Architectural visualisation with Unity?

I know a few people have attempted this - is Unity a good platform for this kind of thing?

 

Well, architectural designers ( or artists ) are looking most of the time for an one click solution program, were everything is handled on the background.
Unity right now is missing few things regarding architectural visualization:
More rendering speed ( eg:deferred rendering, better culling )
More lens shaders ( egost effects like HDR, SSAO for example).
Theirs some parts to improve before Unity become a 100%
architectural viz friendly.

 

It probably wouldn't take too much to streamline the process so that it would be easier for an architect / designer to use Unity.

Perhaps a couple "template" scenes with an editor script that automagically assigns prefabbed materials based on object names. A library of prefabbed materials (interior and exterior). Some of the more commonly wanted camera movements (fly through path follow, orbit scene, etc.). A small collection of skyboxes. etc. etc.

Might make a good add on if there were sufficient demand to warrant the effort to produce it.

 

Definitely Unity is a good tool for architectural visualization, although not the easiest to use.

I'm an architect myself. I've done a lot of realtime presentations with other software (Quest3D) and I recently switched to Unity, mainly because the web player is way better and has Mac support.

Unity is great! But the problem is, for users who don't have any coding experience, it's too hard to learn how to configure a visualization.

I have some work in progress example here: www.tetravol.com/citilab

 

The link that Hector posted is a perfect example of what could be a "template" scene. That plus some prefabbed assets (exterior and interior items) and some drag and drop materials and you'd be almost there.

As it turns out, the first engine I tried was Quest and I found it many times more difficult to get my head around than Unity. I also tried DXStudio, which is about as easy to use as Unity for this sort of thing but, at least when I tried it, was very buggy.

 

I've spent a few years working in game development as well as architectural visualization, so I've got some perspective on both ends. In the big view, Unity is fine the way it is. I don't think there's going to be a one-click solution that anyone is particularly happy with. The viz company that I worked for existed because architects either didn't have the time, skill, or interest to do high quality renderings and animations. They contracted it out to people(us) who knew what we were doing. I don't see how this would be much different for an interactive solution. Aside from maybe an integrated lightmapping solution and internal material editing(something ultra simple like the old BSP editors), Unity is about as simple as you can get.

 

Just go through the "showcase" and you'll see quite a few very nice architectural demos. See for yourself. :wink:

Jovia http://forum.unity3d.com/viewtopic.php?t=33210&highlight=house+architecture
Superflat http://forum.unity3d.com/viewtopic.php?t=33041&highlight=house+architecture
Piazza http://forum.unity3d.com/viewtopic.php?t=28481&highlight=house+architecture
Residential Walkaround http://forum.unity3d.com/viewtopic.php?t=25324&highlight=house+architecture
Architectural Flat http://forum.unity3d.com/viewtopic.php?t=22762&highlight=house+architecture
Pool http://forum.unity3d.com/viewtopic.php?t=17480&highlight=house+architecture
Penthouse Suite http://forum.unity3d.com/viewtopic.php?t=6132&highlight=house+architecture
Apartment http://forum.unity3d.com/viewtopic.php?t=13979&highlight=house+architecture
Architecture http://forum.unity3d.com/viewtopic.php?t=3479&highlight=house+architecture

I thought I would link you to the forum posts so you could read the designer's comments.

These are certainly not all there is. There's quite a few good ones using other searches or just going through the showcase. An outdoor mall also comes to mind.

 

I think there is a conflation of Architect with Arch Viz going on here. Unity is not a good tool for a practicing architect. It is good however for a specialist who specializes in presentations (who may have had architectural training). Typically these folks sell their services to real architects. It is possible that firms of large enough size can keep these kinds of services in house, but nevertheless Unity will not be used by the project manager or any real designer, but be something used by a specialist that puts together presentations. I think thats an important distinction to be made if you are trying to get into this market.

I am basing this on my own experience working in a small landscape architecture/contracting firm in san francisco ( http://millercomp.com ) and paying attention to how architects put together their presentations as well.

I evaluated Unity for our office, gained the skillset needed etc..., and quickly realized that the investment was too big for us to handle in house. We'd have to hire out for this kind of work, and I'd coordinate with whoever we hired. That said this has not happened yet because we haven't had the right kind of project/client to justify it.

I would think that we are not unusual because our business model and size has allowed us to do well even in the current slump in construction. However I've watched many large firms cut their employees as their revenue has dramatically fallen. While they may have had projects in the past ten years that justified the level of expense for real time graphics, I don't think it makes sense right now.

Nevertheless perhaps there is a niche for this that I am unaware of. It'll be interesting to follow this thread to see other's experience.

 

My example is : http://forum.unity3d.com/viewtopic.php?t=31387

 

I use it for Events set visualisation. It's really quick to import your model, shove in a FPC and make a webplayer demo. I did a little demo in five days and four of those were modelling.

If you want doors to open or lighting effects that move it takes a bit longer but once you have a few scripts you are comfortable using it's really very straightforward.

This is from a pitch I did in Unity for an exhibition for Guess Jeans: http://web.mac.com/hayesdavies/Portfolio/GuessBuild1.html

 

Hi there,

I think you could be interested in this project:

http://www.ihome.pl/oferty/wizualizacja/162

Forum topic with discussion:

http://forum.unity3d.com/viewtopic.php?t=37956

 

Here's mine...

www.afterglowstudios.com/interactive/ag_interactive.html

 

As a company who did realtime previs in both Source and Unreal, I would actually rate Unity as probably more suited to the task.. However..

Archviz artists normally don't know how to bake, don't know how to UV Unwrap, etc etc. In order to get some stunning scenes without rendering, you need some quality baking skills.

The amount of scriping knowledge required is minimal, but I think the biggest issue would be that archviz companies won't normally have people who can model efficiently.

 

Hit the nail on the head there. In my experience Unity is perfectly suited for realtime archviz.... once you have a nice optimised model and bake sets. In the last large archviz job I did in Unity I reckon I spent 90% my time on preparing the models, poly stripping, UVing and baking. 10% actual coding. The application had a massive database driven object placement system in it, so it wasn't simple coding! :wink:

Cheers.

 

Or you can use SketchUp Pro which imports AutoCad files to build low poly models in, and LightUp to create lightmaps and export to Unity.

May not be perfect but way cheaper, and way, way faster.

 

I find it to be solid for architectural work, I'm still in the process of finding what my limits are in terms of what is needed to get the best visuals out of it in terms of performance/look/turnaround time.

Here's one of the better looking tests that I've put together in learning:

Project Descriptive Blurb: http://buchhofer.com/?p=216 and DirectLink

I'm working out quite a few of the "workflow" issues that is preventing it from being tatoforever's "1 click solution", Or more accurately an artist friendly solution, but its definitely on its way !

 

That's very nice, Dave. Wondering if you're doing the Palestra next

 

Casa do Mestre Vitalino - Master Vitalino's house

http://www.casadomestrevitalino.com.br/casa/

by www.caju.nu

 

I am currently looking at developing a prototype to test the design of a Healthcare Facility. Basically the end-user would virtually run through different day to day processes within Unity to test the design.

I am having trouble trying to get my Revit model into Unity. The current workflow that I am using is Revit export of a DWG file -> import it into 3ds Max Design and saved as a .max file -> import the .max file into Unity 3D. The problem that I am having is that I am having trouble getting the textures to transfer through the entire workflow. (I have also tried the export an fbx file from revit directly to Unity and I have had similar problems.)

I see articles like this one; http://archvirtual.com/?p=2053, that make it sound very easy.

Has anyone experimented with a similar workflow? Any feedback would be much appreciated.

 

You should try export to FBX from revit directly, unity get FBXs, so save one middle step, and every time you do changes in revit, just export and re-write the FBX, it will get updated automatily

 

I hope you can answer a few questions. First I really like what you have done, can you please explain how did you did the GUI elements and how to they perform the functions asked.
As well how did you create the camera the flies above the model?
Finally, how did manage to tell unity to load the model in stages? Level of quality, furniture etc.

 

Just saw this thread and thought to chime in with a shameless plug 8)

For architects visualization artists alike, we offer the Architectural Visualization Toolkit for Unity3D; if you already have 3D model assets, it's takes less than 20 min to be up and running with your own full-featured Visualization walkthrough using our Toolkit.

Requires no programming experience and is very artist friendly.

Package includes fully adjustable walkthrough behavior (in scene), overhead map support, onscreen help, joystick input, demo / attract mode, music player, full documentation.

If interesting, send a PM here or contact me via the link above!

Best,

joe

 

Hi arkkitekktura,

Thanks, I'm glad you like my work.
First of all, a small update. You can watch the final Citilab as well as a new project here:

http://virtual.citilab.eu
http://www.tetravol.com/tetravol/clients/villamare

In answer to your questions:

-The GUI elements were done using UnityGUI. But I'm not using it anymore, instead I prefer to have 3D objects as a GUI. See the new examples and you'll understand why.
-The automatic camera works like this: It's a Gameobject that rotates automatically, and a camera linked to it.
-The quality control is organized using Unity Levels. Each quality set is actually a new level. But some elements have a DoNotDestroyOnLoad, for instance the camera and GUI.

I hope it helps. Yours sincerely,

 

I am actually looking for a nice workflow for creating architectural viz with Unity.
I am currently working on my third application.
I work with sevral architects on the same project and they do not all use the same software.

You seem to say that make them all provide me with sketchup model would solve the "3D model optimization" step which is killing my productivity ?

Anyone has suggestion about this ?

I'd really like to speed up the architect model -> realtime model step

Any help is welcome

 

I once had to help a friend who was studying architecture to do some renders, so he gave me this really... really bad, and unoptimized building model. Triangles missing, overlapping meshes.. really really really really high poly little knobs and nails, while some big notorious stuff was way too lowpoly for it too look good.

Anyway, I believe if you wanna do architectural visualization with unity3D, that's the main concern, too understand complex messy 3d models, and be ready to re-do all of it.

With Unity3D having fast baked shadows can give it a very interesting look.

It's a great thing to make it interactive, you can't display different sets of furniture, lighting, wall paints, etc. All instantly and before a house is built! pretty amazing! :-D

 

yes, this is the main hurdle.
But I am still convinced that there are great stuffs to do in the architectural area.

 

I've done a ton of architectural work, both offline renders and real-time projects. In almost all cases, I just use provided models and plans as reference and build everything from scratch myself. 90% of the time their plans are messy, unoptimized and sometimes flat out inaccurate or inconsistent from page to page. Always best to work with designs that are as final as possible. Going back and having to scrap and redo entire sections because the client changed their mind soaks up ages of time and they usually don't understand how much work it requires. Read: impatience and whining about cost.

 

wahou... :roll:

Yes, I have also seen that "changes of mind" are very frequent in this domain.
Fortunnaly I got an urbanism agency acting as a buffer between me and the architects which is a blessing.

I think, for future architectural projects, I'll try making a kind of extensible pricing : if an element changes the customer agrees to extends the price or the element stays as it is currently modelised.

Thank you for your experience about this.

 

I'm developing right now a complete project regarding Architectural Visualization, and I can confirm that the main "problem" is that most of the times you get from the customer a complete scene with very highpoly models, and of course you can't just export it into Unity3D ( or any other application ), so each time you have to redesign ( retopo ) the geometry itself...but thats not enough, since probably if your model is low poly ( or not that detailed ) a fundamental thing to have is a very good looking texture, usually with normal map as well, since you can get all the details without the modeling.

I use Softimage and, especially with high poly meshes, I usually do a low poly version then I extract the normal map directly from the high poly mesh and later, with photoshop I start the texturing with the normal map on the background, so I have all the reference of the model from the normal map itself, is very practical and speed up the texturing a lot...

I'm really excited for the 3.0 version, since it has lots of really nice features that will help my project, especially Beast ( lightmapping tool ) is very very handy and avoid the annoying process to export the lightmaps from Softimage to Unity3D.

So, there's no "one-click" solution for Arch Viz yet and I don't think there will be something like that in a while, since is impossible for a 3D engine to manage milion of polygons, so you have to do the dirty job

 

Your normal map approach for arch viz is kind of innovative for me.
I have always thought about normal map for organic stuff (skin, high details faces) but not for architecture.

Honestly, I would not have thought about it since I would assume that the architects would ate the fact that I (over ?) simplifies their models.
But it does not matter as the complexity is apparent and not in the polygon count.

But you are right : it worth the try to use this technique to reduce polygon count.

I'll try it on a next project.

Do you have online examples or screenshots to show us the results you came to ?

Thank you for your reply

 

Hello Navash,

Well the main thing is that I first tried to reduce the polygons on a mesh, however I always tried to keep as much details as possible, but with very complex meshes ( like statues, design objects and especially round objects ) it takes really a lot to reduce the polygons that usually is better to re-design the entire object.
In Softimage ( I'm not sure that other 3d apps got this function ) there is a specific features that allows you to reduce polygons, is very fast, but with complex meshes is not worthed even to try...

The other problem was that my scene usually was full of lots of objects, and for the 3d engine to manage all those polygons was a nightmare, constantly fps drops during a navigation, so I decided to use one of the most common techniques used nowdays by games developers: normal maps.

It works great on round or non completely flat objects, because it gives the look of indentations, but it works good with flat objects too, so since my customers usually give me a complete scene with high poly meshes I decided to try this method.
Here a short description of the process:

- Study the high poly mesh, in order to design the low poly version in a proper way ( considering the UV seams too, very important )
- Start the design of the low poly using some "stitch" tools available in Softimage ( basically make the vertex/face tangent to the high poly mesh, so you're sure that your geometry is close as possible as the original )
- UV
- Use Ultimapper ( always in Softimage ) in order to get all the depth information from the high poly version and obtain a texture ( that is the normal map )
- Use photoshop for texturing using the normal map as background, so you can recognize the shape of the mesh and to a proper texturing
- Open your 3D engine, apply the diffuse, specular ( if you need to ) and the normal map and check the results...usually in 3d engines you can control the "amount" of indentation.

Hope it helps, unfortunately right now I can't show you anything but using the process that I described above it is quite easy to make a test, you can easily download a model ( a fortinutre for example ) from internet with diffuse and normal map and import into your 3d engine and check the results

Nicolas

 

fwiw, here's another prefab toolkit to help new architects and designers get started with some basics in Unity: http://archvirtual.com/?p=2950

 

HI,
Im an Architect and i have used Unity for presentation to Clients.

Usually we do flythroughs but the Client has no control over where they go.

So i put my 3d Model into Unity and dropped a First person camera in and the Client was then the player, they could walk anywhere they wanted.

I even went to site and took photos in a circle around the site and put them on a drum in 3d Max and then added a skybox so the Client was at their site.

Worked a treat.

Should be used more often.

Regards

 

Yea, it has great possibilities. the 3dMax model imports easily and you can animate the doors to open etc. if it catches on it will be great. i have only seen the flythroughs but Unity give great flexibility. The ability to move around as anywhere is a great asset and when i did it for my Client they were really impressed.

 

Congrats, Black Widow, its exciting to hear of great experiences on the first tries - and how you were able to simply drop your model into Unity and let your clients experience the design. That ability to move around the design anywhere they want (from their own computer) is definitely a game-changer for architectural visualization, imho.

 

I just published a 2-part video tutorial describing how to import a Revit Architecture model into Unity3D. Its a very basic overview, and doesn't get into much detail, but I hope it will be useful to other architects and designers who are new to Unity. http://archvirtual.com/?p=2977

 

there are many EXCELLENT works

 

ya really nice idea from these successful project, thanks to Nick3d for the poly optimization .

 

And here is my attempt to visualise stand-alone objects

http://virtualplayground.d2.pl/Unity/standDemo/standDemo.html

with a choice of both orbit and FPS modes and a smooth transition between them, without loosing the eye contact with the object.

 

Hi everybody, I like this post and I want to share with you guys some work I have done a year ago... hope you like it. http://www.camiloalcaraz.com/index.php?p=2_7 this demo was done with the unity 2.6 free.

 

Is there a reference somewhere about getting the materials in. The fbx file imports fine but I am not getting anything for materials. I have a simple test model with 2 textures and for the life of me I can not get the textures to load. I watched on tutorial and it did not show the materials part. In his video all he did is export the fbx to assets directory. I read somewhere else about needing a fbm file. I have never seen one of these in my Revit project.

I am using Revit 2012 and the latest version of Unity (non-pro) I need some understanding of workflow to get the models in and textured. I can program the rest of it. I guess the same issue would be true for fbx exported from 3ds Max Viz 2012???

Thanks

 

I agree with this, Unity is by far the best for archviz compared to other engines.

Unity could really become an amazing archviz tool if it had a better workflow for importing lightmaps baked in external programs. Using the third party 'External Lightmapping Tool' can be a bit clunky.

If there was a way to build your model, pull it into unity, generate lightmap UV's on the model, lay down your plants and vegetation and terrain, then export the model back out, with the trees and with the terrain, and then bake the lighting into the lightmap UV's in Max and have it automatically pull in all those lightmaps with little fuss. That would be awesome.

Also if you could export those 'lightprobes' and bake the lighting onto them in 3DS as well, so then you could light your trees with properly to match the scene... that'd be awesome too

Also if unity better supported 32bit/channel EXR's for lightmaps, that be awesome as well...

 

Hey hector78 I had a look at your Model and wanted to ask what script you used to make specific objects appear and dissapear when clicking different buttons on your res tabs. Ive been trying to make game objects dissapear on button tap but couldnt figure out the script. Great model by the way. Thanks

 

Seriously? You necro'd a 2 year old thread to ask about possibly the most basic script you could set up in Unity?

Normally I don't care about this kind of thing but this would have literally only taken 2 seconds to google.

Use the GameObject.SetActive function to hide/unhide a gameobject.

 

Hey - whoever is using Unity for the architectural visualisations - might be interested in my crossSection tool.

I has just got to the AssetStore.
https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/#/content/14296

and the web demos are here:
http://virtualplayground.d2.pl/Unity/sections/?quickDemo
http://virtualplayground.d2.pl/Unity/sections/?demo

 

Here are some of my works that I'v done in a visualization company:

http://projekte.jamjam.at/buwog/himmelhofgasse/top06/himmelhofgasse_top06.html
http://projekte.jamjam.at/buwog/himmelhofgasse/top05/himmelhofgasse_top05.html
http://projekte.jamjam.at/buwog/himmelhofgasse/top04/himmelhofgasse_top04.html
http://projekte.jamjam.at/buwog/himmelhofgasse/top03/himmelhofgasse_top03.html
http://projekte.jamjam.at/buwog/himmelhofgasse/top02/himmelhofgasse_top02.html
http://projekte.jamjam.at/buwog/himmelhofgasse/top01/himmelhofgasse_top01.html
http://projekte.jamjam.at/buwog/himmelhofgasse/aussen/himmelhofgasse_aussen.html

 

This are my works:

 

On a related note, we actually created a page to showcase Architecture, Visualisation and Simulation projects made with Unity: http://unity3d.com/industries/aec

And a video too!

 

ZBrush. Use the Decimator and or Remesher and the the UV unwrapper plugin. A two step 3 minute or so process and you will have a nice set of UV's. If there was texture on it it will preserve that for you even if you change the UV's.

 

I have recently been inspired me to see how far I can push Unity 5 ( beta ) in terms of realistic rendering and arch vis type stuff.

Lots and lots of images and details on technique or lack thereof here:
http://www.shadowood.uk/Store/?u=2014-09-02

Had a quick dirty go at a fly thru too: