Hulag

But don't you think having some kind of human figure in a demo helps the viewer have a better sense of scale of the whole building? Even if you position the viewer in the right position (say, 6 feet above de ground as you move in the model), it doesn't always look right unless you have some good references, and having people walking around helps with that I think.

I was wondering, what do you people think about NPRs in interactive demos? I saw the rtre House demo in http://www.turbosquid.com/FullPreview/index.cfm/ID/218794 and they use an NPR in it. It looks good (not TOO good) but they had to block your way to the NPR with the chairs, for me it's annoying. So, should NPRs be used in interactive demos or should full 3D models be used instead?

I had the opposite problem, 3ds Max 6 would crash with my Nvidia GeForce FX 5800 Ultra. I replaced it with a Radeon 9700 Pro and it worked great. Now I don't use 3ds Max anymore and moved to Lightwave 7.

I have to disagree with crazy homelss guy, it depends on the amount of geometry you have to handle. I would go for a Radeon 9700 Pro.

Anyone else?

Exactly, I think that the physics engine is important to make edifications more interactive, not in HL2's "shoot-at-this-barrel-it-will-roll" kind of way, but in more usefull ways such as doing more useful simulations. Just think for example if you told a client "Look, you not only get to run around you building, but you can see for example what would happen in case of a dissaster where all the lights go off and things fall, etc." I think that adds so much more to the presentation, and it can make your client happier. And a guess you all know what happens when your clients are happy

I was wondering, what video cards do you people use? I use a Radeon 9700 Pro and it works really good with Lightwave 7(no money to update to 8 yet). Also, please comment on how it works with the 3D applications that you use. I just want to know what is the "standard" in the business.

Another nice tool is Visuall : http://www.digital-arts.dk/products-visuall.htm They have two nice demos you can download, here they are: http://www.digital-arts.dk/Nykredit/Nykredit%20demo%20setup.exe http://www.digital-arts.dk/Gallery/Art%20Gallery.zip

Also, what do you people think of rendering times? Isn't it nice not to have to wait hours to get the GI baked in the geometry at the cost of some visual quality? Some times that's not a problem but usually I'm on tight schedules and since I do have two computers or a render farm, I have to wait without doing much while everything is being rendered. I think that's a big plus for people that don't have that much resources, at least to have another computer do the rendering while you keep on working on other stuff.

What my point was that a real time presentation doesn't have to be just a model with a nice texture and lighting, it has to be more of a presentation showing what a person might actually do in a building. You will have NPRs all around(supposing you are showing something like an office building), allow the user to turn on and off lights, fans, etc. What I have see is that most VR programs(focused for architects) is that they are all VERY static, and the only demo I saw of rtre that wasn't static had something called vertex lighting(doing some google it seems they set a lighting value for every vertex in the scene and interpolate among them) that looks really bad compared to Doom 3 o even any old game such as Quake 1. And I think that Doom 3 doesn't look too bad even on open scenario such as this screenshot . I don't know about you people, but I would sure give up some of the lighting quality to have more interactive demos. I'm looking at demos in a "controlled environment" for people that may invest in a building, and things like that. So yeah, I would have a dedicated computer for presentations just as some studios have dedicated computers for rendering(and some even render farms). Yeah, I saw it and HL2 looks really impressive too, but the lighting is static too, not everything casts shadows. Basically they seem to have all the static geometry with baked GI (called lightmaps I think) and all the dynamic geometry is vertex lighting. At least that's what it looks like in the demos I have seen. So yeah, it would make much more sense to use HL2 kind of technology if you plan to make a demo that isn't too interactive, but then why wouldn't you use rtre or Visuall?

Lately I have been thinking about the real-time business and its use in architecture. I have been looking for different tools and one of the biggest problems for me is the lighting. Is radiosity really necessary for a real-time presentation of a building at the expense of having everything be static? I must say radiosity looks really good in still images, and I think that they are really a need, it just gives a much better quality to a single image, and that is required because the person that will look at the image will have time to really look at every single pixel rendered. But in a real-time demo the person will be moving around, and I think that in a real-time demo what's really required is really dynamic demos and make the lighting be the best possible. I think so solution like Doom 3 is better than using say rtre, while rtre allows you to use the radiosity, its all very static compared to Doom 3. And what's even better is that Doom 3 for example doesn't require any rendering time that means that you don't need a render farm (if you work in a big firm of course ) or you don't need to be waiting for the radiosity render to finish. I would like to know what you people think about this because I am a bit disappointed by most of the architectural real-time presentations I have seen, and what I have been able to do with the standard real-time tools.