Getting left behind....

[CliveG]

I've read some of the other posts here with regards to what software is best for this and that in the VR / Realtime / Tour realm and generally the responses indicate that it's a very varied marketplace at the moment.

 

I have clients who have interests in these services and I certainly don't want to get left behind in the services I offer, but at the same time can't see going and re-learning something like Unreal.... only for the potential for it NOT to be the one that explodes as I feel is likely to happen in this field soon.

 

Does anyone else think that someone (like Legion/Chaos) is going to come out with a simple porting mechanism to take a Vray or Corona scene and bake the hell out of the mat's and lighting so that you get almost a one button move through to something like Unreal or equivalent, for your real time action? Or am I waaay off the pace here?

 

Should I wait until the market is settled on a medium term winner?

[Ernest Burden III]

Uh, I don't know....

 

I actually do not know anything about the subject of the CGA banner ad, but you've got to admit, it is well-placed considering your question.

[Corey Beaulieu]

I work at a larger studio where we are both driven by our client needs and our own need to create new products to sell and encourage a deeper sale. I don't at the moment, personally possess the the hands on knowledge of the question you ask, but I can tell you that a few years ago we sought to learn these new tools from the ground up. I gave it a go for about a week and then quickly got mired in the steady stream of "regular" projects that we complete.

 

This issue is not solely on the user. The companies that create these softwares are well aware of our established trade and are working to develop a workflow where the learning curve is as minimal as possible.

 

Our studio has hosted meetings with Epic and with Autodesk as well as others. We have seen glimpses into the future and we are currently testing some of these softwares in development....

 

All I can share is that while once upon a time it took ground up knowledge to implement these tools, what they all seem to be after is the automation of converting scenes developed for still and animated imagery in Max/VRay and converting them into usable files for RT/AR. They are also trying their best to simplify the "Blueprint" tools in a way that we have all seen before; more node-based scripting.

 

This is not and will not likely ever be without some growth of knowledge, but they are doing a really great job in the realm of making that knowledge based need be something of learning only what it is to generate a real time file. They are making it so that the file and effort to develop materials and scenes; lights even in a lot of ways, is the one we all know and are only asking us to focus on file optimization and general look and feel at render time. And those tools, the look and feel tools are also using terms and methods that we already know.

 

It won't ever be easy, but it will soon be and is already becoming something that we can all learn in a short amount of time and implement without any major overhauls to our current workflow. The future here looks so possible for all users.

 

Sorry to be vague. As a person not directly involved in the testing, but neighbor enough to see the inner-workings I do not know what can be shared, but short of pricing, what I have seen will not set anyone apart from a knowledge perspective. It has all been developed in a way that anyone versed in what we do already should be able to make their way through the new tools without exhausted R&D.

Edited December 7, 2017 by CoreyMBeaulieu

[CliveG]

Thanks Corey,

 

That pretty much backs up my gut feeling.... that this is a marketplace that will go "pop" soon enough. As a freelancer I'm never going to be on the crest of that wave... I just don't want to be too deep in the trough either

 

Personally I think that somewhere in the Legion / Chaos tie-up is a key to this (for me anyway), I'll be looking to see who they start talking to next when it comes to strategic alliances ?!

 

'till then I'll wait for you guys to take the risks and do the hard yards

 

Cheers

[James Vella]

Uh, I don't know....

 

I actually do not know anything about the subject of the CGA banner ad, but you've got to admit, it is well-placed considering your question.

 

What Ernest said. Datasmith is designed to be a 1 click solution. By far the quickest easiest way to get your max scene into unreal with all materials lighting etc.

[lautarovogel]

Datasmith is still in beta testing phase afaik, but I think it's what you are looking for.

https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/blog/introducing-datasmith-a-workflow-toolkit-for-unreal-engine

 

cheers,

[Ernest Burden III]

...As a freelancer I'm never going to be on the crest of that wave... I just don't want to be too deep in the trough either...

 

There is a deep trough for small freelancers that has developed since the Great Recession where we are skilled/experienced enough to command good rates and work on anything, but not big enough to handle really large multi-format jobs (renderings, animation, VR, web integration, etc.), especially within a reasonable timeframe. Clients can also get good work for much less money from overseas vs. expensive local rendering markets, like North America.

 

It is not workable for a small shop, especially a one-person shop, to expect to offer everything the big shops can. So what is your area of most likely success? VR? Perhaps if you specialize in it, dump all resources into learning it and getting all your hardware/software into that area, that would work. But it would come at the expense of other services you can offer.

 

I was looking at the website of a renderer known mostly for hand painted work yesterday, and saw that he shows animation, noting that it is in collaboration with some other entity, and the same for 'digital' work--mentions yet another 'partner'. Perhaps small freelance rendering practices could form alliances where combining expertise and performance ability of a group of small specialists could work to compete with the larger 'under-one-roof' studios.

[Devin Johnston]

Does anyone else think that someone (like Legion/Chaos) is going to come out with a simple porting mechanism to take a Vray or Corona scene and bake the hell out of the mat's and lighting so that you get almost a one button move through to something like Unreal or equivalent, for your real time action? Or am I waaay off the pace here?

 

Should I wait until the market is settled on a medium term winner?

 

I took the plunge into Unreal a few months ago before Datasmith came out and it was very difficult and time consuming. I was able to get into the Datasmith beta and I have to say the thing really works wonders, it's not perfect yet but easily cuts your work in half. This is a great development for our industry and as tools like this begin to come out along with software like Lumion and Twin Motion very soon we will have many options for high quality quick rendering.

 

I have to believe Chaos Group is looking at this and thinking this aint so good, after all why have Vray if your going to use Unreal to render everything out. If I were them I'd be seriously looking at two options, one to adapt the current tech they have in a way that can compete with Unreal's render times or develop a new rendering method that does the same thing. I don't know about you but I'm finding it hard to justify the cost in both time and money using Vray to render animations when I can use a free program like Unreal and get descent quality imagery.

 

As an example I've started using Lumion to render out less important animations, on one machine rendering 1080P @ 60 FPS my render times are about 5 hours for a 45 second animation. To render the same thing out using Vray in the same amount of time I'd need a render farm of about 100 PC's. The cost of Lumion is $3500, Vray with all it's licenses and a render management solution like Deadline costs about 18K. That doesn't include the cost of the farm which is well over 100K. So my point is that once GPU rendering really takes off there will be lots of people moving to that method even if the quality isn't as good as Vray, the cost/time benefit is just too great.

[James Vella]

Devin you may be interested to know vray for unreal is here

 

[Devin Johnston]

Yes that's what' Datasmith is but I don't believe this is a long term solution to this problem for Chaos, there's no money in it for them.

[Ernest Burden III]

Yes that's what' Datasmith is but I don't believe this is a long term solution to this problem for Chaos, there's no money in it for them.

 

Chaos are used to getting a piece of every pie in digital rendering. I would think they would be working on an in-suite competitive product. BUT... thank you for the numbers. However, those differences are smaller for small studios (OP's situation).

 

Vray is going to produce better results, as you said, but most of my work is based on what I can do in post, so maybe I could get close enough with Lumion.

[bertabob]

As an example I've started using Lumion to render out less important animations, on one machine rendering 1080P @ 60 FPS my render times are about 5 hours for a 45 second animation. .

 

Hi,

Off topic: do you really need 60 FPS for a walkthrough with real-time engine?

I'm not so familiair yet with real-time remderers.

 

 

https://kallai.net

[Devin Johnston]

Nope you certainty can get by with 30 FPS but the higher frame rate does play back smoother and at the cost of a few hours I feel is worth it.

[Francisco Penaloza]

This is my personal opinion.

To me it really depends on the type of visualization you do and how steady is your work.

If you are a freelancer with many clients coming and going, you need to stay in the top of the game, competition is very rough nowadays and giving a little more for the same budget really make the difference.

 

If you are an in-house Artist, I guess this will depend on what are the goals and how close your company works with clients, in my case I work for an Architectural company so the more I can produce in the shortest time the better, Of course not sacrificing quality.

 

Now, truth to be told real time is here to stay, sooner than later you need to play the game, it is true that every day a new software comes up with a more efficient and faster way to do things, for instance, Escape. It is one click and you have raytraced images, progressive real-time and VR. Of course, the VR part is a long way to be perfect performance is very low but alas, you are doing literally nothing to get there.

 

Seating and waiting for things to get better IMO should not be an option, you should at least read and test; so when it comes time to decide what to use, you have some foundation and don't get blinded by publicity.

Let say you don't know anything about Raytracing, and someone comes to sell you Lumion or Final Render, but you heard about Mental Ray and VRay, what to choose??

 

For instance, My company works under Autodesk software, of course when realtime came to the game, Stingray was the first option, it did well while it lasted, but after developing some scenes in Unreal there is a world of difference, and honestly, you should not waste time on Stingray. Unreal or Unity are a much robust and way more supported by a large community than anything that Stingray can hope.

But if I didn't try, I would not know what's is the core difference, because just reading the website, they look the same.

 

My company is producing more real-time presentations that I dreamed, now everybody has access to Enscape and Lumion, me I only concentrate on the 'Fancy' renderings and VR, and overseeing everybody else with their day to day 'quick renderings' but as mentioned by others if a large project comes, with several still images and animation and VR there is only two of us up to the task and having set and fluent workflow with Unreal, the sky is the limit. The sad part is unless you have many cheap artists and lots of computer power, VRay can't produce the same amount of work in the same timeframe. and if changes come, (they always comes) there is no time to re-render all the frames, all the still and adjust photoshop work. And I consider my self pretty fast on Max and VRay.

 

 

Of course, everyone has his own style and workflow, and 'traditional' raytracing can still produce the highest quality images, but again VRay is developing VRay for Unreal and pretty sure there is a reason for that.

 

Epic keeps pouring money into Unreal and developing real-time GI, the goal is not to have to use baked Lighting map, when that happens, that would be a total game changer.

 

Imagine you get a project and the client ask for still images for print and panoramas for google cardboard and he would like a 3 minutes flythrough.

You could import everything into Unreal, then render high res with VRay inside Unreal and everything else with traditional Unreal tools.

Maybe VRay for Unity also may come

[CliveG]

To move the drift of this a bit sideways.... my original question mentioned also "Tours" because my clients see this (very different product) as offering similar benefits to a "real time" experience. Basically offering clients a stilted or staccato tour of a scene rather than a seamless tour of a scene.

 

As long as the client get's to drive his own exploration of the scene, if that exploration is clicking on a door for example and being taken into the centre of the room, looking around a panorama of that room, then clicking on another thing to take them to the next, then my clients are happy enough with that in the interim.

 

For me producing half a dozen panoramas is much easier to do than learning Unreal (while I wait for Vray / Unreal or Datasmith as mentioned above) But do you guys see this as a dead market (or just for realtors to use) as currently all of the good products seem too expensive for what they offer us in our sector? Do you even bother with any of these Panorama based "Tours" at all or are you all fiddling with real time engines instead?

[Josef Wienerroither]

...as currently all of the good products seem too expensive for what they offer us in our sector? Do you even bother with any of these Panorama based "Tours" at all or are you all fiddling with real time engines instead?

 

Could you please elaborate on what you mean by "all good products seem too expensive" ? Could you list the products with their price tags ?

I ask, because i'm the developer of a pretty advanced ( my humble opinion of course ) VR/Stereo Pano Tour product, which gets used for complete client 360 VR experiences (produced for clients by an archviz studio ). This includes all VR and non VR platforms ( desktop, mobile ) and includes shared tours on all screens also ( including shared, guided tours on the VR headsets). As i said currently this is strictly for inhouse productions, but for 2018, we consider opening it up for general usage and client purchase.

I'm aware that most existing tools in that realm, are using some online based, rental/subscription pricing model. Is it that that's makes them uncomfortable (from a price point ) to you ? Would be really thankfull if you would share some insight about your thoughts

Edited December 11, 2017 by spacefrog

[CliveG]

Could you list the products with their price tags ?

 

I'd not consider it appropriate for me to list products and prices here, I'm sure you're more familiar with that marketplace than I am so I would assume you'll be aware of the products and their pricing structures without me.

 

That said I'll put to you the broad brush of what I've discussed and you'll probably be able to discern whom it is I'm referring to.

 

As you said a lot of products in the marketplace offer a an on-line rental type subscription model or an outright purchase with online type hosting arrangements etc. all of which is a bit too much of a marriage for me at the moment.... right now I want a bit more of a casual hook-up!

 

One of the more important facilities for me and my clients is the ability to send a shrink wrapped file of a complete tour that is then able to be viewed on PC / Tablet etc. by the end user - preferably with copyrighting facility built in to prevent abuse of our file. We don't want to be referring clients to a website or 3rd party host either.

 

Secondly I'd anticipate doing this on maybe half a dozen projects a year (initially) and so a 500 euro price tag for a licence or even a 50-60 euro a month on-going subscription just doesn't stand up as value for money when my subscription for Corona itself (for example) is just 25 or so Euro's a month (I see it in Australian dollars so can't remember what it is in Euros exactly) and that's a daily driver for me!

 

So I don't know exactly what would be acceptable financially for me and in turn for my clients, I'd probably just be happy with a pay for each finished tour or something of that order with an option to go for a full licence / subscription at a later date. Either that or a descent evaluation period and non-watermarked or restricted finished product so I could test the viability on a live project without flushing that time and effort down the WC, if it's a good product a purchase would then follow.

 

You want to hurry this out for the Archviz market - as mentioned above.... we're all waiting for "real-time" to pop or do you not consider that a threat?

[Josef Wienerroither]

Thanks for the detailed response...

Honestly speaking , i don't think such a specialist tool and a renderer are really comparable. A renderer would have a far broader market from which potential buyers would possibly come from. 360 VR pano is more or less a niche. So the fact that you would find the price for such a tool ( depending on it's capability of course ) too expensive at a €500,- for a one time license, surprises me a bit. I understand your argument against a 50-60 monthly rate, but it sounds as you would see this as "better" value even when it's only rental ?

Regarding the realtime threat: yes of course it might be one for such a product, but i think the effort, to bring something good looking and performing acceptable onto any mobile device is still years off. And i see the current trend to one-click solutions not as the holy grail for any product you want to hand out to end customers ( maybe even make it available on Appstores, downloadable for everyone for marketing purposes) . For internal or pure archviz-purposes okay, but even there at some point you will hit the end of automated possibilities. And not to forget, thhe more automated, the more every ones output will look the same, operate the same and thus be totally interchangeable ( and the price-race to the bottom will hit in )

But i think i miss-used this thread enough so i'll stop for now ;-)

So thanks for your detailed response again

Edited December 11, 2017 by spacefrog

[CliveG]

Honestly speaking , i don't think such a specialist tool and a renderer are really comparable. A renderer would have a far broader market from which potential buyers would possibly come from. 360 VR pano is more or less a niche. So the fact that you would find the price for such a tool ( depending on it's capability of course ) too expensive at a €500,- for a one time license, surprises me a bit

 

Sure, you may be right, but I don't assess my spending justification based on whether any product comes from a niche market or not, I assess it based on whether it presents actual tangible value for money for me and only for me.

 

As I said, if it had a more tapered entry with say a month or two fully operational evaluation period I may well find that this is a useful tool for my business and that it would pay for itself in a year or two and be happy to pay 500 Euros... I could also find that it doesn't work as well as their promo videos suggest and that I've got a 500 Euro white elephant, especially if I don't have the opportunity to properly assess it!

 

I'm not just looking for "one button solutions" either, I'm happy to pick up skills where necessary, indeed it's to my advantage if not every Joe can offer the service. However it's all about the bang for the buck, I need to be able to learn it quickly enough that I can charge for the first project I try and then improve my skills on projects thereafter. IF I can produce a workable, ship-able Pano-tour first time I try it and it all goes smoothly then I'd probably pay 500 Euros, but not for a watermarked restricted Pano-tour with all sorts of on-going tie-ins.

[James Vella]

CG have you tried krpano?

[CliveG]

CG have you tried krpano?

 

Not recently, it was probably one of the first ones I looked at.

 

From memory I don't think it provided a bundled file of the finished tour and required a website instead which isn't how I want to go. I don't want to be getting into html codes and whether a client has flash or quicktime etc...

 

Do you think it's an appropriate consideration for me now....?

[James Vella]

Last time i used it it provided a file to be uploaded to a website, i thought it was easier than some other methods I tried. I also tried The Construct vr tours you upload either panos or stereo images and it does all the hardwork u just place your tour markers, I really like it however you dont have the control like krpano when it comes to how you prefer to deliver your file as its bundled into their app.

[Lewis Garrison]

I've found that my clients actually prefer a website link they can get via email rather than something packaged. They seem to want to share it and show it off more when its a simple link. They email blast it other people in their company, or text it to friends and family. However when I send it packaged, the only person who sees it is the person I sent it to. Unless they embed the 360 on their own website it pretty much stops there.

[CliveG]

I've found that my clients actually prefer a website link

 

In a hugely cut-throat sector - the companies I do most of my work for would see this as a massive vulnerability, when their competition needs to just look on a website in order to learn who they need to phone in order to steal a potential project, especially one where 9/10ths of the design work has already been done.... No matter how you "protect" a website my clients would see this as a major vulnerability of their invaluable project leads.

However when I send it packaged, the only person who sees it is the person I sent it to.

This is perfect, just what they want - Out of interest Lewis - How are you "packaging" your tours?

[Lewis Garrison]

I guess for me, the more people who see my work potentially leads to more business. I used to use Pano2vr for packaging. Now I use TheViewer.