collidervisuals Posted November 7, 2014 Share Posted November 7, 2014 i worked with lumion when it first came out , and it added a lot of features since then but at the time (and this still holds), my experience was this: you have a much faster, optimized workflow, after all its an archviz tool to begin with. But it is also limited. With Unreal you have much better visual quality and you can basically do anything you can imagine (visual/interactivity) at the cost of time invested. Its Lumion=fast results vs Unreal=high quality+interactivity. For the untrained eye (most clients) there is no difference though, and the client always wants fast results. So take your pick Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
arnoudschoofs Posted November 7, 2014 Share Posted November 7, 2014 Yesterday we visited an Autodesk workshop on gamification, because we also strongly belief in the real time engines like Unreal for archviz. Autodesk recently bought Bitsquid and they're are currently developping it further on to create an efficient pipeline between 3dsmax and the game engine. plus : you will be able to use referenced geometry// they'll provide easy (free) output for every platform // there will be an integrated feature that will optimise your geometry in the background when importing into the game engine downside : it will be for mental ray/iray only, you 'll have to convert vray shaders with a script // they couldn't tell when it would be released Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alexisbosscher Posted November 7, 2014 Share Posted November 7, 2014 Nice results Collider, I especially like the 2nd video. You had a lot of crashes? seems strange I never had one, but maybe the scenes I tested where too small. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest dialog Posted November 25, 2014 Share Posted November 25, 2014 We are an architecture studio and VR is going to be the future of how we present designs to clients and how we get clients feedbacks. All our studios are now equipped with Oculus and we will soon be shooting for multiple sets in each studio. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
philippelamoureux Posted December 4, 2014 Author Share Posted December 4, 2014 We are an architecture studio and VR is going to be the future of how we present designs to clients and how we get clients feedbacks. All our studios are now equipped with Oculus and we will soon be shooting for multiple sets in each studio. What software are you using for Vr arch viz? unity, cry engine, ue4 or something else completely? I'm really curious cause someday i'll make the jump to RealTime!!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Frosty Posted December 4, 2014 Share Posted December 4, 2014 I've been using Revizto for the last while. The quality is lower but it's basically 2 clicks out of Revit and I'm in a real time simulation. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest dialog Posted December 4, 2014 Share Posted December 4, 2014 I've been using Revizto for the last while. The quality is lower but it's basically 2 clicks out of Revit and I'm in a real time simulation. At this time it does not sup port the Oculus (yet). Quality is also too low for what we want. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sketchrender Posted December 4, 2014 Share Posted December 4, 2014 Can I ask what is the work flow and pipeline for projects? thank you Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
collidervisuals Posted January 7, 2015 Share Posted January 7, 2015 Hi guys! We have created a community guide to using Unreal Engine 4 for architectural visualization. http://collidervisuals.com/guide The goal is for us to build the most comprehensive archviz guide online that doesn’t need periodic reposts as it is updated in real-time! To comment, select a piece of text or a pic, right click, and click comment. Text with comments will be highlighted. To suggest changes or add new content simply edit the document. The font for suggestions is green. We will frequently add content to the guide and we hope that you will too. This document is public, so share the knowledge and play nice! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
philippelamoureux Posted January 9, 2015 Author Share Posted January 9, 2015 Great initiative, I'll check it out! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sketchrender Posted January 12, 2015 Share Posted January 12, 2015 That's great thank you . Can I ask one thing, has it been optimised for the mobile phone ? I personally do a lot of reading coming too and from work. But I want say thank you, really appreciate the time taken to put it together. I am fighting with Lumion and the results are not great. Phil Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
collidervisuals Posted January 12, 2015 Share Posted January 12, 2015 Hi guys! We have created a community guide to using Unreal Engine 4 for architectural visualization. http://collidervisuals.com/guide The goal is for us to build the most comprehensive archviz guide online that doesn’t need periodic reposts as it is updated in real-time! To comment, select a piece of text or a pic, right click, and click comment. Text with comments will be highlighted. To suggest changes or add new content simply edit the document. The font for suggestions is green. We will frequently add content to the guide and we hope that you will too. This document is public, so share the knowledge and play nice! Added the french version. Enjoy! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
collidervisuals Posted January 12, 2015 Share Posted January 12, 2015 Phil, Lumion is very fast but if you want quality then game engines are the way to go. Unfortunately google docs is not very mobile friendly when embedded and I wouldn't know how to optimize it. But i'm open for suggestions.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Devin Johnston Posted January 28, 2015 Share Posted January 28, 2015 Unreal can do some very nice pre rendered animation but I haven't seen any examples of the interactive game, does anyone know of any online examples I can interact with? I'm torn between Unreal and Lumion, I need to be able to produce an interactive model and I like the quality and price of Unreal but I'm concerned about the learning curve. I've got a project that needs to be done in 3-4 weeks, do you think that's enough time to be able to produce something even close to this? http://www.evermotion.org/tutorials/show/9154/unreal-engine-4-for-archviz-tutorial Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scott Schroeder Posted January 28, 2015 Share Posted January 28, 2015 Unreal can do some very nice pre rendered animation but I haven't seen any examples of the interactive game, does anyone know of any online examples I can interact with? I'm torn between Unreal and Lumion, I need to be able to produce an interactive model and I like the quality and price of Unreal but I'm concerned about the learning curve. I've got a project that needs to be done in 3-4 weeks, do you think that's enough time to be able to produce something even close to this? http://www.evermotion.org/tutorials/show/9154/unreal-engine-4-for-archviz-tutorial I haven't seen too many user-interactive demos from UE4 in the quality of what has been shown with the Koola way of doing things. Probably because those massive light maps and pure quality of them do not perform so hot on most average-user GPU's at anything close to a minimum of 30fps. Let alone putting that online and making it all interactive. To tell you the truth, CL3VER is pretty good at doing interactive models is takes all of a few hours to learn. Unity is also up there and is a nicely priced option at free (though with some limitations). These guys do some pretty cool work in Unity, http://unity3d.com/showcase/case-stories/nvyve Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Devin Johnston Posted January 28, 2015 Share Posted January 28, 2015 CL3VER doesn't look all that great to me, the quality is less than Lumin or Twinmotion. I'm sure I don't understand but isn't UN4 made to create games, why would creating an architectural interior be so difficult? The suggested system requirements aren't high end, I'd think most business desktops could handle it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
philippelamoureux Posted January 28, 2015 Author Share Posted January 28, 2015 Koola (lightroom interior daylight), and Xoio (berlin flat) both have put their scene for free on the UE4 marketplace. That mean you can download the project, check it out, modify it, use their settings, and change it to your need, recompile it and enjoy...Great way to learn. Now, 3-4 weeks to make a project WHILE learning the engine for the 1st time may be a lil tough. Id say it depends... if you need to learn blueprints (to make interactive stuff), learn UVW unwrapping, learn material creation which is very different from v-ray, it's not going to be that easy. On the bright side, there is sooooo much tutorials and infos about UE4. and the engine is so cheap! But just the accessibility of Xoio and koola's scene, is going to help you a lot I guess! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
philippelamoureux Posted January 28, 2015 Author Share Posted January 28, 2015 CL3VER doesn't look all that great to me, the quality is less than Lumin or Twinmotion. I'm sure I don't understand but isn't UN4 made to create games, why would creating an architectural interior be so difficult? The suggested system requirements aren't high end, I'd think most business desktops could handle it. Well, Ue4 uses pretty much only the graphic card in your pc... better have a decent one, with 2gb of ram being the minimum... It's their damn workflow that sucks. There is no good dynamic G.I, that mean you have to bake your lightmaps (in the engine). But for that, each asset needs to have a properly unwrapped 2nd uv channel. It's supposed to be automatic on import in ue4, but most of the time the result sucks. Better do it yourself in max or whatever 3d soft you use. Some assets are very complex to unwrap, that's why I abandonned Ue4 for now lol. Because other than that, Ue4 is dope. Material editor is cool, viewport performance A1, matinee editor, all the tutorials... you can even do camera effects in real time, blueprint system relatively easy to use, fun times!!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Devin Johnston Posted January 28, 2015 Share Posted January 28, 2015 What about sharing your model/level with others, in the end I have to send this to a client and they have to be able to "play" it. Does that work well on your average computer, do you have to install anything before playing it? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
philippelamoureux Posted January 28, 2015 Author Share Posted January 28, 2015 You can compile your scene/project to a .exe , they don't need anything else. They'll just need a ''gaming'' computer. Well, a computer capable of running a next gen 3d engine. :-P Usually, in Arch vis, we don't care much about poly count, optimization heh...This time around, if the scene is very big, you may have to consider this. Games are highly optimized, arch viz scenes, not at all. That's the little downside unless your client doesn't really need photorealistic graphics! If your scene use alot of instances for vegetation it's going to required a beefy pc tho! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
beestee Posted January 28, 2015 Share Posted January 28, 2015 That is a nice workflow, thanks for the link. I appreciate how they do separate exports based on object type to control lightmap resolution. Working in UE4 gives nearly 1:1 feedback for how well the project will run once it is compiled. If your viewport is sluggish while at work in the project, the final build will be sluggish as well. That tutorial shows the recommended specs for running UE4: The recommended hardware by Epic Games is a Quad-Core processor 2.5Ghz or faster, 8GB of RAM and at least a GeForce GTX470 or AMD Radeon 6870HD Series, but we do recommend a better setup if you are planning to really work with UE4. The architectural demo provided by Epic with the UE4 subscription runs really well on my "moderate" desktop here at work, but the scene is pretty simple. CL3VER is nice because you can run the interactive presentation on any HTML5 compatible platform over the internet, that is why the visual fidelity is a bit lower than other options, because it can be run on tablets. I agree with everything philippelamoureux said here. Unwrapping a scene is still as cumbersome as ever and IMO is one of the biggest hurdles to overcome. If it were easy, I guess all of us would have ported all of our work to UE4 by now and this discussion wouldn't exist. I also find that the UE4 marketplace for pre-fab content lacks things that would be useful in arch viz. It is early days for it so I am optimistic that it will grow, and it could be a lucrative opportunity for those that have a leg up on learning UE4. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Devin Johnston Posted January 29, 2015 Share Posted January 29, 2015 CL3VER is nice because you can run the interactive presentation on any HTML5 compatible platform over the internet, that is why the visual fidelity is a bit lower than other options, because it can be run on tablets. That makes since however when I contacted them about pricing I was pretty shocked to find that their cheapest plan runs $300/month. That puts it on the same level in price as Lumion and yet the quality and content are no where close. After looking at all the options UE4 seems to have the highest potential for quality imagery at the cost of a steep learning curve and a difficult workflow. Lumion and Twinmotion offer a much improved workflow with lots of content but their image quality is still lacking and only one of them offers a walkthrough option. Cl3ver's content and image quality put it at the bottom of the list along with their very expensive pricing structure but they do give you the ability to deliver your content to a wide audience. Unfortunately there isn't one package that does everything so it's going to be a difficult choice. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scott Schroeder Posted January 29, 2015 Share Posted January 29, 2015 Yes, the CL3VER pricing structure is something I've had many talks with them about in person over the phone and at this year's AU. I believe it's the one thing that holds them back. The quality is okay to decent, but it really doesn't matter. They are about interactivity and getting the point across. You get the same information from their models as you would if you put their models in a UE4 full blown scene. The difference is that to get to UE4 is going to take you a lot longer development time. I would make the decision based on if the quality of visuals in say the UE4 tech demo of the Paris apartment are important and if you have the development time to get to that quality. If visual quality is not that important and just getting your information across is the most important thing, then I would look to a software that is more drag and drop content creation, be it Luminon/Unity/CL3VER, etc. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
beestee Posted January 29, 2015 Share Posted January 29, 2015 Dereau Benoit, the maker of the Paris Apartment demo above, has made this walkthrough available on his portfolio site. Would be a good way to get an idea of what UE4 is truly capable of on your current hardware and/or a laptop to show the walkthroughs on. http://www.benoitdereau.com/unrealparis.html Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
moritzweller Posted January 31, 2015 Share Posted January 31, 2015 This was just posted, http://moritzweller.wordpress.com/2014/09/25/dissecting-koolas-ue4-archviz-magic/ All of the works shown are still crazy simple, so that's something to remember. A room with a few chairs or a kitchen and you focus your entire time on that. Of course it will look good. But what about a full scene or the client wanting to see every room? How well do these scenes play in actual walk through mode? Sure it's smooth, but it's pre-rendered video. Overall I'm super excited about this stuff coming out of UE4, yet it still leaves many questions unanswered about it's usability in a more generalized workflow. Thanks for the feature of my blogpost! Glad to see that it hit some interest the last couple of months. The questions raised here are also questions I have in my head. Since this is my first post here, let me introduce myself briefly: I'm Moritz Weller, 3D / Postproduction Artist & Photographer currently finishing his M.A. in Stuttgart, Germany. My 3D background is mainly Cinema 4D & a bit of 3Ds Max, but I'm keeping an eye on the advancements in realtime graphics, specifically in UE4 It does make other softwares look like dinosaurs :- ) The UI, the Asset browser, brutally nice nodal mat editor, super PBR shading system,etc. But it doesn't make 3dsMax (or other DC apps) obsotele, you still have to create clean, arguably simple, well unwrapped geometry, and that's what gives this worflow a big minus for fast-paced large-scoped chaotic projects of Archviz. Yeah, I think that's still one of the major weaknesses for large-scoped projects. Nevertheless, we see more and more of these impressing demos coming, like recent Paris apartment by Benoît Dereau. I wonder how much time still goes into work like this and how much this can be improved in near future... We have created a community guide to using Unreal Engine 4 for architectural visualization. http://collidervisuals.com/guide The goal is for us to build the most comprehensive archviz guide online that doesn’t need periodic reposts as it is updated in real-time! We will frequently add content to the guide and we hope that you will too. This document is public, so share the knowledge and play nice! Great Idea! I starred it for my Google Drive. If some insights should arise from some C4D/UE4 experiments, I will keep in mind to add them to this article if that is of interest Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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