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'Real-Time' architectural visualization


acidmaster
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Website: arconovum.com

 

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ArcoNOVUM is a 'Real-Time' architectural visualization service provider for architects and building developers. With our proprietary 'in-house' modeling and visualization software, we are a unique 3D real-time solution provider.

 

Long and expensive rendering wait times, fixed 3D walkthroughts, and pasting to photographs are a thing of the past. Architects can now freely navigate a 3D proposal to give clients a real experience of the building concept inside and out, from any point of view.

 

3D visualization is no longer a seperate and final process, ArcoNOVUM makes it possible to intergrate real-time 3D as part of the design process. Structural and material changes on client demand are part of the unique service we provide.

 

visit the site for images...

acid.

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looks great, however what's deal with needing at least 3.0 Ghz, and gig of ram, and a special video card. They claim "that's all you need." Seems like pretty high end hardware for the laymen client.

 

A little off topic but I think it would be great to export your model to a playstation or xbox compatible cd and navigate your design with the controller. They quality these machines can generate seems to be comprable to the images on the website.

 

Thanks for sharing.

 

Mike

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Actually it runs on 1.5 Ghz, 128 Meg video card, and 1G of ram for very large models. I have been thinking of making a web based viewer from the

current PC based viewer, I was wondering if that would interest anyone?

 

 

acid.

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looks great, however what's deal with needing at least 3.0 Ghz, and gig of ram, and a special video card. They claim "that's all you need." Seems like pretty high end hardware for the laymen client.

 

A little off topic but I think it would be great to export your model to a playstation or xbox compatible cd and navigate your design with the controller. They quality these machines can generate seems to be comprable to the images on the website.

 

Thanks for sharing.

 

Mike

This is something that I was really hot on a few years ago and I thought I would start out experimenting with one of the 1st person shooter games like Doom or Quake. I quickly found out that just creating a simple room and lighting it was a difficult thing to do. There is no direct export process to take a model in 3D Studio and put it into one of these engines. Even if you could do this the textures would need to be re-mapped and you would have to re-light everything. I can only assume that the same thing applies to X-box or play station but I agree being able to do it would be a very valuable and powerful tool but someone smarter than me is going to have to develop some software to do it.

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Yes Games don't give a signficant amount of flexibility, and volume.

 

But... this does.

 

You can navigate a quasy GI lit city block or large landscape, and view in full

detail the primary building, and the major areas of the interior.

 

acid

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We've been eyeing this market like Maxer, but not only is it infeasible at this point (more work than an animation) -- at this point in time, it's basically unmarketable.

 

A good slice of our work lately has been renovated condo spaces targetted at baby boomers or recent empty nesters. I've never seen a 3D first-person interface that the average 50+ year old with no computer experience could walk up to and operate with any amount of joy.

 

It also doesn't translate to boardroom or city planning board meetings, which constitutes the rest of our audience. Stills or a carefully crafted animation tell the story a whole lot better. Add to that the increased development cost and it's easy to see why few in our industry are actually doing this.

 

It'll definitely happen eventually. Probably in the next five years. I think as the general population becomes more tech savvy and we see more computers built into entertainment units in peoples' living rooms, there'll be a delivery engine for the product beyond the kiosk in the sales center. Then realtime will really take off.

 

Shaun

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I can just see someone 60+ years of age trying to figure out how an x-box or play station controller works so they can move forward. Talk about aggravating, most of the people that I work with that are over 50 can barely use a computer much less figure out how to navigate a 3D world with one.

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ShaunDon,

 

interesting points, as for navigating the user has multiple choices:

sure you can freely navigate, but you also have pre-programmed camera

views that require a single keyboard click, and also pre-programed fly throughs also initiated by a single keyboard click .

 

As for modeling time, this is the same as modeling in SketchUp

 

acid.

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hey lordmidas,

 

Yes I will be releasing the DEMO to the general public shortly.

 

And Yes I use my own programmed engine if you want to call it that, I call it simply the viewer. And my own modeler. It all has taken about 3 years to do.

 

thanks for your comments.

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Getting a 3d scene from 3dsmax into a game engine isn't that difficult. The trickiest bit is the lightmapping for your global illumination & other static lighting. Most renderer's focus on rendering single frames in 3dsmax, and their lightmap renderer's are very poor. There seems to always be black or white line artefacts or too much noise requiring manual tweaking. Since 3dsmax now has it's own render to texture feature, third party renderer's have even decided to drop their own lightmap features. Maybe one day 3dsmax's render to texture will work well with 3rd party renderers.

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Nice shots. Looking forward to the demo.

I would not make a browser plug-in before you have the filesize etc. reduced significantly.

For "Maxer". We are using TurnTool quite successfully right now towards the general public, and extremely rarely have people not being able to interact with the model. We made "tour" though for those cases.

Samples of some our later work: http://www.cubicasa.dk/interaktiv_3d_alle_projekter.html

For "ShounDon". My experience is that the market is getting ready right now. See above link. We have a standard html template, then it is only modelling, baking the light and click the export button to get an interactive model for the clients.

A little off topic but I think it would be great to export your model to a playstation or xbox compatible cd and navigate your design with the controller. They quality these machines can generate seems to be comprable to the images on the website.

It is not too difficult to make a version that would run on the x-box. The major problem is that you would need a "chipped" version of the x-box as you cannot publish anything whithout having a deal with microsoft. - and they are extremely expensive.

Regards

Claus

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Hi Claus

 

I would not make a browser plug-in before you have the filesize etc. reduced significantly.

 

This is true, but if filesize is not an issue, and in some cases this is true, currently file size is about 25 Meg compressed.. which is not bad.

 

btw. nice pics.

 

acid

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Hi again Claus,

 

Yes I tried some out.. The shading in my tool is soooo much better, well you can't beat GI.

 

But the work is very interesting. And shows a real need for this kind of thechnology

 

I have to say I don't like the people models, when I add people or moving models to my tool they will be dynamic.. in other words move around.

 

and doors will open, and elevators will move..

 

Graig

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Hi Richard,

 

Do you have some guidelines anywhere on this site about this. (advertising)

 

I just want to say that I'm finding it difficult to draw the line where my

private work ends and the other kicks in when my website is both personal

and professional.

 

Sorry for the inconvenience.

 

Graig

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It's hard to say, really, as this thread was originally moved to the moderator forum due to some moderator felt it has a tint of advertising to it. I ask it to be move back since I do not find it to be advertising as such, but still, I am just warning u that, some other mod may not see it as it is.

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hei dude, ive been to the ArcoNovou site,what do mean by 'real-time' la dey,the images is not real enough and the surroundings is far from real rendering....and stiff

 

 

I believe the reference to "real time'" particularly in the real time VRML forum pertains to navigability..not photorealism....;)

 

 

 

Steve

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hei dude, ive been to the ArcoNovou site,what do mean by 'real-time' la dey,the images is not real enough and the surroundings is far from real rendering....and stiff

 

 

"Real-time" means "no delay"...

Basically it means "no post-rendering" required. eg. rendering that does not require a time consuming post-processing method with rendering engine such as Mental Ray/VRay/Brazil.. even though they are very fast already. You are using the graphics card's hardware power to render onto screen at 30 frames per second typically.

 

Typical real-time rendering can be found in Games, or Virtual Reality Apps.

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