Hello Matt, Igors, Ian and all

A question that eternally springs into my mind from time to time is the ability to create standalone realtime presentations of property.

With EIAS set in the right way you can get some quite nicely shaded views in the viewport and with an adept use of keyboard shortcuts and mouse movement traverse through the scenes. This is invaluable if, like me, you’re searching for that particular viewpoint for rendering out a high rez architectural render.

I’ve very slightly ‘looked’ at real time environment systems in the past but they’ve all left me cold in respect of their operation and simplistic rendering levels.

So my question is whether the realtime rendering elements of EI as it stands today could be used to create a standalone application that could present to whoever. I suppose I’m thinking if I could send a client their 3D model for them to walk round and pick views or crit the design without me navigating for them it could be an advantage.

Now don’t get me wrong I’m fully aware that developing such an app would be a sidetrack to current development but I just want to know whether its possible ?

And my other question would be if anyone on this forum, using EIAS has ever had call to take their models out of EIAS and use them in a real time system - are there any on the market that are truly worth looking into.

I’d be interesting in getting peoples views.

James

James,

I really like the idea of having that capacity.  We’ve been asked to do walk-throughs a few times.  At the time we employed formZ’s walk through capacities.  It wasn’t pretty.  But gave clients the ability to ‘see’ the site spatially.  I think it would be a great add on, to have that capacity, especially if EIAS is going to have texture baking.

The only down side to a walk through, is the loss of control.  The user is able to see it all, which is not always desirable.  Sometimes just animating the ‘walk’ you want is better.  That is not so much a vote against it’s use, as a downside.

Rendering out QTVR is another option, which gives clients the feel of moving, but just from one spot.

Yon

Hi, James

We aren’t familiar with “real-time walk” technique, in our understanding it’s somewhere “inbetween 2D and 3D” We heard a new Apple iPhone SDK allows very interested/powerful abilities in this area, but.. that’s we just heard . A related theme is a baking of textures, lighting and GI, most probably, assumed/necessary for “walk tasks”. It’s very attractive but one thing dramatically colds our enthusiasm: a baking phase can be very and very slow for complex illumination. Baking nature is not adaptive, everything should be calculated. AFAIK here render time scale is not “hours” but “days” and “weeks”. Note also that Rama cannot make it faster. So not all heroes would ovecome this barrier

Igors,
A walk through in this sense, is really like a video game.  You use a mouse, or keys to steer through a project.  I imagine if it were important, days of rendering wouldn’t be an issue

Of course the real question is is it possible.  There are large packages which do just that.  I think the idea here is could one take the high quality EI can produce and apply it to that kind of interface?

Then of course can someone be persuaded to make it

Take care,
Yon

GeordieJames - 17 July 2008 07:45 AM

Hello Matt, Igors, Ian and all

A question that eternally springs into my mind from time to time is the ability to create standalone realtime presentations of property.

With EIAS set in the right way you can get some quite nicely shaded views in the viewport and with an adept use of keyboard shortcuts and mouse movement traverse through the scenes. This is invaluable if, like me, you’re searching for that particular viewpoint for rendering out a high rez architectural render.

I’ve very slightly ‘looked’ at real time environment systems in the past but they’ve all left me cold in respect of their operation and simplistic rendering levels.

So my question is whether the realtime rendering elements of EI as it stands today could be used to create a standalone application that could present to whoever. I suppose I’m thinking if I could send a client their 3D model for them to walk round and pick views or crit the design without me navigating for them it could be an advantage.

Now don’t get me wrong I’m fully aware that developing such an app would be a sidetrack to current development but I just want to know whether its possible ?

And my other question would be if anyone on this forum, using EIAS has ever had call to take their models out of EIAS and use them in a real time system - are there any on the market that are truly worth looking into.

I’d be interesting in getting peoples views.

James

I had the same thoughts, and searched for an easy way to give clients a realtime experience.

I’ve been looking around, and it is posible, but sadly, there is no easy way.

It would be great if this could be done in EIAS, sometime in the future. However, for what I’ve seen, it’s not a very realistic feature request, it’s a completely different ballpark.

When exploring the realtime arena, your functionality wishes quickly become very demanding, you know, “Now I can do this, but wouldn’t it be even better if I could do X .... or Y or ....”

So I focused my search on Game-engines, as they are specially developed for Real-time applications. I am no programmer, so the development environment of the game-engine had to be easy to use ..... and for a long time, nothing was easy to use.....

Long story short, I found one that fitted my needs pretty good, Unity http://unity3d.com

Now I could do realtime, and the next problem was to find a good workflow.

The preparation of a scene for realtime or for pre-rendered application is very different, “low res” models for real time application need a lot of special attention, and can take even more time as what we are used to spend on preparation/modeling for use in EIAS.

I can use Unity to show rough models, or even make simply walkthroughs (OSX, Windows, internet, soon also for Wii and iPhone).  It works pretty good, although I sometimes think I’ve opened Pandora’s box

cheers

Hans

Hi everyone,

We used to use Director for this kind of thing, but we haven’t had a request for it in quite a while.

In Manchester, Tony Tickle’s 3D fly-through software is being used by the council for this purpose.
It seems like good stuff, he’s a nice chap too.

http://www.t3d.co.uk/

Best,
Ian

Hey everyone, thanks for the great feedback.

Ikke, I had a look at the Unity website and there’s some pretty impressive stuff on there. You suggest however that using this software requires you to start from scratch in Unity rather than bringing in usable data from EIAS or a.n.other modeller/rendering app. On the tech spec it says that it uses the power of FBX to work with other apps. I presume therefore for EIAS to feed into that system in its simplest form we’d need an FBX export module ? Any chance of that coming ?

What I’d ideally like to do is develop models/environments in EI and then take them into a program like Unity to display them to clients OR to create standalone kiosks to put in show houses etc. I really like the idea of running this through a Wii as the controls would be really nice.

Ian, thanks for the link to Tony Tickle’s site - again very impressive and wonderful to see that a council in the UK is taking advantage of such technologies. How far are we away from global assessment of cities in 3D via this type of technology or even Google Earth. I spotted a car with a 360 degree camera rig on it the other day and followed it - turned out to have a Google badge on the side of it - he was driving at quite a pace but presumably they were scanning the city from street level. Interesting I thought.

Anyway, thanks for the links, and discussion.

Enjoy your weekends

James

You closet slooth !

Lots of councils are having 3D models of ‘their’ cities made up. The whole of Manchester is being modelled by http://www.ccinw.com/ - and the whole of Wolverhampton by (wait for it) iDrawFast. I’m sure other cities are the same.

Ian

Ian, interesting site that one and pretty good for the type of environment its showing.

No one’s responded to my query on FBX export - whereabouts in the development cycle would that come ? ie. would it be part of Tesla ? or part of EIAS. Either one would be great.

James

Ian - 18 July 2008 01:37 AM

We used to use Director for this kind of thing, but we haven’t had a request for it in quite a while.

In Manchester, Tony Tickle’s 3D fly-through software is being used by the council for this purpose.
It seems like good stuff, he’s a nice chap too.

http://www.t3d.co.uk/

I have used Director for CD-ROM since it was called Micromind Director, 3D in Director has taken a long time to be useable, and feels a bit “glued on”. I don’t know about the latest version, maybe it’s better now, but director is not a 3D application as Unity is. When you are used to 3D applications, Unity will feel more familiar, proper viewports and good feedback.

The t3d software could be good, i don’t know, I can’t see it, it has no Mac player…

GeordieJames - 18 July 2008 02:36 AM

Hey everyone, thanks for the great feedback.

Ikke, I had a look at the Unity website and there’s some pretty impressive stuff on there. You suggest however that using this software requires you to start from scratch in Unity rather than bringing in usable data from EIAS or a.n.other modeller/rendering app. On the tech spec it says that it uses the power of FBX to work with other apps. I presume therefore for EIAS to feed into that system in its simplest form we’d need an FBX export module ? Any chance of that coming ?

What I’d ideally like to do is develop models/environments in EI and then take them into a program like Unity to display them to clients OR to create standalone kiosks to put in show houses etc. I really like the idea of running this through a Wii as the controls would be really nice.
James

If you don’t need perfect looks, you can import a lot of 3D file-formats into Unity, and create an app without to much problems. However, realtime 3D has a few obvious limitations (polygon count/VRAM), and to make big projects run smooth (and look good) you’ll need to optimize your assets for realtime application (as for all other realtime 3D software), and this can cost a lot of time, no matter what 3D application you created your models in. Exchange of textured models never works as we want it to, at least not as far as I am aware of.

Unity isn’t the only option, there are more like Torque which is also a low-cost commercial engine http://www.garagegames.com, or even open source engines like game blender (part of blender), Ogre3D and more. At one time fbx was even an option, there was a fbx quicktime plugin, in motion builder you could create walkthroughs, car simulations and even simple games which were view/play able in realtime 3D with just quicktime and the plugin, it was very interesting, until Kaydara was sold.

Cheers

Hans

Ola,

Im using Unity3d too.
so..lets see what will happen..

Tomas