Graphisotf BimX vs Artlantis iVisit3D

[Anonymous]

Hi everyone,
we want to start offering virtual tours of our projects to our clients and we need to decide on which software to use.

At the moment, our presentation workflow is as follows:

Archicad 3d model > Artlantis Render 3 > 2d render

We tested the VBE already, although we did not try to work and export tours starting from our own project files.

A few days ago we found out about Artlantis 4 and the iVisit3D feature, and we got pretty excited about it.

I'd like to know if anyone got a chance to test both software. We'd like to compare the two tools as far as cost/ preparation time required/ result quality.

[Karl Ottenstein]

Hi Enrico,

I beta tested both, so can talk about a few of your questions.

First, it is essential to understand that iVisit 3D and BIMx are completely different solutions.

With BIMx, everything about your model must be done inside of ArchiCAD - all texturing, all entourage, etc. and any 'glitches' must be fixed there. You then export all or part of your model and the client can view the 3D model in any way they choose, looking at every nook and cranny of the model and with only the global illumination provided by BIM Explorer (if you choose to compute GI).

With iVisit 3D, you use the workflow you are currently using - typically texturing in Artlantis, generating all lighting, radiosity, background and additional 3D entourage - setting up a render as now - to be as great or as simple as you require. But, the export is simply a panorama - the same as old QT Panoramas, but now these are done with Flash for the web and Android ... and with iVisit for iPhone/iPad. Well, not 'simply' a panorama: you can generate a stand-alone pano, but you can generate a collection of linked panos and an overview floor plan, so that the user can navigate from viewpoint to viewpoint in a project as you envision.

You can make an iVisit pano much more lush and realistic than any BIMx model, because of the power of Artlantis.

But, the viewer can only see the panorama - or the linked panoramas, which provide a guided tour of your project. They can only see what you show them. Big difference.

Dwight has posted many times on a similar difference in presentation methods: he often compares people generating a flythrough animation buzzing a person through a project to those generating a slideshow of sumptuous images fading into one another, guiding a person through an emotional presentation of the project. In some ways, BIMx is more like the flythrough movie (although not really of course - the user can navigate where they want on their own through the whole model) ... and the panorama is more like the guided slideshow - since you only produce panos of the scenes/viewpoints you want to showcase.

Cost and Time...

The upgrade to Artlantis 4 costs more than the ArchiPlus price for BIMx - but as you know, Artlantis does so much more in terms of powerful shaders, entourage, fixing surface material glitches, illumination, etc etc - and Studio can produce not only images, but animations, VR objects and panos. Still, cost advantage is to BIMx.

Generating a radiosity solution for a panorama in Artlantis can be much faster than generating a global illumination solution in BIM Explorer - and with far superior results. Particularly since you can use the batch render to produce your collection of panos for a multimode pano project, I give the time advantage to Artlantis.

Viewer cost: BIMx for IOS is free. iVisit 3D viewer is $20 per client. (No cost to view panos in a web browser.) iVisit 3D Lite is free, but only allows you to look at one pano per day just to evaluate. Cost advantage here is BIMx.

Coolness factor: personal taste! Personally, I find iVisit 3D on an iPhone 4 or faster or an iPad 2 to be totally cool. Manually navigating a beautifully rendered panorama is nice, but turning on gyroscopic mode and making your IOS device a dynamic window into a virtual world is way cool IMHO. Turn in place or look up and down, and the screen of your IOS device is like a window into your virtual scene. Others may find BIMx more cool because you can navigate anywhere through the 3D model, walking up stairs, through doors - and not through walls (unless fly is enabled), etc.

Usability by tech-limited, non-gamer clients: I think iVisit would be easier for this kind of non-techie person to experience a project in a persuasive, non-frustrating way... they cannot get stuck in a closet, for example. 😉

Different tools, different presentation capabilities. Ideally, get both. 🙂

Cheers,
Karl

Edit: about the iPhone 4 or faster or iPad 2 or faster for iVisit 3D: that only applies to using the virtual gyroscopic viewing method. Any IOS device works absolutely fine and smoothly for manual panning with gestures. If in doubt, download iVisit 3D Lite and a sample model and test the performance on your device. BIMx is of course free, with sample models available too, so easy for people to test performance there also.

[Anonymous]

Thank you Karl for the excellent explaination! I really appreciate it.

As I said before, we are looking for an easy, easy, easy presentation tool to show pretty stuff to non-techie clients. I do agree that BIMx is probably a better tool to present a design to a professional than 3d panoramas, but that is not what we are looking for.

For these reasons, I think we'll go for Artlantis 4. About the 20$ fee for iVisit, we'll add it to our fee and we'll take care of installing it on our clients devices if necessary.

How does iVisit work on normal browsers? Do you need to upload it anywhere?

Thanks again Karl!

[Anonymous]

By the way, is there any website where you can share these Artlantis/iVisit presentation?

It would be great to be able to embed 3D presentation of our projects in our website, like you do with a youtube video etc...

[Karl Ottenstein]

Enrico wrote:
By the way, is there any website where you can share these Artlantis/iVisit presentation?

It would be great to be able to embed 3D presentation of our projects in our website, like you do with a youtube video etc...

I don't believe that Abvent has set up any kind of site like the Graphisoft Facebook page where people can share panoramas. But, you can load them on any web site - or email a folder to any client to view on their computer in their browser.

Artlantis creates an HTML folder when you generate a (multi or single node) panorama. This folder can be easily uploaded and integrated into your web site ... but anyone viewing the site has to have Flash enabled, so if someone goes to your site with Safari on an iPad, they cannot view the panoramas at all since IOS does not support Flash.

See the sample web panos here:
http://ivisit3d.com/

The quality of the image in these samples on the web depends on the rendering settings, of course, but also to some extend the render size - as you can zoom in and out of the image as well as pan around. Wait for the spinning download icon in the upper right corner to finish before judging quality. Only the current panorama of a multi-node panorama downloads, to make things faster. As you navigate to another node, that pano will download. On really fast internet connections, you won't notice the delay - and the lower quality until the download completes.
Creating the iVisit file for the IOS app consists of dragging and dropping the generated HTML folder onto the iVisit 3D Builder app, which handles the reformatting to create the single file that you would share with people having IOS devices... this file, too, can be placed on your web site for anyone to download to their device for viewing on iVisit.

Cheers,
Karl

PS Note, too: the panorama file is a full hemisphere. This differs from prior QT versions and other software that let you control how much you would 'see'. You can observe this by trying the various panoramas on the site above and panning up to the ceiling. For large rooms, I think some (computer challenged) clients might end up panning up to a blank ceiling and then rotating and get lost. If the ceiling (or sky) has no architectural interest, it would have been nice to be able to limit the upwards view as in the old days.

PPS In case you and others do not notice it: there are three ways to navigate from one panorama node to another in the viewer:

1. Click the white triangle in the lower left corner of the screen to display the panorama thumbnail list and click on another thumbnail...

2. As you pan around one panorama, you will see text in the image corresponding to the center point of another panorama. Click the text to jump there.

3. If there are two offset black squares in the top left corner of the web viewing screen, then there is a floor plan attached. Touch the squares and the rendered plan appears with text name on each location of a panorama for that floor. Multiple stories can be accommodated, too.

[Karl Ottenstein]

I tried several of the online/web panos before finding one that has a floor plan attached to it for plan navigation (method 3 below). See screenshot...

[rob2218]

With regards to this topic.
I just opened my Apple iPad and it stated that there is "iVisit3D App" which can be downloaded onto your iPad?

What is this app?
Has anyone downloaded it to their ipad and what are the results?

Please advise.

We are in the same mode...we need to show our potential clients and current clients 3D environments and make it easy for them to view them on either an iPad or a computer be it a MAC or PC.

[Karl Ottenstein]

rob2218 wrote:
With regards to this topic.
I just opened my Apple iPad and it stated that there is "iVisit3D App" which can be downloaded onto your iPad?

What is this app?
Has anyone downloaded it to their ipad and what are the results?

Please advise.

We are in the same mode...we need to show our potential clients and current clients 3D environments and make it easy for them to view them on either an iPad or a computer be it a MAC or PC.

"What is this app?": Seriously? Just go to the App Store and read the description with screenshots like any other IOS app.

I've discussed this app in detail below. The biggest feature over viewing a pano in your browser is that it can use the gyroscope to orient the iPad view to your physical environment. As you rotate or look up or down, the virtual scene adjusts accordingly.

There are YouTube videos demonstrating this app's functionality, too.

There is a free version that you can download and lets you view one pano file per day. The not-free version is the same functionality, but lets you view as many panos as you want, whenever.