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.
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/FullPreview/index.cfm/ID/218794
You could take a look for more advanced work to:
Thanks,
Ismail
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
I want to use this:
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. Redirecting... (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.
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.
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.
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…
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?
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:
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.
yeah but its not free. you cant go around distributing it on cd.
YOu can dristribute your model all you want and if your client has the game they can open it. That cost like what $35?
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.
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.
Yes, but can you imagine that explanation?
client: Hi, I got your cd. What do I need to open this again?
me: Oh, the game unreal tournement.
client: Oh, Ok, I’ll go get it
2 hours later
client: Hi, I got this unreal tournement thing, there is a lot of violence in the introduction, is this correct?
me: oh, yes, that’s right. It’s a bit gorey. Just load that cd I sent you as the level in the game.
client: Don’t ever call me again!
exactly
Currently HKS writes all of their own plug-ins for exporting of the model from MAX/Sketch-Up/Revit and importing into Unreal.
They also write all of the interface so that the gore and guns do not pop in automatically. Also contained within this interface is the ability to toggle between ‘ghost’ mode and actually walking around. And depending on the project there are other triggers programmed in for doors opening, etc…
Also at this time Vray textures can not be baked for use with Unreal because you lose the light maps. Once they figure out how to bake those light maps for use in Unreal the quality will jump tremendously. They bake standard textures and add lights in through Unreal.
As for the architects and clients disliking the product, that is not entirely true. True there are some limitations like mikeeee2 said in that you fake your reflections or just drop them completely, but a lot of the architects and clients will take a not so high quality render/model to be able to run anywhere and see what conflicts are occuring and what that view from the seat in the corner will be. Currently they do not hand out models to clients, it is mostly used as a design tool and for presentation purposes.
Mikeeee2, Owen says hello. 
if memory serves (which it seems to be failing more and more lately :? ) the unreal engine is somewhere in the realm of $250,000.00 USD? Or was it $25,000.00 USD? One of those, but at any rate, if you look at engine plus development plus each project’s time? I find it hard to believe that you could turn a buck with it for quite some time. IT would take quite a lot of walkarounds to make money. I gave up for those reasons.
EDIT> just found it. $350,000.00 plus 3% royalties on all revenues. Like I said. If they are using Unreal, then they have to be really in the hole.
Hey Jerry!
I didn’t give out any “trade secrets” Did I? I only tried the one project like 16 months ago and decided to leave it to the big boys.
It is a hell of a tool if you have the time to learn it or the deep pockets to develop the workflow so it is near automatic. ANd once the texture baking of the v-ray materials it will be sweet!
As for happy clients… Are they ever truly happy? THey do enjoy a good FRAG at the end of the presentation.
Owen meet at the sanches for a beer!