new real time model!!!

[alkis]

hello everyone
Please take a look at my latest try on a real time scene baked with max and vray.
This is the first stage of the scene and most of the problem areas will be changed. I would really appreciate your feedback.
The scene was done with cadai ( http://www.cadai.com ) which is a real time engine consisting of a viewer and an editor that was developed primarily for visualizations and is being tested at the moment by major architectural practices and vis studio here in the uk. CADAI has just started to be commercially available and compared with other real time products its an extremely powerful and moderately priced product. This scene was made as a research project to explore cadai as an engine and different baking techniques.
It consists of a hybrid house with both interior and exterior spaces that you are able to walk through. there is a full set of collision detection as well (hint: you can access the courtyard from the long corridor windows)
here is a screenshot


you can go here for more screenshots http://www.cadai.com/gallery.aspx

to download the real time model click here http://www.cadai.com/downloads/BakedInterior.zip
( 10.7MB)

overall time spent 5 working days. this includes tests and workflow experiments because of bake 3d problems and limitations( .png???!!!)
instructions: once downloaded extract all the files to a new folder and double click cadai viewer.
just use your mouse and arrow keys to navigate
The only limitations are that the model is optimized to run on nvidia cards
however it will probabbly work fine on ati cards with latest drivers.

Let me know what you think
regards
alkis

[Psy]

looks nice, wish us students could afford to use programs like these in our studies.

anywho, hope you have even better luck with this, looks good and i know what a pain in the *** it is to use bake3d.



edit: just saw the universtiy license thingy, gonna have to send some emails and see some profs.

[alkis]

to psy: thanks for the reply and the positive comments
cadai has evolved because of the heavy use in research programs in oxford school of architecture. we have currently installed copies and are about to start working with the westminster school of architecture as well and we are very keen in other institutions or students who want to get in touch and set something up. our main concern is to get people to start using the software and getting familiar with real time engines and their application to architecture and visualization. the software is dead cheap anyway for a commercial licence and as for educational we are almost giving it away.
keep in touch
regards
alkis

[tom schuelke]

Hi Alkis

How did you solve the problem of texture overlap at the corners with vray texture baking.

right now we do texture baking in max5, but would like in much situations to switch to vray.

the problem is the edge padding didnt work propperly until now with vray.
Looks very good your scene.
grrrr.

so right now we arent any more the only ones who can do such nice things. if you are interisted you also can see our work at

http://www.lichtecht.com/zeit/flugzeug.html and at http://www.lichtecht.com/zeit/reihenhaus.html

good luck
with your work


Tom

[dusan]

What bothers me the most is bake3d being unable to work with color mapping... i managed to cope with it but i just don't know how to get over this.....

So how did you light your scene?

[sc]

Nice work Alkis,

You bake is amazingly clean for VRay bake. Out of curiosity how large
are you saving your baked maps? You must need a pretty serious video
card in order to load those textures into memory?

Do you need to bake absolutely everything in your scene in order to use your program, or just select the ones you want?

Interesting stuff.

SunnyC
www.ivolvestudios.com

[alkis]

hello again
to sc: the baked textures are only 512x512 which is waht currently cadai supports but we are almost ready with an dupgrade that supports 1024x1024 which produces much nicer results whedn baking. the only reason i bake textures is because it makes the model look so much more better. however the other demos that we have on the site are using simple 512x512 image maps that we have very carefuylly colected from actual buildings roads etc manipulated heavily in pshop and then applied to the model.
in order to use the program the only requirement is that every object exported from max needs to have a texture.
as for memory or graphics cards we have tested a very large scene well over half a million polys with more than 300 textures and works (somehow quirky though) on a 16mb nvidia card in an old laptop. anything above that should work perfect. that interior scene alhtough cadai is optimized ofr nvidia cards, is running perfectly on an old workstation at work with matroxg350 32mb
the best way to find out though is to download the demo scenes and have a look. if you are worried about workflow i normally have max photoshop and couple of more apps running and can load the engine's editor and viewer on the background straight away and switch between apps with no prob .

as for colour mapping i havent had any problem with it in vray and the scene was baked in one go(interior and exterior) using exponential colour mapping to avoid variations in light on the different textures
there is only one target light with vray shadows at the scene to cast shadow as sun and gi enviroment set to white nothing else.

tom : i havent had any problems whatsoever with edge padding as you say. what you see is results straight from vray with no tweeeking of the mapping of textures in any of them. your problem might have something to do with the way your model is made(just assuming).
on mine there were no overlappin geometry and the whole model apart from the furniture is one mesh that was detached for baking and then stiched together again for exporting.

let me know if i can help with anything guys
this forum is amazing but in a way its a shame that baking and realtime technologies are not covered or explored so much
bake 3d deserves some attention from chaos as an integral part of vray and it desperetaly needs an update .
alhtough these are early days still for real time in visualization its something that will very rapidly expand i think

thats all fro now
its late and i m typing like a 3 year old fro sleep deprivation
regards
alkis