Short Learning Curb VR Package

[jtiscareno]

OK guys I have read about VR in architecture and it looks like it is a very good alternative for walkthroughs or panoramas, the client can see what they want and trun, etc.

 

So my question is what is the "best" or better yet more user friendly package out there to use in conjuntcion or as part of 3d softwares, we are using 3ds Max and Vray for our renderings and movies, so would there be a packege or plug-in that would work with Max???

 

I am intrested into researching the possibilities of using it, but i dont want to beacome a game developer and learn programing and other stuff, besides keeping up with the 3d and vray stuff we now have jumped into Revit and that is quite a task.

 

I have also read about the new movment in 3d animation called "MACHINIMA", it seems that people are tapping into 1st person games and "creating" there movies and capturing them and then going and edit them and add sound, voice, etc. So it looks like the whole gaming modeling, baking of material and light, etc is catching up and moving from games into mainstream.

 

So any suggestions...

 

Appreciate the help and info like always!

[jtiscareno]

OK I went and checked out turntool and it looks like what we need, so what is the diffrence of turntool and the game engines that people talk about???

 

And is there another software better than turntool?

[mbr]

technology is moving along, but from what I've seen it's a long way off from being comparable to regular animations. Also, it's significantly more time consuming, especially if you have to work with existing models (you need very low polygons, highly optimized textures, etc.).

 

And its important not to forget that the quality will be determined by the viewer's graphic card, so if they have an office system or an old computer, it won't work at all or will look very bad.

 

my 2 cents, but it's been a year since I worked with real time stuff

[rpict]

how do you intend to use vray with turntools? second uv sets for a nice slim texture baked lightmap solution aren't currently supported by turntool. so you will end up using max's radiosity to produce some decent results.

 

-rpict

[Pablo Zurita]

The program I'm working allows you to make real-time presentations. It works just fine with Vray, the workflow is the same for Vray, the scanline renderer or MentalRay. If you want to see how it works you can check http://www.irradiance.com.ar/IrradianceWiki_Tut1.pdf which is a very simple tutorial that shows one way to get your geometry from 3dsmax to Project Monte Carlo. In there I use MentalRay but the steps are the same for VRay. If you want to see if you can run Project Monte Carlo you can download a test from http://www.irradiance.com.ar/MCTest.exe. The demo shows a simple scene taken from the VRay help, here is a screenshot

[Clausbang]

Hi Akzit

Using game-engines is a posibility to make good quality VR, but they usually require quite some hardcore programming.

 

to rpict: You can use any render to make the lightmaps that TurnTool supports, and then having a tileable texture below. That makes sharp light edges and detailed textures.

Sample:http://www.turntool.com/tnt/lightmap/index.html

 

To Pablo Zurita: It looks from your screenshot like Irradiance could have some potential down the road, but I can't seem to get it running. Is it going to be a public tool ?

 

To mbr:Modelling for realtime is different than for stills, but my experience is that people pick it up in a few days, and then achieve results that are 90% of the way to stills.

 

Claus

[rpict]

to clausbang:

Sample:http://www.turntool.com/tnt/lightmap/index.html

you must be kidding what was the price again?

[Pablo Zurita]

For people having problems with the demo, if the demo complains with the following message “The application has failed to start because the application configuration is incorrect. Reinstalling the application may fix this problem”, then that’s because you don’t have the vc8runtime (a runtime used by all C/C++ applications compiled with Visual Studio .NET 2005), you can download it from http://www.irradiance.com.ar/vcredist_x86.exe. If the demo complains that an OpenGL extension is missing then that means that your driver is not updated or that your video card doesn’t fit all the requirements for the demo to run. The application was meant to be for high end presentations so it requires at least a GeForce 6600.

 

To Pablo Zurita: It looks from your screenshot like Irradiance could have some potential down the road, but I can't seem to get it running. Is it going to be a public tool?

Unfortunately Irradiance Software was forced to close, so now I’m the only programmer working on it. The idea is to develop the engine and tools as much as possible until we reach a point where the engine can be licensed and the product sold to any company willing to take over the development.

[Pablo Zurita]

I made another demo, this time is Azuma's House. You can download the demo from http://www.irradiance.com.ar/MCDemo-Azuma.exe. Remember that you need at least a GeForce 6600 to run it and http://www.irradiance.com.ar/vcredist_x86.exe. Here is a screenshot

.

[rued]

Claus Bang:

In the case where you want a sharp edged lightmap with a detailed diffuse texture, you would probably be better of complete baking things.

The whole idea about using a seperate lightmap is to mix a high frequency (fine detail) diffuse map with a low frequency (low detail) lightmap.

 

About your lightmap sample, the problem is that this only works for very simple scenes. IF you have just a little more complex mapping of the diffuse map, you can't just tile the lightmap. In this case you need seperate UV's for the lightmap.

 

Pablo:

Sorry to hear you are the sole programmer now :-/

I have enjoyed to watch your work progress here!

 

/Thomas

[bokkins]

hi, max has a panorama exporter. you can create a VR that can be viewed using quicktime. there are also several VR viewer/maker found in the internet. also, you can render a panorama (sphere or cylinder or box) then compose it in flash. flash gives you the freedom on the interactivity part.

and for game engines, my biggest problem so far is the level of details it can handle beside from baking and texturing.

[jtiscareno]

First thanks to all, second pablo your irradance program looks very good, I just could not make it work the first time, will follow your advice for the second run.

 

Having a panorama is fine but it still limits the control that real time can do, I liked truntool it looks easy to handle but I dont like that it needs a special viewer to see the model, I had a lot of problems installing the viewer.

 

I came upon this other program reading architecture mag, used by Arup:

 

www.cubicspace.com

 

looks even better than turntool and it is a plug-in for max, they have a demo, have not tried it yet, but lets see.