Renderoom develops a new Substrate materials pack for automotive visualization
Sema Sezgin and Leonard Krüger are automotive visualization veterans. Starting out as 3D modelers, the pair embraced real-time 3D workflows early on and never looked back, setting up CG studio Renderoom in 2021 to provide digital media production services for the automotive sector and beyond.
Unreal Engine is the bedrock of the studio, enabling them to deliver stills, animations, and interactive experiences like automotive configurators from a single project.
As part of this work, Sezgin and Krüger have now built a comprehensive library of high-quality, physically accurate automotive materials designed specifically for Unreal Engine’s Substrate shading system, which they’ve made available on Fab. Their collection includes realistic paints, metals, glass, leather, carbon fiber, and more.
Unreal Engine is the bedrock of the studio, enabling them to deliver stills, animations, and interactive experiences like automotive configurators from a single project.
As part of this work, Sezgin and Krüger have now built a comprehensive library of high-quality, physically accurate automotive materials designed specifically for Unreal Engine’s Substrate shading system, which they’ve made available on Fab. Their collection includes realistic paints, metals, glass, leather, carbon fiber, and more.
We caught up with them to find out how working in a real-time engine saves costs and slashes project timelines—and how their Substrate material library fills a crucial gap in the market for authentic automotive materials.
Courtesy of Renderoom
How are you using Unreal Engine at your company?
Leo Krüger, Managing Partner: At Renderoom, we first explored Unreal Engine out of curiosity, looking for virtual-reality-capable renderers to showcase our clients’ car models’ CAD data in an iterative, fast-paced design cycle.
Very early on, we discovered the benefits of using a real-time engine for other areas of our design communication services. Although originally created for game development, its interdisciplinary and modular nature proved highly valuable for our needs. Today, Unreal Engine has become the foundation of our studio, bringing many workflows together within a single production ecosystem.
What is the value of UE for your company in your work?
Krüger: Unreal Engine gives us the production flexibility and workflow modularity to create tailor made visual experiences that meet both the creative and technical goals of our projects. This combination allows us to adapt quickly to client feedback; move smoothly between stills, animations, and interactive media; and maintain a consistent level of quality across all deliverables.
The modular nature of Unreal Engine means that a single Unreal project can serve as the foundation for many different outputs. For our clients, this means faster turnaround, more options for how their product can be presented, and the confidence that both visual quality and technical performance are always achieved.
Courtesy of Renderoom
How do you first engage with customers?
Krüger: Since we work across multiple sectors and with both experienced clients and newcomers to virtual storytelling, every project is different. But at the heart of it, we enable our clients to tell the story of their products and create visual experiences that engage their customers.
Our philosophy of selling by emotion, combined with transparent communication and the streamlined production we achieve with Unreal Engine, often proves to be the strongest way to engage first-time clients.
How is your use of UE beneficial for your customers?
Krüger: Beyond the visual quality achievable in Unreal Engine, its integrated production workflows help us keep budgets lean, implement feedback quickly, and shorten timelines.
Unreal Engine gives us the flexibility to expand projects in ways that traditional pipelines often cannot, whether it is expanding a campaign from still images to full cinematics or adding interactive elements such as configurators and virtual showrooms. This combination of professional creative production and cutting-edge technology ensures our clients receive both project efficiency and outstanding creative results.
Courtesy of Renderoom
Can you give us a real example of how Unreal Engine has been integral to your work?
Krüger: We developed an interactive real-time web-based product configurator for a car that showcases extensive features, options, and animations. It brought together the best of what Unreal Engine offers: a modular configuration system combining visual quality with technical processes through our Substrate materials, Lumen lighting, Nanite model optimization, immersive interaction and real-time simulation, AI integration, Blueprint scripted features, animation packages, and more.
Our aim was to show that a lean and dedicated team of Unreal Engine specialists can create an extensive interactive brand storytelling experience for any product, without the need for an overly large or complicated production setup. We use Unreal Engine as a force multiplier in that regard, and the extensive experience we gained from this project has since flowed seamlessly into our client’s work and other areas of our workflows.
Do you think UE gives you a competitive advantage and if so how?
Krüger: The Unreal Engine platform evolves constantly with new features, visual quality updates, real-time mechanics, and technical solutions. This regular progress—together with the advantages of real-time visualization and the interdisciplinary use of core engine features that can be deployed in wide varieties of workflows and use cases—gives us a clear edge in a highly competitive visualization industry.
Courtesy of Renderoom
What is your personal favorite UE tool or feature and why?
Krüger: Next to core features like the Variant Manager and Unreal’s Blueprint visual scripting, Lumen especially comes to mind for its high-quality real-time lighting and reflections, which are ideal for rapid visual development of automotive scenes in a fast-paced production environment. UE5 with Lumen really has been a significant step in the engine’s development.
What do you think are the biggest challenges facing visualization professionals today?
Krüger: The automotive sector, especially in Europe, is in a period of significant transformation, where long-standing traditions are being challenged by disruptive change, along with economic pressures and geopolitical uncertainty. This intensifies competition and underlines the need for CGI studios, or any supplier for that matter, to stay ahead of the curve by constantly innovating their workflow processes, ensuring their competitiveness in the marketplace, and expanding the quality of their service output.
Courtesy of Renderoom
Congratulations on launching your Substrate library on Fab! What are your thoughts on Substrate, and what tips you can pass on to folks wanting to create their own projects?
Krüger: Thank you so much! We had a lot of fun developing this tool for ourselves and were happy to share it with artists and studios around the world via the Fab marketplace. The feedback we received was overwhelmingly positive.
Unreal Engine’s new Substrate system brings a new level of flexibility and realism to material creation. It allows complex layering like clear coats and metallic finishes and delivers more accurate light interactions for surfaces.
Since there was no comparable item on the market, we created our own automotive Substrate materials as a successor to the classic automotive materials pack, updated for the new technology and refined for modern creative needs. The material Blueprints are built to be physically correct and packed with options, so you can perfect the look in any lighting scenario or use case in real-time or path-traced projects.Courtesy of Renderoom
The library is ready to use out of the box and serves as a template for building an extensive, easy-to-use system—just make sure to follow the instructions on our Fab description, like enabling the Substrate material support in your project settings.
Like many other great tools and modules in Unreal Engine, our Substrate pack is meant as a strong starting point for you to make it your own by adjusting textures, tints, and looks to match your style or project goals. In addition, we’re launching a Substrate material pack tailored specifically for product design and architectural visualization to complement our material library for the needs of these sectors as well.
Like many other great tools and modules in Unreal Engine, our Substrate pack is meant as a strong starting point for you to make it your own by adjusting textures, tints, and looks to match your style or project goals. In addition, we’re launching a Substrate material pack tailored specifically for product design and architectural visualization to complement our material library for the needs of these sectors as well.
Courtesy of Renderoom
What is your vision for the future?
Krüger: Our core belief and our goals for the future both lie in the constant evolution of ourselves, our technical solutions, the visual experiences we deliver, and the growing trust and relationships with our amazing clients and partners.
Renderoom is our room to render, a promise to challenge and change. By combining our experience in real-time visualization with emerging innovations, we aim to raise the speed, scope, and quality of our craft while expanding our expertise ever more beyond automotive into many different sectors. For us, the journey will always be about pushing boundaries, making connections, and staying curious.