Week 3 / Precedent Study - Real Time Environment

As precedent study, I have done some research about all architectural software (and plugin) that I have learned in Architectural Computing courses till now. For each software (or plugin), I've collected some export explanation from the official website, and also wrote down some comments based on my previous experience.

Real-Time Environment

- CRYTEK CryENGINE

CryEngine is a game engine designed by the German game developer Crytek. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CryEngine)

In architectural modeling, CryEngine is a very useful software to create real-time environment. The setting of skylight, texture and background sound all allowed people to get standard quality animation scene for 3D model. As a game engine, CryEngine also make walk-through video by control a virtual character in the scene.

The disadvantage of CryEngine is, all texture of the imported model will be lost. So that the model has to be import separately and then reassign the texture piece-by-piece. It’s not very convenient for rendering a building with different textures. So I’m not going to use CryEngine to do my real-time environment.

- Unity

Unity is a cross-platform game creation system developed by Unity Technologies, including a game engine and integrated development environment (IDE). (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unity_(game_engine))

It is much easier to import from Graphisoft ArchiCAD, Autodesk Revit or SketchUp Pro to Unity with good results. And it's now widely use as virtual interactive technology. (http://unity3d.com/industries/aec)

The purpose of my project is to have a quality rendering and representation, instead of use Unity to have virtual interaction, I would like to choose other software to do real-time environment.

- Lumion

Lumion is an essential render tool with ease of use combined with ultra fast rendering and excellent quality. (http://lumion3d.com/3d-software/)

Personally speaking, I prefer to use Lumion because it’s easy to use and the final product is of a good quality. In Lumion I could have high quality rendering image and walk-through video as well. There is no need to have other plugin or movie making application. So I’m going to use Lumion to do my real-time environment and walk-through video.

- Maxwell Render (SketchUp plugin)

Maxwell for SketchUp is a plugin which has been expressly designed for rendering in SketchUp. It brings you advanced, Maxwell Render technology in a simple, self-contained package. Maxwell for SketchUp has the render engine built-in, so no other applications or programs are needed. (http://www.maxwellrender.com/products/maxwell_for_sketchup)

From my experience, Maxwell for SketchUp is really simple to set-up, and all settings are simple and easy to get. Also, Maxwell for SketchUp is compatible not only with the usual SketchUp materials, but also Maxwell MXM materials.

Because I’m going to use Revit for modeling but not SketchUp, so that I prefer to use Lumion as rendering tool.

- Chaosgroup V-Ray (SketchUp/3Ds MAX/Rhino plugin)

V-Ray is a rendering engine that is used as an extension of certain 3D computer graphics software. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-Ray)

I have use V-Ray (3Ds MAX) only for several times, and mostly used for interior render. There are ranges of free materials in online V-Ray library available. The disadvantage of V-Ray is the very slow render time.

Because I’m going to use Revit to modeling and Lumion to render, so I’m not going to use V-Ray for rendering.