Best real time model interaction application for client (end user) usage ?

[stevesideas]

Hi there. I have a fairly large garden ground area to model & texture plus the buildings inside the grounds. One large main building plus a few small buildings. Lots of foliage etc. I'm thinking something like Unity might be the best option but does anyone have any advice as to what would be the best application to export to so the user has full control over the camera and can also turn on and off certain layers, ie services. buildings, landscape etc

[stevesideas]

No-one...........

[glorybound]

Big needs. Autodesk just announced something that might fit the bill.

http://www.autodesk.com/products/vred/compare-products

I think that this is it.

[stevesideas]

Thanks Bobby. I've actually just proposed building an application and controlling a linear animation via that. The vred stuff seems good but probably way too complicated for this clients needs.

[Ihno]

Stingray might be worth a look, it's an Autodesk Engine.
I believe it would probably easier to prep and export for it than for unity. Since they claim it's optimized for 3ds max and maya workflow.
http://www.autodesk.com/products/stingray/overview

[beestee]

There is Lumion, but it is pretty expensive if this is not a recurring need. The Pro version has lots of foliage, they have an interactive 'viewer' application that can be sent out. There are also options for layer control.

I performed a live presentation with it myself several weeks ago. It is a nice tool, but as I said costly unless you can make more use of it.

[Guest]

Sketchfab. It is surprising what that viewer can do, especially if you dive into the API. There is VR support too https://sketchfab.com/

[samuel_bubat]

Probably some sort of Game/Realtime Engine is what you need. I can only speak for the UE4 Engine as I haven´t used Unity or Stingray. What I can tell you about the UE4 Engine. For the stuff you´re going to do, it´s basically free as far as I understand it. It´s easy to use. Models are imported with FBX including multiple mapping coordinates materials and animations. What I really like about their import. If you import a FBX file wich contains some hundred objects and you need to change just a single object you can make a new export and reimport just that single object from the fbx file. No need to reimport the whole scene wich might mess up all the changes and materials you did in the ue4 engine to other objects. Writing out an .exe file is just one click. The scripting is done with a node based so called "Blueprint" system. Hardcore developer who are used to write code by hand probably won´t like it. As I´m more and artist than a programmer I do like it. The engine supports all plattforms including mobile devices and VR. We´re using it with the Vive and the setup is fairly easy. The visual quality is one of the best you can get in realtime. It has an inbuild GI renderer to bake the lightmaps wich also supports network rendering. The GI seems to be some sort of irradiance mapping. At least the parameters are named like that. You can tweak it to get very sharp indirect shadows. It supports screens space reflections wich let´s you do glossy reflections in realtime. The material Editor looks and works similar to Slate. A nice feature is are postprocessing volumes. These let you color correct your scene, add glow, Ambient occlusion, grain and a wide range of other effects. Once your camera enters these volumes, wich are basically just boxes, those effects are applied.

So no matter what engine you choose it will require quite some time to get used to it. Many things are similar if you come from Vray, but many things work completely different.

What I don´t like about the engine is the documentation. The Wiki most of the time just tells you what a feature or node does, but not how it´s correctly beeing used. In the forum many basic questions stay unanswered. They actually have a lot of video tutorials on youtube which are great. But often you just need to know a tiny bit of information to get something done wich is hidden in those very long tutorial videos.

[Neilg]

For what it's worth i've used both unity and UE4, and unity is miles easier to get running. A lot of the obscure details of ue4 are automatic/not an issue in unity.
It does sacrifice a decent amount of control, but if you're not pushing the absolute limits of image quality it's significantly faster to get up and running in it. If it's static models you want to move around in real time, i'd go unity. if you need complex materials and scripting/animated objects, you'll need to spend a good amount of time learning ue4.

[Olli96]

If you need it to be viewed online then try sketchfab like JamesCutler suggested, its fairly powerful for an online solution that works without any plugins - i am not sure if you can do the layer thing in there...otherwise i guess you have to go with unity or ue4.

[stevesideas]

Thanks guys. I'll check out sketchfab.

[Morne]

Haven't used it, but saw a demo of it a while back:

https://twinmotion.abvent.com/en/

[Raph4]

It's not easy for begin and you need import/convert objet and scene, but you have Unreal Engine too.

some exemple here :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gah8sHA1r_8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8kdjJ1qsL2c

It's free and you can create standalone executable projects.