realtime interactive walkthrough

[percydaman]

Hey, we have a potential client that wants to see the space before construction, and be able to walk around in realtime. Anyone do this before, and what software did they use? Ive done some searching, and found some stuff, but who knows how easy it is to use.

[efx2004]

RTRE is very easy to use. It supports radiosity of the scanline renderer of max. I think texturebaking with vray might work as well.
http://www.turbosquid.com/FullPrevie....cfm/ID/218794

You could take a look for more advanced work to:
http://www.quest3d.com/

Thanks,
Ismail

[posterus]

take a look at this: http://www.archengine.org/
i interviewed with HKS awhile back and they created the software in their viz lab. i got to sit down and and walk through some of their projects and it was pretty amazing to say the least. basically what they did was buy the Unreal engine and modified it. its just like playing a video game. the projects on their site look pretty bad but the stuff i demoed was pretty sweet. i bet the software is fairly pricy tho. they seemed to be pretty proud of it.
-joe

[phildlight]

I want to use this:

http://www.projectoffset.com/

to do that!

I played around with the quake engine (free). You can actually pretty quickly get the hang of dumping geometry in it, and moving around. The problems came when trying to attach physical properties to the geometry for collisions etc. So you don't walk through walls... Anyway, it is possible, and works fairly well, but in the end would be a boat load of work.

Also look at cult3d. I think they have weird licensing for the viewer or something. I don't recall, but it's really easy to export to the viewer. http://www.cult3d.com/Cult3D/exporters.asp (best viewed in IE)

This concept is something that I've really wanted to get going again, but have been too busy to deal with. I wish vray or someone would work on a plugin/viewer/engine like this. Hugely valuable I think.

[Dynedain]

If you bake your textures/lighting, you also can probably use Plasma (an Autodesk product) to export to Shockwave 3D. That way most endusers will have the plugin already.

I haven't tried it yet though.

[percydaman]

thanks for the info. Im going to check these out. Im not sure yet what the client wants to spend, he might think he can get something of good quality for real cheap. We'll see.

[Da_elf]

ive been sugesting the quake3 engine for a while since its free and robust

[phildlight]

ive been sugesting the quake3 engine for a while since its free and robust

That it is, but it's the object interaction/gravity etc. part that gets sketchy. I'm not a very good programmer, but I was able to get it all working. I'll dig it up and post it. You had ghost abilities though

You could fly etc. Plus without designing a nice splash interface/loading screen, it's very harsh when entering the scene. You get the feeling you're entering a quakeIII deathmatch...

[Neilg]

ive been sugesting the quake3 engine for a while since its free and robust

Is it easy to do things like this? Its always interested me but I dont have a clue how you'd go about getting the model into an engine like that. No so much thatI dont know how to, just that I dont know where to start.

If its free/open source, you should be able to make a custom menu/splash screen and edit what gets shown too, I think. Can anyone confirm?

[meanadam]

No. Not easy.

The world builders are difficult. I don't know if it is different now - but you have to do a lot of the work in the wold builder (engine of your choice). Also have to build textures to the right spec 512x512? Baking sounds like a good idea - and an advancement. Wondering if you can export with all the mapping applied?

I haven't used since the 2nd gen - I guess the newer max plugins for the unreal engine are supposed to work - hence HKS. I had a friend that worked there. The stuff wasn't that great, and the models aren't very detailed. I think the guys running the system were also gamers (which is easy to find in dem parts) and knew how to run the unreal engine. But they are in a constant battle with the architects / designers - and the architects are rarely pleased with the work.

Here is an image they did:
http://football.ballparks.com/NFL/In...s/newindex.htm

[mikeeee2]

Percy:
If you are going to use this alot in the future I would recomend the Unreal engine. When you purchas the game you also recieve the game editor/World creator. I have given this a try and it seems to work. THere is a large lurning curve in the editor/modeler compaired to max so it is a large investment in time.

HKS has invested alot in automating the texturbaking process and importing into Unreal. THat is what the ARCHengine guys are all about. As with any process there are plusses and minuses to the Realtime engine. All you reflections must be ignored or faked and that makes the models look a little flat to me. The trade off is the interactivity of the final product. I did the modeling for the W-hotel that was imported into the Unreal game engine by ARCHengine and I definatly prefer the v-ray rendered images and animations but there is something to be said for letting the client run around the project themself. And at the end you can add players and shoot them.. clients LOVE that.

[Da_elf]

yeah but its not free. you cant go around distributing it on cd.

[mikeeee2]

YOu can dristribute your model all you want and if your client has the game they can open it. That cost like what $35?

[phildlight]

the unreal engine is very expensive. That's why I used the quakeIII engine. Open source. My workflow was to model/texture in max, export to gmax (free game map editor), then export that to the map format (don't recall what that was right at the moment) then load that map in the engine. Seems easy enough, but like i said, to create interactivity is where it gets tough. When you load a map like that, there is no gravity etc, so you just fly around. You have to create a custom source file to accompany the map file, and that includes all of the information about gravity etc, and the object interference is where it get's really really tough. You have to give the coordinates of the objects that you want to interact with (i.e. bounce off walls), and if your architecture is complex in the least bit, it's a nightmare. I'll dig up my stuff and post something. Just busy at the moment.

[percydaman]

cool beans. I've in the past created half life levels using their editor. Its doable, but if it can be done in max, and then exported to the engine, that's a real boon.