How to Create a Cinematic Archviz Render with UE5 & Dash

Added: 2026-05-07

[00:00:01]Hello, I'm Thomas from Polygon Flow. In this video, I will show you how I created the scene for the 3dmos.org renovation challenge using Dash inside Unreal Engine 5. I will also help you to get started with the challenge and show you how you can build your own scene in just a few days using the free Dash trial. For the final result, I will render the scene using Pathra for a more realistic look. So, let's get started.

[00:00:25]Let's start on the 3dmodels.org or website where you can download the house model and find all the information you need for the challenge. You just have to fill out the application from first. I have unpacked the model and textures and now I'm here in Blender. I already have a vision for how I want to renovate this house. So, I quickly put together a mood board and frame ref. So, the idea is to extend the rustic house with a modern section surrounded by an English style garden with lush vegetation.

[00:00:58]I'm also going to heavily rebuild the side building and add a rustic stone wall around the scene covered with climbing plants. Let's start with the renovation.

[00:01:08]First, I will remove everything I won't need. This process took the longest.

[00:01:16]I modeled the side building. So, now it's time to export everything to Unreal Engine. I'm exporting it as an FBX. And in the geometry section, I set smoothing to face.

[00:01:28]Inside Unreal, I will import the house into a new folder.

[00:01:38]I don't need collisions in this project.

[00:01:44]I can simply drag and drop the static meshes into the scene.

[00:01:48]As you can see, I kept the original textures, but I would like to replace them with better materials. This is where the free Dash content library comes in. I will open Dash and the content browser. It's worth mentioning that even after the Dash trial expires, the content library remains completely free to use with almost all of its functionality. You can download Dash on the Polygon Flow website. You can find a huge collection of free asset libraries here from Ambient CG and Polyhaven to the legacy Quicksell library. I already have a few Mega Scan materials downloaded, but I can easily open the library and grab new ones.

[00:02:33]And just like that, it's ready. I can simply drag and drop materials onto any surface. The material settings are also super easy to tweak from the pop-up tools panel.

[00:02:47]Let's apply new materials to all surfaces.

[00:02:54]For the glass, I created this simple material setup that will look great later in the path trace render. I changed the blend mode to translucent.

[00:03:03]here.

[00:03:10]I quickly realized that a regular material wouldn't give me the rustic surface look I wanted. So instead, I decided to build a wall from modular wall meshes.

[00:03:22]So I downloaded a few cast wall assets and the plan was to cover the entire surface with them while using booleans to cut out the window openings.

[00:03:57]Once the walls are finished, it's time to work on the building details. I want to add roof tiles along the roof edges using the path scatter tool. First, I draw a curve on the roof.

[00:04:11]I can freely edit and extend it however I want.

[00:04:17]Then while holding control, I will drag a mesh from the content browser onto the curve and choose scatter on selection.

[00:04:27]Inside the tools panel, I can fine-tune everything and align the tiles perfectly to the edge.

[00:04:34]I will use this technique to cover all the roof edges.

[00:04:54]Next, let's check out the surface scatter tool. I'm going to scatter small gravel meshes across the ground to create a gravel surface. While holding control, I drag the mesh into the scene and click scatter on selection. Then I adjust the scale and density. I don't want to cover the entire surface, only the area around the terrace. To achieve this, I will add the terrace to the proximity mask and invert the distance value.

[00:05:37]Next up is the stone wall. I will build this using meshes scattered along another curve.

[00:05:55]For the climbing vegetation, I can download some foliage and bring them into the scene.

[00:06:02]I hold control and choose place in grid.

[00:06:06]Then I can select a few and add them as scatter objects inside the surface scatter setup by using the wall scatter as the target surface.

[00:06:34]To break up the vegetation a bit, I can use the noise mask.

[00:06:43]And to reduce the repetition in the wall itself, I can bake the scatter so I can manually tweak the individual wall pieces.

[00:06:52]I also want some climbing vegetation on the building. For this, I will use the wine tool. I can add a few wall pieces as a surface and use a simple cube mesh as the origin.

[00:07:18]For the leaves, I can reuse some ivy acids from before.

[00:07:35]And now let's work on the background.

[00:07:37]I'm simply going to scatter trees across the plane and place it behind the fence.

[00:07:50]For this, I'm using pixel 3es.

[00:08:07]I can build a terrace edging from brick meshes using the grid scatter.

[00:08:57]The lush garden was created using surface scatter as well. Similar to the background trees, I started by creating a plane and scattered different plants on it.

[00:09:11]Heat. Heat.

[00:09:53]Now it's time to compose the main shot so I don't waste time detailing areas that won't even be visible in the final render.

[00:10:12]And for the interior decoration, you can find some amazing free assets directly inside the content browser.

[00:10:23]I already have some furniture pieces from the Amazon Berkeley library and I will use them to furnish the side building.

[00:10:45]of course. The materials on these assets are also very easy to customize.

[00:10:53]The scene is almost finished. All that's missing is an HDRI background. I will drag the light studio blueprint into the scene. If you can't find it, you can edit manually with the add button.

[00:11:07]After that, in the outliner, I can select every lighting related actor except the directional light and delete them.

[00:11:15]Inside the light studio, I can enable use HDRI and select an HDR file I downloaded from Polyhaven as the HDRI cube map. I will also uncheck use sunlight, use atmosphere and use fog if needed.

[00:11:31]Then in skylight one, I will change the source type to cube map and assign the same asure file there as well. We can also increase the cube map resolution for sharper reflections.

[00:11:44]Finally, I can tweak the directional light a bit.

[00:11:55]Now let's see how the scene looks in par racing mode.

[00:12:02]Looking nice.

[00:12:05]I will finish the scene with a few extra details like small grass patches growing near the walls, some decals, and a few decorative props.

[00:12:17]So I can bring the camera into level sequence and add a bit of movement.

[00:12:23]After that, I can render everything using the movie render queue. Here are my render settings.

[00:12:33]A little bit of color grading and we're done.

[00:12:36]And that's it for this renovation scene.

[00:12:39]I hope this gave you some ideas for your own challenge entry and also showed how much faster environment creation can be with Dash inside Unreal Engine 5. I managed to build this scene in just five work days and most of the time went into planning and modeling. You still have a lot of time left to create your own entry. So, good luck and have fun building. Thank you for watching and see you in the next one.