Need Advice - New Member

[wiltonh3]

Hello,

My name is Wilton Hudson. I work in sort of a retail fixtures/graphic design combo job. Most of our work involves tweeking and/or customizing semi-standard units. A lot of our sales are generated by the 3-D renderings we do, at no cost, showing our clients what the lineup of products that they are interested in would look like in their location.

 

I am interested in developing an interactive web presence that would allow the customers to log on, to set up their virtual 3-D room, then to add, move, align, and munipulate the fixtures we sell and produce with minimal effort their own rederings which they could download and print. I would need the ability to provide drop down list for them to choose the items to place in the renderings, controls to allow movement and alignment of the objects, and some way to input some basic size info and have some selections automated based on that input. The ultimate would be for them to be able to customize some of the objects with a logo which they could browse to and upload from their own hard drive.

 

Please point me in the direction of what I need to learn, what software or systems can provide the flexibility to do what I want. I assume there may be several paths to this goal and would like to hear of them all. As you can imagine, I need it to be extremely simple for the end user regardless of the overhead.

 

Thanks for you time,

Wilton

 

 

Second,

[anton]

Your best bet would be flash with a lot of actionscript involved. Everything else would take too long to develop.

 

Basically you would have to model and render all the products you have in all their sizes and save them as an image with an alpha channel so you can overlap them over a background.

 

The hardest part would be to build the background... I am not sure how to go about it but once you have a clear idea of what it should look like it should be pretty straight forward.

 

Now my question is: wouldn't it be easier to actually create some scripts for the application that you are using to ease the creation of the space? With some well thought out scripts you could dramatically reduce the time needed to create a new render...

 

Give me more details like what 3d application are you using, details on backgrounds and objects and I'll be able to help more.

[wiltonh3]

Anton,

Thanks for the feedback. I may be reaching too far, but the desire is more than just taking my workload down. By allowing the customer to make color/graphic adjustments on the fly, they gain a sense of control and can review many more options than me sending them 2 or 3 choices.

Another option would be for them to make choices of equipment from a list then I could somehow script the rendering based on those choices. This would do away with both the real time interactive need and reduce any need for them to be computer literate. I would be very comfortable with a standard wall, ceiling, etc for the background.

If I am reaching too far, beyond the reasonable, then I understand, but if it is possible I'd like to try.

Thanks,

Wilton

[mathes]

I worked on something similiar in the past for kitchen finishes. The client went with a different option (no interaction), so unfortunately I cannot link it to you.

 

Flash was used. A base render was made of the kitchen, then additional images were made for each option, using alpha channels. You could do something similiar, create a render /w alpha of each fixture. Then use a color overlay in Flash to allow them to change the color themselves.

 

One thing to be aware of is the size of the flash file. Depending on how many fixtures you have, the download can really add up.

[William Alexander]

I don't believe what you (and I) have been looking for is "available" just yet without a whole crap load of backend and go between programing, heavy programing.

 

There are speed and quality issues. A real time shift of material-finish at a quality your clients are looking for (an assumumption) even if it could be programmed the render times on in a server based environment would take a bit longer than the client may wait for.

 

Now cloud computing and gpu computing integrated with a rendering engine... may hold some promise.

http://www.cgarchitect.com/news/newsfeed.asp?nid=4656

 

Side note-Retial fixtures as in metal fixtures, millwork or both? Just curious as I'm working in that area also

Wm

[FlytE]

Actually there are programs out there that can help you achieve something similiar to this, I have seen examples of kitchen layout programs which do something along these lines and will update your gi and reflections accordingly. Im not sure about uploading a logo etc though.

 

Unfortunatly I cannot remember offhand what the name of the software was but I am fairly sure I saw it posted in a news artical on cgarchitect so maybe if you do a search in the news forums you might find it. Sorry I couldnt be more help than that.

[wiltonh3]

I found something from 20-20 called Virtual Planner. It appears to do exactly what I am interested in but I can't find any info on how much it cost. Based on the "find a 20-20 consultant in your area" button, I gather it is rather high end solution.

Please continue to offer suggestions as I would LOVE to build this ability from scratch. The challenge of learning how to pull it off far exceeds the need for a quick answer.

[anton]

Anton,

Thanks for the feedback. I may be reaching too far, but the desire is more than just taking my workload down. By allowing the customer to make color/graphic adjustments on the fly, they gain a sense of control and can review many more options than me sending them 2 or 3 choices.

Another option would be for them to make choices of equipment from a list then I could somehow script the rendering based on those choices. This would do away with both the real time interactive need and reduce any need for them to be computer literate. I would be very comfortable with a standard wall, ceiling, etc for the background.

If I am reaching too far, beyond the reasonable, then I understand, but if it is possible I'd like to try.

Thanks,

Wilton

 

The web application would become a bit cumbersome when you start adding all the options to it thus forcing the client to "learn" how to use it. You might find people that would like that but most likely they'll dread using it and they won't necessarily tell you, and their response time will dramatically increase.

 

The simplest way would be for you to develop a workflow that allows you to output a multitude of renders based on client input. If you are using 3ds Max I can help with answers and ideas on how to use maxscript to accomplish this.