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Tuco

Tuco

I got Tuco'd!
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I haven't done any in-depth research but I don't think games like

Dyson Sphere Program (Unity)


Chorus (Unreal)


Would exist if they chose to roll their own game engine on OpenGL/Vulcan/DirectX or whatever, unless they also had a massive developer team to support them.

The question of why so many indie games produce super quickly, do a crowd funding exercise and then produce anemic growth is probably separate from the game engine question. But in 2023 if you're an indie dev looking to make a photorealistic 3D game, you'd need a *really* compelling reason to not use Unreal or Unity (and really, Unreal is the first choice right now).

I know for the work I do, Unreal is a massive enabler compared to what I was doing before when I was building a game engine on more basic elements.
 
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Bandwagon

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Kolohe
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This seemed like the best place to make a post.

My job revolves around photogrammetric mapping and I use a lot of different software. The other stuff I use works well for my needs, but I'm trying Epic's "RealityCapture" to see if the quality of the 3D models is better than the other stuff I use. I also want to play around with Unreal 5 a bit, so I'm downloading that right now.

Anyways, I just watched this video.


I'd love to use Unreal to help with some renderings and animations of conceptual designs, but I don't think there's enough uses for me to justify spending a bunch of time learning Unreal. I -would- like to be able to make this type of thing available in a web browser so people can do virtual walkthroughs, though. Anyone know of a simple way to upload models like this to a web viewer with an interface for that type of thing? I remember seeing Tyen do it with one of my (shitty) 3D models about 8 years ago, but I don't want to dedicate my life to learning how to do that if it's really complicated. The 3D models are pretty easy for me to put together, so I'm hoping there's a way I can just load them into Unreal and smash an "Upload" button or something like that.

Anyone have experience with that?
 
Control

Control

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Bandwagon said:
This seemed like the best place to make a post.

My job revolves around photogrammetric mapping and I use a lot of different software. The other stuff I use works well for my needs, but I'm trying Epic's "RealityCapture" to see if the quality of the 3D models is better than the other stuff I use. I also want to play around with Unreal 5 a bit, so I'm downloading that right now.

Anyways, I just watched this video.


I'd love to use Unreal to help with some renderings and animations of conceptual designs, but I don't think there's enough uses for me to justify spending a bunch of time learning Unreal. I -would- like to be able to make this type of thing available in a web browser so people can do virtual walkthroughs, though. Anyone know of a simple way to upload models like this to a web viewer with an interface for that type of thing? I remember seeing Tyen do it with one of my (shitty) 3D models about 8 years ago, but I don't want to dedicate my life to learning how to do that if it's really complicated. The 3D models are pretty easy for me to put together, so I'm hoping there's a way I can just load them into Unreal and smash an "Upload" button or something like that.

Anyone have experience with that?
Click to expand...
Unity can do webgl builds (not sure if Unreal supports anything like that), and it probably wouldn't be too much work to just use it as a model viewer.
 
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Bandwagon

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Kolohe
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Control said:
Unity can do webgl builds (not sure if Unreal supports anything like that), and it probably wouldn't be too much work to just use it as a model viewer.
Click to expand...
I have various ways to host 3d models on the web and in viewers, but so far I haven't been able to get something like a 12gb photo-realistic model to work in a web viewer.


This is the closest I've gotten, but the quality is so much worse than on desktop and the 3d navigation is very disorienting to most people I've sent it to. The Level of Detail settings aren't configurable and it won't load full resolution unless your eyeballs are right up against something. Everything I've seen in Unreal looks much better.
1700086362631.png


1700086382072.png


1700086466742.png
 
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Control

Control

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Bandwagon said:
I have various ways to host 3d models on the web and in viewers, but so far I haven't been able to get something like a 12gb photo-realistic model to work in a web viewer.


This is the closest I've gotten, but the quality is so much worse than on desktop and the 3d navigation is very disorienting to most people I've sent it to. The Level of Detail settings aren't configurable and it won't load full resolution unless your eyeballs are right up against something. Everything I've seen in Unreal looks much better.
View attachment 500548

View attachment 500549

View attachment 500550
Click to expand...
The navigation should be less of an issue in a game engine, but trying to load a 12gb model over the web sounds like a giant issue. I would think you would need some optimizing steps to get anything to be reasonable in a browser. If you're just trying to show a reasonable visualization, there's pretty clearly a shitton of unneeded data there. Of course, that doesn't mean that simplifying is quick or easy.
 
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Bandwagon

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Kolohe
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Control said:
The navigation should be less of an issue in a game engine, but trying to load a 12gb model over the web sounds like a giant issue. I would think you would need some optimizing steps to get anything to be reasonable in a browser. If you're just trying to show a reasonable visualization, there's pretty clearly a shitton of unneeded data there. Of course, that doesn't mean that simplifying is quick or easy.
Click to expand...
The LOD Mesh is the right idea, but the options I have to display it right now all suck. What I really want is a way to merge a reality capture model with a conceptual design from Revit or Civil3D/Infraworks.

There's a 3D Viz specialist at a company I team with all the time that just started using Epic's Twinmotion for some of his animations and renders. Neither of us know of a good way to host in the web and let people walk through it though.
 
Control

Control

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Bandwagon said:
The LOD Mesh is the right idea, but the options I have to display it right now all suck. What I really want is a way to merge a reality capture model with a conceptual design from Revit or Civil3D/Infraworks.

There's a 3D Viz specialist at a company I team with all the time that just started using Epic's Twinmotion for some of his animations and renders. Neither of us know of a good way to host in the web and let people walk through it though.
Click to expand...
It looks like Reality Capture should export to common file types, so you should be able to pull it into whatever (assuming licensing allows). Drastic oversimplification I know, but it's still probably just a matter of conversion/optimization. It looks like there are some options for web-based Unreal as well.
 
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Bandwagon

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Kolohe
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Control said:
It looks like Reality Capture should export to common file types, so you should be able to pull it into whatever (assuming licensing allows). Drastic oversimplification I know, but it's still probably just a matter of conversion/optimization. It looks like there are some options for web-based Unreal as well.
Click to expand...
If you're curious, this is the type of thing I'm doing. This guy made a quick video for me to show our PMs.
www.loom.com

DroneDeploy Bridge Inspection Workflow

Use Loom to record quick videos of your screen and cam. Explain anything clearly and easily – and skip the meeting. An essential tool for hybrid workplaces.
www.loom.com www.loom.com

I can do this stuff myself on desktop, but don't have a good way to give other people access with basic tools, unless they're ready to dedicate some time to learn photogrammetry software.
 
Control

Control

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Bandwagon said:
If you're curious, this is the type of thing I'm doing. This guy made a quick video for me to show our PMs.
www.loom.com

DroneDeploy Bridge Inspection Workflow

Use Loom to record quick videos of your screen and cam. Explain anything clearly and easily – and skip the meeting. An essential tool for hybrid workplaces.
www.loom.com www.loom.com

I can do this stuff myself on desktop, but don't have a good way to give other people access with basic tools, unless they're ready to dedicate some time to learn photogrammetry software.
Click to expand...
Ah, looks interesting, I guess whatever he's using isn't user friendly enough for end users? I can see how it would be tricky to optimize if you need high res textures and/or the actual source photos for inspection of literally every inch of a structure. Obviously though, even the most high-res game would have the needed size reduced by orders of magnitude, but I guess it just depends how granular your end users need to get.
 
Bandwagon

Bandwagon

Kolohe
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Control said:
Ah, looks interesting, I guess whatever he's using isn't user friendly enough for end users? I can see how it would be tricky to optimize if you need high res textures and/or the actual source photos for inspection of literally every inch of a structure. Obviously though, even the most high-res game would have the needed size reduced by orders of magnitude, but I guess it just depends how granular your end users need to get.
Click to expand...
This workflow IS easy enough for end users. Exactly the type of thing I'm after and I may sign up, but 90% of the subscription cost is stuff I can already do myself and have been doing for 7 years. This stuff cost about $12k a year as a starting point, rising rapidly after.

I can do this exact thing on desktop, but I need to give other people a way to do it. Sometimes they're coworkers, sometimes they're teaming partners or clients. And there's always other requests that come along with it like "Can we replace the bridge with a conceptual design and then have the City engineers take a virtual tour of it?".

Anyways, thanks for the input. I'll play with this a little more this week and see if I have any use for it
 
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