designs that you can download for free, such as the sandy beach scene and bridge scene, and the previously mentioned Automotive Materials Pack.
The sample also serves as a base for those in other industries to experiment with configurators for other types of product. Stay tuned for our upcoming webinar on April 21, where we’ll do a deep dive into the Automotive Configurator explaining how to bring your own content into the sample.
For those interested in learning more about real-time workflows for automotive, our Automotive Field Guide provides a comprehensive look into the key real-time innovations driving change across the automotive pipeline.
The sample also serves as a base for those in other industries to experiment with configurators for other types of product. Stay tuned for our upcoming webinar on April 21, where we’ll do a deep dive into the Automotive Configurator explaining how to bring your own content into the sample.
For those interested in learning more about real-time workflows for automotive, our Automotive Field Guide provides a comprehensive look into the key real-time innovations driving change across the automotive pipeline.
Get the Automotive Configurator sample
Ready to create your own interactive digital showroom? Download the Automotive Configurator today! You can check out the documentation for a full overview of what’s included.