Architectural Walkthrough

Hey there

We just got our unity pro license at work about a month ago,
thought id share what we are doing with it.

Link to images ---> http://www.intelligentanimation.com/realtime.html

Normally we do pre-rendered architectural animations that take about 15 minutes per image to render, The plan was to get as close as possible to that in 1/60th of a second.

Some tech details, most of the furniture models are 30k+ per model totaling 5 million tris. we are using baked lightmap textures from max and Vray, and have 8k lightmaps throughout the scene using the Amplify plugin to allow such high res maps and keep memory free.
Some parts get as many as 750 draw calls, mainly due to the render to texture reflections. but we still get a smooth 60 fps.

We are very happy with Unity and how easy it was to start using it, whenever we had a question, a quick search found an answer pretty much straight away. So kudos to the awesomely helpful community!
You might see me around these parts to ask questions when we cant find an easy answer online


cheers

 

Hi!

What is the purpose of the project? To show somebody a new flat, if he/she wants to buy it? Or to show somebody a version of redecoration in a house?
Is it possible to walk inside a flat or a house? Or just a predefined camera movement?

Some years ago I wanted to make a similar project using 3ds max and OGRE, but didn't

 

The apartments are not built yet, so we make 3d mockups of what the space and the view will look like.
Then people will buy and put up 50% deposit, and the developers can now afford to build it.

 

I think the use of a RT3D interactive software like Unity as architectural representation changes a lot of traditional parameters of walkthrough that are basically boring and useless. This way the viewer is also a participant and his/her movements defines how they perceive the space, their interaction, and gestures can recreate the space or make new forms to complement the space. Suddenly the possibilities in the useful utility of walkthrough process vastly improves. The traditional walkthroughs have not changed much since its conception decades ago, but using a real-time 3D rendering such as Unity has to offer changes the static context in design process into a more dynamic and abilities to adapt changes without too much efforts as well as realising the results of changes far more rapidly.

In other words Unity can be useful in testing the desires of the clients, participant, as well as the intentions of designers. It's a way of simplifying the design process.

 

A couple of things

- I'm curious. How many fps are you getting with those images? Are you using occlussion?

- Perhaps you should consider retopologizing the models in order to decrease polygons. Models used in architectural rendering are far from being optimized for realtime. I would suggest Meshlab, which is a quite nice free soft

 

Hi, your scene looks quite nice.
I noticed you don't have any black spot artifacts on your lightmap on the edge of the roof, what are your baking settings to get such result?