I sometimes do architectural presentation work, and I’ve often thought about the posibility of making an interactive “walkthrough” using a realtime 3D engine. I know that some exist for this very task (can’t remember the name of the one I tried), but the posibilities seem to be pretty limited (simple flying/walking around).
After spending a whole lot of time just walking around in Half-Life 2, I thought it would be really great to be able to make a presentation that actually has people walking around (who might even look at you and smile or something if you get close), as well as traffic, birds, gimmicky lens flares, moving water and trees, ambient sounds determined by what you are near, and so on.
So, what I’d like to know is, whould it make sense to pick one of the current game engines, and try to create this as a mod-style project? I understand that this is no simple task, but since game work is one of my ambitions, I feel I’m up to the challenge and it would be worth learning.
Now what I’m considering is not the usual “done at the last minute” status presentation that needs constant updating (although being able to make modifications would be important). I’m also not thinking about distributing these presentations (although I’d like to know what issues might be involved in this), but instead having either myself or someone else do them (I certainly wouldn’t want to have to teach WASD/mouse control to clients anyway).
I currently use Maya/MR for rendering and stuff, and I understand that it can be used for a lot of the work with the current Unreal engine (or is that just the PLE?), and that the free version of XSI could be used with Source. Are there other that would be worth looking into?
Has anyone else thought about this, and if so, do you have any advice?
Yeah, im thinking about doing the exact same thing a architectural walk thru with the Source engine. But i dont have any floorplans,evelations,roof plan,etc.
Ideally it would be easier if you use Source or any other engine that allows modding, so you wont need a programmer set things up, like you would if you went with something like Quest3D(look into that BTW).
If you use Source, you can use the hammer editor to create the architecture and setup a walkthru very easy(as seen in the beginning of HL2 game, your basicalling walking thru buildings with no weapons, yet you can interact with the props, open doors you can extend that further thru modding) Most of the code for “walk thrus” are in HL2 already. So you can tweak the engine using those.
You can take advantage of this technology to present a house to your client in a more interactive manner. What you could do is create the bsp map, buy a copy of HL2 for your client(this is cheap(50-60 bucks) compared to the amount of money you back in return), send it them along with some simple installation instruction(or you can go to them and install it yourself)). After thats done, you can set up a password protected dedicated server, where you and your client can meet online. At which you can use the voice chatting to communicate back and forth. But keep in mind, that your client computer might not be the top of the line, so get the specs of their computer and apply that to reasonable polygon counts for props and anything else that cant be modeled with hammer brushes. Since its a walk thru probably wont require insane physic time 32 players are so, that should open up some more room improving frame/sec rate(you can use that extra budget maybe with higher poly count props, or however you see fit).
I believe its possible to use HDR image to light up the scene also,with Source. this will improve the realism of a real time walk thru. As far as MR for rendering, i wont use it for baking any lighting into texture. If you can use MR in maya scene to create a HDRimage than that would be cool(but i dont think its possible). Source from what i know is more ideal solution for architectural walk thrus, its got a ambient occulsion shader(spelling?), and realtime radiosity.
As soon as the full HL2 SDK is release next week i’ll start on the walk thru project. What kind of building are you planing to create anyway?
What you could do is create the bsp map, buy a copy of HL2 for your client(this is cheap(50-60 bucks) compared to the amount of money you back in return), send it them along with some simple installation instruction(or you can go to them and install it yourself)).
Hmm. Then there’s the need to make a Steam account, waiting for the activation/updates, not to mention needing HD space for HL2 in the first place. No way would that be a possibility.
Anyway, as I said, I’m not really expecting that the clients would be running it themselves. If that were the case, I would probably would choose Quest3D (that’s the one I tried way back) or a simple engine with a free license for distribution, as opposed to one of the big ones. The advantage that I see with the Unreal or Source engines is the development tools and that much of the hard work has been done already.
Though looking at Quest3D again, it does seem pretty capable too. I’m going to spend some time with it this weekend.
What kind of building are you planing to create anyway?
Current project is an office building with walking space on all sides and retail/shopping inside. The idea would be that this would allow freedom to walk up and down both sides of the street, and around the plaza space around the building to be able to see it from all sides. Then, to allow entry to the lobby/shopping space, and an elevator ride to a typical floor (or even all floors). Having moving people and traffic and various real-time effects would be the main reason to do it like this instead of pre-rendered.
You might want to try “Unreal runtime” ( http://udn.epicgames.com/Two/UnrealEngine2Runtime ). Its the 2.0 engine minus all game content, so just the engine and nothing else. only takes about 14 MB diskspace in and all, free to download and use but you are not allowed to release any (both freeware as commercial) games or the like with it, but presentation work is allowed I think, and as long as you dont distribute I dont think anyone will notice anyway
XSI is heavily supported by HL and Unreal has heavy support from both 3DSMax as well as Maya and Maya PLE. And next to those there is still the Quake/Doom 3 engine that might be good to use for you
Or you can do all your work in hammer or XSI/MAYA and take it into blender3D. Take advantage of its builtin game engine, and its ability to output .exe. There is a sample walk thru(.exe form) on the site.
though i dont know how good there builtin game engine is as far as creating interaction :S
The things you ask about people walking around, birds and interactions will require programming. You need to pick an engine that alows you to add your code very easily probably something with a plugin nature to it. Also you should make the engine you choose also has pathfinding code already built in or you will have to program this yourself so npcs can naviagte the world.
OK, so Quest3D is off the list again. It just feels too awkward to work with. :shrug:
Blender does seem nice. Every time I’ve tried it in the past, I gave up on learning the UI, because I had no real reason to do so. This might be a good reason. It seems like the cheap and easy solution.
I also like the idea of the Unreal Runtime a lot. But apparently, architectural vizualization (for profit) is not covered by the free license. They don’t have the final terms set yet, but this is one of the areas they seem focused on, so I don’t expect it to be too bad. Reading their forums, I see a few others who are interested in using it this way.
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