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I visited an architectural firm many years ago, where they had started to show prospective customers prototypes of designs via an xbox. The customers could walk
by noplsbecivil 4y ago
I visited an architectural firm many years ago, where they had started to show prospective customers prototypes of designs via an xbox. The customers could walk around, go inside the building and the experience helped them win deals. Always wondered why more firms didn't try something like that. Its great to see more sdks making things like that easier
- andrewxdiamond 4y agoit sounds cool, but I wonder how much work goes into it. Is it possible for the firm to produce the walk-around model from their actual design tools? Without that, an Xbox based simulator is pretty expensive marketing material and it wouldn’t be a perfect match to the real plans.
- andrewxdiamond 4y agoMaybe that’s the next startup, pipeline to transform architectural designs in whatever-normal-format to a rendered videogame-ish sim.
- yrgulation 4y agoOne can easily convert cad into playable meshes and slap an fps character controller for walking around. Texturing is trivial.
- andrewxdiamond 4y agoThe other thread here explains from the perspective of someone who tried why you may be over-trivializing this https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32311254 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32311254
- yrgulation 4y agoI bumped into similar issues - most kitbash modes i use are detailed down to screws. I remesh them or blender simplify them or drop the details. It is somewhat time consuming but nowhere near the complexity described in there. And for a building you dont need that level of detail.
- andrewxdiamond 4y agoFor sure it’s achievable, but how much does this actually add to the value a firm provides? Is it more than the cost of a technical person who knows how’s to make the models? And if you internally automate it, are the results clean enough to show to prospective clients? And even if the above two concerns are met, is the ROI on this higher than any other prospect the company has to increase customer satisfaction?
- bshipp 4y agoWe experimented with a similar process in agriculture for customer VR tours of facilities that are too remote or would result in excessive biosecurity risk for the plants/animals inside. However, we now just use 360 degree video to provide a better, more realistic experience. it's not helpful for exploring designs, but its a better choice (IMHO) for tours of facilities that already exist.
- LegitShady 4y agoTexturing is trivial if you don’t care if it looks good. Texturing and lighting are an enormous amount of work if you’re using the model to sell or impress people.
- yrgulation 4y agoSubstance painter and procedural materials work wonders. Plaster, bricks, marble, glass look great. And render nicely in ue or unity +hdrp. It can bake normal maps, ao, and so on for high fidelity. Worth giving it a go. Tho you need to uv your models in blender with marked seams or use triplanar textures.
- LegitShady 4y agoall of these tools exist and you're totally right they work, but they aren't trivial and require time and skill to do properly. I was responding to the idea that this kind of texturing and lighting is trivial - its not if you care about the product and actually want to sell based on it.
- madrox 4y agoI remember visiting AutoCAD in SF once, and they had a driving simulator for the newly constructed Presidio Parkway Tunnels, which were designed in AutoCAD. Simulation of real spaces is an interesting niche that I suspect will get leveraged way, way more as the data becomes pervasive.