Unity Game Engine for Architectural Visualisation

[Anonymous]

I've only recently dabbled with Unity for Mac (alternative to Unreal Development Kit which isn't available for Mac OS) and it offers many features which I'd love to see in either VBE or ArchiCAD presentation apps.

Anyone else out there played with gaming engines? and if so do you (like me) consider that Graphisoft ought to have caught up to these guys by now?

They offer the following features that appear to all render in real time without any problem on an off the shelf iMac or similar spec machine;
- real time lighting and shadows
- physics, including items that respond to wind of being pushed
- wind
- soundscapes
- realistic water
etc

Curious to know others opinion of such.

[Anonymous]

Ferokollar,

Thanks for the tip / idea!! Of course! A game engine!

Unity looks fantastic... maybe better than VBE. And it digests ordinary 3DS files which I can write from anywhere - even older versions of AC.

I downloaded the standard (free) version and had full functionality with one of my recent AC jobs within a couple hours. If I had a full day to devote, could probably get a darn nice presentation together with full walk-through and look-around capability.

I'm going to play with it for a few weekends and see what I can do. some of the sample projects on their site are very impressive and user friendly. This is a great way to do presentation - particularly for homes.

You can update the building model easily, too. Nice!

I'll post developments if meaningful.

[Anonymous]

Hi Dave

Glad my 'tip' was of use.

It would be great to get an update on your progress with it.

My only reservations with Unity is that some of the high end features that attracted me to it are not also available in the free version.

I've been playing around with the free-pro version but who knows... maybe a free version of UDK or mac will come out soon, apparently it's under development is easier to use than Unity, well at least according to forums I've read, although I guess it depends on the individual user application.

What type of design work you use Unity for?

[Anonymous]

Ferokollar,

We're doing luxury homes, mostly, with the occasional light commercial and multi-family projects.

For the luxury homes, one of my customers likes to sit with the clients and walk through the building in AC using the regular 3D window navigation. It's fine, but not optimum.. He needs to be there with them at the office operating the software. With VBE or something like Unity, you can send the client a file that they can operate themselves or in unison on a phone conference.. it's more 'accessible'. We've used Artlantis to generate walk-throughs in the past, but it's slow to render 1000 frames every time there's a a change! With the game engine, you get an unlimited 'path' and it generates quickly... fully textured, properly lit and with all the awesome context and entourage (like the water, flying birds, etc.). And the sound! That's very intriguing. Part of the 'immersion' of the samples on Unity's site is the sound... the waves running up on the beach and the birds chirping in the trees. It's very atmospheric.

$1,500 for the Pro version is no problem.. We'd consider that well within reason for such a powerful package. Looking at some of the samples on their site you can see it's possible to add a great deal of user interface features... like turning lights on and off, changing the time of day, opening and closing doors (particularly the giant pocket doors we use on the Hawaii houses). It's rich with possibilities.

Once we've played it with it some more, I'll post some examples here or on my website. The only thing I'm really missing on the free version is the shadows... If I can get feeling confident with the free package, I'm going for the Pro version. For me, the user interface of this program feels like a good 'fit' for my brain. Some packages I just can't quite 'get', but this one started making sense to me right away. That bodes well.

Thanks again... Will let you know how it's going in the next few weeks.

[Anonymous]

Update on the Unity software...

Wow. This is really splendid. Seriously, seriously thinking of plunking down the US$1,500 for the Pro package. With the AC models we produce (which are very detailed at an early stage), you can generate a pleasingly textured, awesomely entouraged and fully interactive presentation in about a DAY. Imagine a VBE with a 'living, breathing' world environment.

I swapped the model several times for tweaks - no problem... Took minutes (seconds once I got the hang of it). Changes are NO PROBLEM. That's of critical importance for my shop... we herd cats.

Extremely logical interface. The manual is useful. Their forum at the Unity site is well populated and yields pretty fair answers on searches.

To export from AC, save your 3D window as a 3DS. Unity will read it and translate it automatically. Read the manual on that part - they give some good tips. IMPORTANT - If you have Meshes in AC, be sure you set them to 'All Ridges Sharp'. That way, Unity will import the UV / Normals correctly. Pulled my hair out for hours trying to figure out why my shaders wouldn't wrap. If you have 3DS, you can do smoothing in there and it'll probably translate fine. I don't have 3DS.

You can add furniture and additional modeled entourage to your scenes at will - no problem.

Full animation / physics modeling.

RUNNING WATER... with SOUND!!! Wow man!!!! Totally COOL!!!

BTW, in the course of trying to figure out my shader problem I discovered 'FBX Converter' at the AutoDesk site, which will convert 3D files of various types to the gamer's preferred 'FBX' format. In this case, I ended up not needing it... but it's still good to have.

Also, in your AC model, the photorendering settings matter, so take a look at them. The AC manual has a good section on what it does when writing 3DS, so you should reconcile that with what Unity wants to see.

After you've constructed your Scene, you can build and write it several ways. It'll play on your machine exactly like a game program would. I've already done one house in it and it looks very nice... but still not to the level I'd like to show off.... but that's just an aesthetic thing.. as far as function, this package does pretty much everything we could ever need for architectural work. BTW... yes, it yields a big folder (my test project is about 65MB), but it's worth it. And besides... we all know handling 100MB packages is really no problem these days. Any client that can afford this service has connectivity and machines that are up to it (decent gaming machine).

The part they leave out in the free version is ray-traced(?) shadows, so if I were going to use this program for shaking my money maker, I'd go for the Pro version. However, you can definitely learn every feature on the free version and husband your resources until you've got a real project where you want all the goodies.

I'd rate it's level of complexity (and thus, capability) about equal to ArchiCad itself... After a year on this program, I'll probably be able to do things indistinguishable from magic... as Arthur Clarke would say!

I've got a notion to do this with a house we did in Hawaii that was really a great project and never got built because of Depression 2.0. Once it's fully-baked, I'll post a link... promise.

Talk soon!

[Anonymous]

Dave

Thanks for update and tips on export/import re shaders etc. I had similar problems, now solved by your advice.

I would have thought there were many others out there eager for this level of control in creating such immersive environments to win over clients. Where are they?

I gather your far more proficient with the programming side of things too?

Eager to see link to Hawaiin house.

[Anonymous]

Results for your inspection here:

http://www.dmsdesign.us/planrm/CHIOU_2011-08-17.zip

It works! Pretty well, too. That said, I need to learn how to utilize the lighting and lightmapping features better.. which is doable, but requires time I don't have presently. In this example I'm only using a single light (the sun) and I also made some changes in the landscape entourage which I didn't 'bake' again for shadows. I'm just posting this so folks can get an idea of what's possible for even a beginner.

What's been done here was a day's work, and it'll get faster as I move up the learning curve. Lots of little details to learn how to use / operate more effectively. For instance, we'll be able to get better surface definition in the interiors by utilizing more lights... this run is admittedly horrible in that respect.

You'll need to download the ZIP to your machine, unpack it, then run the EXE which is pretty much just like any other game program. It'll open and begin loading assets from the asset folder, then you can begin exploring the project.

This was done 100% on the free version of U3D. Price is right!

Enjoy!

[Anonymous]

One more thing!

You'll notice the example does indeed have shadows. The free version will do static shadows, which are done with a light map generated inside U3D. The licensed version allows Real Time shadows, which is awesome but probably not required for simple walk-throughs. Forgot to mention that. As a matter of fact, they recommend using lightmapped shadows wherever possible because they don't demand so much processing power.

Talk soon!

[Anonymous]

Hi Dave

Sorry to say i am on macintosh platform.

Is it possible to save images or components which i may be able to open in Unity for mac?

If not, even some screen shots if not inconvenient.

Thanks

[Anonymous]

Ferro,

http://www.dmsdesign.us/planrm/CHIOU_2011-08-17_MAC.zip

Give that one a spin. I hope it works.. Can't test it!

Let me know...

Talk soon!