Tim3dartist Posted February 4, 2011 Share Posted February 4, 2011 I'm curious to find out if there is a preferred software for doing a real time architectural walk through. I have seen various posts on the topic but they all seem to date back about 3 or 4 years, and most reviews of software at that point were not any good. I have used the C4 game engine before to do real time work, the workflow is a bit time consuming. So currently we are testing out plugin3d(formerly RTRE) however as I use it, it seems quite buggy. Example: I have a scene which is currently about 300,000 polys(which should be no problem for plugin3d, they claim millions of polys can viewed), I was doing tests with standard gray materials and everything worked fine, smooth walkthroughs, no problems. I wanted to try texture baking the floor material as a test, did that, put the material into a shell material and all of a sudden I can barely move within the viewport. I removed the shell material and put the baked map onto a single standard material, which seems to have worked....for now at least. Does anyone use plugin3d? Their support is seriously lacking and I have been hard pressed to find any type of help forum. Has anyone used Blender, Turn Tool or Eon for real time arch viz? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dande Posted February 4, 2011 Share Posted February 4, 2011 I installed plugin 3d the other day. I ended up uninstalling it because it was causing too many problems. When it was installed it was taking an age to start up Max and Max kept crashing on me. I uninstalled plugin3d and it's back working fine. I like Unity3d. I have also used quest3d. I have found unity easier to use then quest3d and importing is much better. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tim3dartist Posted February 4, 2011 Author Share Posted February 4, 2011 Hey Dande, Have you done any texturing with plugin3d yet? This is the 1st time I've used it, I just started testing textures and find the results to be pretty poor. The quality of the textures just seems to come out very blurry. I have baked both 2048 x 2048 and 4000 x 4000 pixel textures, neither looked that great. I then tried cutting my floor plane into smaller pieces so there would more texture space in the map, it looks a little better but still not that great Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dande Posted February 4, 2011 Share Posted February 4, 2011 No. I didn't get that far. It kept crashing max 2011 so I just uninstalled it Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tim3dartist Posted February 4, 2011 Author Share Posted February 4, 2011 Gotcha. Well I will update this page when I finalize my results Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
johnc Posted February 6, 2011 Share Posted February 6, 2011 You can always try performing an Export to X3D from 3ds max and viewing the resulting architecture model in 3D in a web browser. This site shows some simple examples of architecture models in 3D in a web browser using real time rendering. http://www.tinyurl.com/3DArchitecture It also works with Exporting to VRML from 3ds max. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dande Posted February 6, 2011 Share Posted February 6, 2011 That interesting. Where can you download an x3d exporter. What i do like about the game engines such as unity and quest3d is you can put in a first person camera Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
johnc Posted February 7, 2011 Share Posted February 7, 2011 Here are some links to software tools for converting to X3D from 3ds max. http://stef2cnrs.wordpress.com/2008/07/11/x3d-vrml/ http://darendash.home.comcast.net/~darendash/MaxExporter.html http://www.okino.com/conv/imp_vrml.htm http://www.bitmanagement.com/products/authoring-tools/bs-exporter-3ds-max Since most X3D players can also display VRML content, you can also just try use the built in VRML exporter in 3ds max and view the exported vrml file in an X3D player. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ThreedeeStudios Posted February 8, 2011 Share Posted February 8, 2011 Hi As someone has mentioned, have you tried Unity3D? Its a game engine but handles realtime vis very well, especially the latest version - its almost on par with current games tech and its pretty easy to use. Ive been a game developer for a long time now and its one of the most impressive platforms Ive seen, and its free! I made a realtime 3D visualisation as a demo, its not a walkthrough (FPS) but thats a simple addition - mine was done in another package but the new Unity is far better. You can check out my demo at my website - http://www.threedeestudios.com and find it on the iScape Interactive Visualisation page and can just do a search for Unity3D - its completely free. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dave Buchhofer Posted February 8, 2011 Share Posted February 8, 2011 chronologically, I've done quite a few with unity, and a couple with quest3d, a few years with virtools. of those, unity is the best by far. you'll still need to learn a few things, but the community is helpful. (Or maybe i'll get the ok to sell my arch script pack someday!) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tim3dartist Posted February 10, 2011 Author Share Posted February 10, 2011 I appreciate the posts, they have been very helpful. We have started working in Unity 3d as it seems like a more versatile and permanent solution. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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