Interactive 3D Architecture Vizualization

[tricky]

I remember about 10 years ago Archvision had a plug-in that allowed you to create a 360 along a path. Basically it was a cross between a 360 render and a walk through. as you moved forward you can spin 360 degrees... really sweet!

We had a demo of that as well I think: wasn't it called SmoothMove or something???

[sea2stars]

Hrm.. I don't think it was Archvision. Infinite Pictures? I remember .PAN files. You'd start at a 360 panorama, pick your direction, follow along a prerendered video segment and end up at another 360 panorama.

[glorybound]

SmoothMove does ring a bell

[tricky]

Theres nothing really that you cant do with quest/unity/virtools/<insert package here>, its all about the effort required to get to a certain level of quality, and the publishing.

As a 6-7 year user of virtools, I'd lean towards unity, because of its great publishing and its large helpful community.

prepping for realtime work requires a little extra knowledge/effort to get the most out of it, you want to format your meshes/materials differently if you wish to get the best out of the realtime engines, and really it means keeping your models a lot cleaner than we're used to now, somewhat along the lines of what was needed 6-7years ago for rendering.

now that we're in the land of unlimited ram and proxy objects, its progressively harder to just 'convert' a scene to realtime without a fair amount of work~

(Not that it can't be done, but it takes time, [or scripting ] ! )

A few unity examples I've set up:
Link removed ~6mb, AO baked into 4 1024 lightmaps (So its noisy as hell currently), should be playable on most computers.. Realtime Glow, selectable AA settings

Link removed ~7mb, fairly slow on older systems, no baking, just ingame lighting. Realtime AO, Glow, Water.. no model cleanup from the original, thrown together as a quick test.

When you start looking into more complex stuff like realtime reflections, it can start to get a bit complex however.

I've been interested in interactively walking around my buildings for many years. I'm just looking at Unity now. It seems a very capable package. However, it also seems that there is an awful lot to learn, scripting being one of the things.
Is it possible to simply 'convert' a Max model of a building into Unity 'format' and then walk around it freely, or must you master scripting etc for it to function properly?

[beestee]

Unity has prebuilt modules that you literally just drop into a scene to get a quick walkthrough mode set up, quite painless even without any scripting knowledge.

I suggest starting with a very very simple scene to figure out some of the workflow before trying anything serious though.

[tricky]

Will give it a try.

It is a bit weird that there isn't just an option to 'export as an interactive 3d model' button in max, and then you can view it using another bit of software. A bit like a VRML output I guess but just brought bang up to date.

I don't expect the qualities of our GI renderings, but a robust 3d model even with plain colours would be a very useful tool to explore buildings and the spaces around them.

[Subburb]

Hi !
I'm using Stonetrip Shiva to make 3D realtime content.

Relatively Cheap, well designed and rock solid.
The cool thing is it have a very solid webplayer, working with almost all browsers, (Pc/Mac). You can also publish .exe files, and more (psp, iphone...)

Here's some examples i made with it (max/Vray/Shiva) :
Use keyboard arrows to move and leift click to rotate.
GUi buttons are ; subjective, orbit, and fullscreen.

- interior demo :
http://solidrocks.subburb.com/index....=14&Itemid=102
- exterior demo (bigger file, lot of trees and plants)
http://solidrocks.subburb.com/index....=14&Itemid=103

[beestee]

I found this in the past, and they have added some form of VRay support since I last looked at it:

http://www.codeblend.com/

Seems simple enough. I would be interested to hear if anyone has any experience with this package.

[tricky]

Hi !
I'm using Stonetrip Shiva to make 3D realtime content.

Relatively Cheap, well designed and rock solid.
The cool thing is it have a very solid webplayer, working with almost all browsers, (Pc/Mac). You can also publish .exe files, and more (psp, iphone...)

Here's some examples i made with it (max/Vray/Shiva) :
Use keyboard arrows to move and leift click to rotate.
GUi buttons are ; subjective, orbit, and fullscreen.

- interior demo :
http://solidrocks.subburb.com/index....=14&Itemid=102
- exterior demo (bigger file, lot of trees and plants)
http://solidrocks.subburb.com/index....=14&Itemid=103

Looks interesting. Will take a look.

[tricky]

I found this in the past, and they have added some form of VRay support since I last looked at it:

http://www.codeblend.com/

Seems simple enough. I would be interested to hear if anyone has any experience with this package.

Had a quick look at a demo file. It was pretty awful, but it could just have been my PC I guess. Will try again...

[squeakybadger]

Codeblend lights look like nuclear hot spots

Having a good old play with ShiVa at the moment, but it likes to crash on dae export (or it doesn't export materials)

[tricky]

Codeblend lights look like nuclear hot spots

Having a good old play with ShiVa at the moment, but it likes to crash on dae export (or it doesn't export materials)

-
I know I had a few headaches with the install of Shiva (isn't that a type of cat food?) on an XP 64bit system with Max2009 64bit, but I got there in the end I think.