VR yes or no?

[landrvr1]

Interesting conversation. People dramatically underestimate the radical impact that VR/AR is going to have - not just in the architecture + design world - but the business world at large. Heck, that radical impact is happening right now. It is absolutely going to change everything about the design and visualization experience. It's also going to change everything in terms of how people in the workplace communicate with one another, different projects teams and initiatives, and their customers/clients. Manufacturers are already way deep into using the Hololens mixed reality to share 3D model engineering concepts in real-time on a global scale. The power of that format is nothing short of astonishing.

 

Animated films and renderings will always have their place in the storytelling process, but there's an absolutely magnificent narrative opportunity within the VR world that we are only just beginning to appreciate. Getting hung up on the current state of hardware (too many cords, not sanitary, etc etc lol) is entirely missing the point. From the software side, things that would have been impossible (higher poly count models, for instance) in Unity just 1 year ago are entirely possible now. The speed of advancement with this stuff is far exceeding anything we've witnessed in the Viz world. Ever. The hardware and software limitations are being overcome on an almost quarterly basis.

 

I'm crazy excited about where all of this is heading!

Edited October 20, 2016 by landrvr1

[Nic H]

if i read another stupid 'VR is the future of storytelling' clickbait article on linkedin im going to jump off a cliff

i am yet to see any really decent 'VR' content in architecture / property marketing. its a lot of fluff at the moment until the dust settles

[mirkonev]

To answer the OP's question: there is significantly less time needed to produce a VR walkthrough than what seems to be general opinion in here and rest of the forums.

 

I recently finished a hybrid Oculus/Vive visualization in few hours, following this workflow:

- my input was a FBX file from MAX with a model linked to baked out textures that VRay produced

- ye ol' drag and drop to Unity yielded a ready to use asset with already linked textures to materials to model (usually people tend to waste so much time re-linking the textures to materials, proper FBX export is all that is needed)

- manual setup of collision took an hour as performance friendly primitives were used, can be much quicker if, for example, naming convention in initial input file was used, for mesh colliders

- simple setup of the scene with no active lights and static geo yielded great framerate, even though whole model had almost 2 million triangles. As all the lighting information was already baked into textures, ambient light was all that was needed. Forward rendering and 8X MSAA

- import of free and also drag and drop OSVR library for VR support enables that the same build (application) works on both Vive and Oculus

- from my experience, this kind of application meets majority of 'I want this project in VR' client requests. It can be done in ~5 hours. If lighting needs to be baked in Unity (you only have textures applied to the model), it can be done on decent quality in ~2 hours (naming convention in initial file can make this faster also)

- prepared Unity project template with non-model specific steps can be used in future projects, cutting the time further

 

TL,DR: medium sized two floor apartment with VRay lighting baked into textures needs around 5 hours of setup (with Unity) to produce a walkthrough application that works on both Oculus and Vive.

[innerdream]

To answer the OP's question: there is significantly less time needed to produce a VR walkthrough than what seems to be general opinion in here and rest of the forums.

 

I recently finished a hybrid Oculus/Vive visualization in few hours, following this workflow:

- my input was a FBX file from MAX with a model linked to baked out textures that VRay produced

- ye ol' drag and drop to Unity yielded a ready to use asset with already linked textures to materials to model (usually people tend to waste so much time re-linking the textures to materials, proper FBX export is all that is needed)

- manual setup of collision took an hour as performance friendly primitives were used, can be much quicker if, for example, naming convention in initial input file was used, for mesh colliders

- simple setup of the scene with no active lights and static geo yielded great framerate, even though whole model had almost 2 million triangles. As all the lighting information was already baked into textures, ambient light was all that was needed. Forward rendering and 8X MSAA

- import of free and also drag and drop OSVR library for VR support enables that the same build (application) works on both Vive and Oculus

- from my experience, this kind of application meets majority of 'I want this project in VR' client requests. It can be done in ~5 hours. If lighting needs to be baked in Unity (you only have textures applied to the model), it can be done on decent quality in ~2 hours (naming convention in initial file can make this faster also)

- prepared Unity project template with non-model specific steps can be used in future projects, cutting the time further

 

TL,DR: medium sized two floor apartment with VRay lighting baked into textures needs around 5 hours of setup (with Unity) to produce a walkthrough application that works on both Oculus and Vive.

 

Can we see the results? It's hard to understand the quality without seeing it.

[RyderSK]

Not even 10perc. of my assets/scenes could be baked-down, let alone unwrapped properly without days of work per scene additionally. (In most cases it would even be physically impossible due to deco and vegetation type of polygonal density, reaching into 10s of gigabytes. For assets like this, I would have to keep separate real-time friendly alternatives).

 

5-hour convert would not really work for me :- )

 

It's again the quality task, to provide non-vomit-worthy, 1999-CGI look-like experience, the effort for true VR is still pretty considerable. It's getting more seamless but it's not drastic speed development.

[mirkonev]

@Robert M,

I will ask my client whether he agrees for me to share a screenshot or two in here.

 

@Juraj

As I mentioned, scene's lighting was baked into textures with VRay. As that was not part of my work, I did not count that time. My input was a 'FBX file from MAX with a model linked to baked out textures that VRay produced'

 

Certainly I confirm that time needed grows exponentially with quality level. What I want to point out is that a quality level that satisfies most of the needs I met from people for now can be met in the time schedule that I have mentioned.

[mirkonev]

Here are four screenshots from the scene and one view showing rendering statistics (tris/drawcalls/FPS) on GTX 780Ti:

 

 

 

 

 

 

IMHO, this level of quality certainly won't serve as final visualization of a project. Still, workflow I mentioned can enable a very quick VR visualization of a project that meets most of the needs that clients wanting VR have.

 

This visualization is owned and has been done for:

Enter the Japanese market, with the best digital creative agent Makoto Shirose

Edited October 25, 2016 by mirkonev

[Francisco Penaloza]

Here are four screenshots from the scene and one view showing rendering statistics (tris/drawcalls/FPS) on GTX 780Ti:

 

IMHO, this level of quality certainly won't serve as final visualization of a project. Still, workflow I mentioned can enable a very quick VR visualization of a project that meets most of the needs that clients wanting VR have.

 

This visualization is owned and has been done for:

Enter the Japanese market, with the best digital creative agent Makoto Shirose

 

Just to put things clear, you said that you prepared this presentation in about 5 Hours but you are not counting baking time in VRay or unwrapping texturing time correct?

[beestee]

Just to put things clear, you said that you prepared this presentation in about 5 Hours but you are not counting baking time in VRay or unwrapping texturing time correct?

 

If I were to guess, considering tools like flatiron have been available for a long time now, there is technology to handle a lot of the unwrapping and baking automatically. The drawbacks would be that the scene is static and affords little opportunity for interactivity aside from camera movement and UX overlays.

Edited October 25, 2016 by beestee

[innerdream]

Thanks Mirko for the screen shots.

[mirkonev]

@Francisco

This exact project took me a bit longer then 5 hours, due to additional functionality with gamepad controls. Otherwise then that, yes, 5 hours is enough time to make that presentation and it does not includes baking and unwrapping. We are talking about unwrapping UV0 channel, of course? That's the only channel the input file needs to have, containing wrapping onto the baked VRay textures.

 

@Benjamin

Definitely, for people producing renders in VRay, Flatiron is a good tool to automatically bake your scene for use in real-time engines. As for interactivity, I would add possibility to change materials and textures on the baked scene.

On the other hand, there are solutions that automatically unwrap and lightmap a scene in game engines, almost zero manual unwrapping is needed (such as Unity's Enlighten). Quality does not much VRay's, but I would certainly call it decent for an automatic (and free!) solution to be used in a VR scene.

Edited October 25, 2016 by mirkonev

[philippelamoureux]

This plugin now comes for free with the ue4 installer (royalties for games tho). Should stay free like ue4 for arch-viz. On paper it looks great. Gonna have to test it.

 

https://www.simplygon.com/enterprise

[beestee]

This plugin now comes for free with the ue4 installer (royalties for games tho). Should stay free like ue4 for arch-viz. On paper it looks great. Gonna have to test it.

 

https://www.simplygon.com/enterprise

 

Starting today, Simplygon will be available as a free up-front license with a small royalty when you ship a successful game. Also, the technology is now available from $400/month for small to medium-sized non-game companies.

 

It is the same licensing problem that other game-making related software has been plagued with before, they assume the visualization industries are loaded I guess. Plus, this software is primarily for auto-generating LOD geometry, that's quite a ways down on my priority list and I am certainly not going to pay $400/mo for it.

[innerdream]

This plugin now comes for free with the ue4 installer (royalties for games tho). Should stay free like ue4 for arch-viz. On paper it looks great. Gonna have to test it.

 

https://www.simplygon.com/enterprise

 

Okay, I'm not technical in the least. Does it get rid of the need to uv/lightmap everything by hand?

[mirkonev]

Yes, pricing really is quite steep for Simplygon now. I tested their cloud version few months ago, to check possibilities to ease up model preparation for VR. Here is my sum-up from then (based on retopo of a typical sofa for offline rendering). Blender's output is on the left, Simplygon on the right:

 

Comparison of Blender and Simplygon's retopology methods, both programs set to reduce original 225K triangle mesh with a factor 0.2 (final mesh needs to have 0.2*original polygon amount):

- Blender produces better looking topology and model silhouette using Decimate on Collapse mode compared to Simplygon's automatic method, as visible on attached screenshot (this needs to be checked, as I did not used Simplygon's option to better preserve the silhoutte)

 

 

- Simplygon's alghorhytm is better at preserving UV's, with Blender having few bigger stretches on output model

 

Edited October 27, 2016 by mirkonev

[Francisco Penaloza]

Okay, I'm not technical in the least. Does it get rid of the need to uv/lightmap everything by hand?

 

No, this is to manage already created textures and mesh.

For auto unwrap and bake, you need to look in to Flat iron or similar.

[philippelamoureux]

You can start with the script named Steamroller for 3ds max to begin. It's free. See if you like it. Flatiron is a bit expensive.

 

Ue4arch guys are also baking assets for their unreal scenes. Obviously it's the best method for vr but it's another task to do on top of everything else. I'll probably give it a try eventually.

 

Edited October 27, 2016 by philippelamoureux

[mirkonev]

Anybody here particularly experienced with mentioned Flatiron or comparable render-to-texture solution? Please, PM me.