Unreal Developer's Kit (UDK) anyone?

[Anonymous]

Gaming engines have left the likes of ArchiCAD behind for producing lifelike environments with swaying trees, lapping water, and the use of sound for texture and mood. Could ArchiCAD / VBE incorporate such features?

[Anonymous]

I'm a little surprised nobody else has commented on my earlier post.
Is it the case that nobody else is either interested or aware of UDK (Unreal Developers Kit) and what it offers for architectural visualisation? or are most viewers confident that Graphisoft will *quickly* incorporate such features/functionality either into VBE (which ought to be built into ArchiCAD by version 16 or so...) or ARchiCAD itself.

[Karl Ottenstein]

I think most people have seen requests such as yours over many years and realize that Graphisoft has plenty of irons in the fire that are much higher priority to them and most users than this.

Certainly, if there were money to be made, a 3rd party could add this functionality...

And, of course, if Revit added something like this, then GS might consider it a higher priority for competitive reasons. 😉

Cheers,
Karl

[Anonymous]

Thanks for your thoughts Karl.

Whilst I appreciate Graphisoft may have other higher priorities I don't think waiting for Revit to do it first is the reason to then consider such features.

Note I posted in the 'Presentation - Rendering and Multimedia' forum and it is exactly what these gaming engines pull off beautifully in my view, i.e. much better than VBE which is expensive for the features it offers.

I could argue that VBE is Graphisoft's first foray into the gaming engine approach and that they have done it somewhat clumsily, but I'm glad that have something! (they even use WASD navigation)

I'm curious to know whether you've actually had a close look at the quality of the architectural visualisations prepared with applications as UDK (Unreal Developers Kit), Unity3D and even good ol' blender. Please have a look.

3rd parties are already making money on such, and architects are already importing into such gaming engines for the improved environmental quality they offer.

[Karl Ottenstein]

ferokollar wrote:
3rd parties are already making money on such, and architects are already importing into such gaming engines for the improved environmental quality they offer.

If that's true, then you should relax - a 3rd party (perhaps you?) will come along and offer this as an add-on for ArchiCAD. 😉

[Anonymous]

Karl,

Fero and I were discussing this in the other topic. This Unity package looks like it may be a good setup for myself.

I've got Blender, but it's really hard to wrap my mind around... it doesn't 'fit' my head. Unity gave me results in just one session; I found it easy to get into it's 'culture'. Also, it's documentation is pretty solid, so I could figure out how to 'make it do THIS' pretty quickly. I'm seriously thinking about laying my money down for the full version. It blows VBE out of the water, for sure.

Busy as the dickens with production currently, but after a few weekends of playing with this package I'll get some results posted on my site for all of us to look at. I'm excited to use this. Fero kind of 'slapped me in the head' with the concept of a gaming engine.... I'm not a gamer, so I never made the cognitive connection. This is like walking into a new world. Awesome!

Gotta' play with it first. I don't like to post 'half-baked' material, so I'll need to sit down and really tear into it to produce something worthy. From the looks of it, though, it shouldn't be to difficult. With a good model and a few pre-defined scripts, I could see this giving us an extremely impressive presentation for a home in about a day... which is amazing.

This is the future, for sure.

[Anonymous]

Karl,

Thanks, I'd like to have a go at it but have insufficient skills although I'd love to work with anyone with Dave's enthusiasm to make it come about. It is the logical next step in the creation and delivery of ideas.

[Anonymous]

Dave et al

Don't know which platform you're on but Unreal Developers Kit may also arrive for Mac OS soon (and I use the word 'soon' very loosely).

If you're on PC then the free beta is available as far as I know (non-commercial use).

I cannot give comparison between Unity and UDK, plenty of reviews on net, although I'd expect you get in there and start playing around to make your own judgement.

UDK license/royalty arrangements differ to Unity and may be less attractive for that reason. Let me know what you think if you do have a look at it.