Unity creates new open source tool for architects
archpaper.com
archpaper.com
Basically you first design, for look and feel, then you calculate technical details, then you build. Or rather the architect does all three, but you would normally want to "chip in" during the design phase - change the layout, move things around, etc. That's where things get bloody awful.
I wasn't expecting full VR tours of the place (though it is doable [1]), but I did expect to be able to walk through the place in 3D and see how it will look like in the winter morning and summer afternoon. Hell no. What are you smoking?
Floor plans. Planimetric facades. Roll your eyes to the ceiling and imagine. 3D renders that looks like from the early 00s take hours to produce, so they aren't done often. That's _still_ renders, mind you. 3D walk-abouts are possible, but they look like butt and they are viewed as the final step of the process, when everything has been done and done.
And this is with firms where principles are in their 40s and generally computer literate. It just seems that the industry is very conservative with its tooling choices AND these tools are also ridiculously expensive, further stifling any desire to switch. So they are stuck with using technical design software like ArchiCAD (good for laying out piping, calculating stress, air flow, etc.) for visual design. And the resulting process is sooooo slow, small changes and iterations take hours if not days to complete, so it takes weeks to converge to a general design of the house.
Painful, painful process. Ugh. Caveat emptor.
Software guys don't know what small margin means.
I think you've picked some creative fields but haven't actually identified voids to fill. What are you offering that S-Frame or Revit isn't? What drudge work in particular do you think you can tackle that no one else has?
If you can identify some specific voids to fill, go ahead. but I think those voids you identified are likely your unfamiliarity with the industry.
But if you've got something, go for it. Just research first, because right now it sounds pretty nebulous.
Architecture is a competitive industry. If you want a 3d model you can walkthrough it's not the end of the world - even Trimble sketchup pro has a built in walkthrough tool. You can also export most models to something like cinema4d for a video walkthrough. The models you expect to walkthrough to get some idea of light will require new texture work, lighting, and lots of small details that they otherwise have no reason to add. But those all cost time and money they probably had no idea you expected from them.
The thing is that you probably didn't make your expectations clear up front. If you did architects would quote you a price with that included. But theyd also say something like x revisions and then it's $125/hour so you dont waste their time.
It's a pretty reasonable if you have specific non standard expectations. They'll be happy to mark up the value of having someone else do it and charge it to you.
The existing model - get a draft, send in a list of tweaks, get a revision, send more comment, get another revision - is ridiculously inefficient and excruciatingly slow. What can be decided in a couple of hours takes days if not weeks. Coming to the architect's office and doing the same by sitting aide by side with then doesn't help much, it's still not a real-time and they get frustrated because that's not how they work.
The problem, as I mentioned, is both in architect software lacking (what's been available in game engines for years!) and the willingness to adopt the new tech and workflows on architect's side.
I mean, with all existing technologies I should be able to see my house-to-be in near exact realistic detail before we OK the project. This is NOT possible and this is supremely frustrating.
Changes being "hard work" is a matter of a tool not being well adapted to the job, which is a problem with the tool, not the process. If I am playing with a floor plan, then certain changes, like moving walls and openings should be as easy to do as possible. If they aren't, it's the wrong tool for the job ... which is exactly what I mentioned in the first post - that the architects routinely use heavy-lifting ArchiCAD to do design phase sketching.
It's totally possible. 99.999% of clients aren't willing to pay for it, and architects aren't interested in having you do a dozen revisions no matter how much effort you think that is (an hour lol!).
I can tell you that simple walkthrough stuff is simple in sketchup (time of year/day built in), but most house builds don't require a detailed sketchup model with lighting real textures, rendering, etc.
You also have to remember that they are interviewing you as a client. If your expectation is 12 revisions in an hour as a reasonable, then there's very little they can do to make themselves competitive and I can understand why they wouldn't offer a likely unreasonable client an atypical contract.
You're going to them to get a proposal/quote. I can understand not being willing to offer you something you're clearly not willing to pay for. And from their perspective there's a lot of risk involved in taking you if they have someone else who isn't asking for atypical free extras knocking on their door.
As a kid, I made the transition from drafting boards to CADD. My efforts to mitigate the poor UI, with my own wares, launched my career as a UI designer. Started as an enthusiastic technophile, left a bitter techno skeptic.
Just one small example. One research team funded by the Army Corps of Engineers were tasked with determining why their mechanical engineers using CADD were no more productive or accurate than when using manual drafting boards. The major finding was that whereas manually drafting had developed effective strategies over the millennia, eg work from left to right (for right handed drafters), CADD software had poor, missing, inconsistent strategies, eg matrix of verbs & nouns showed holes in the UI coverage.
To the best of my knowledge, these considerations are still unaddressed.
Here's the first hit for that research. It's been forever since I've thought about this stuff, so don't know for certain if anyone built on top of these findings.
https://researchexperts.utmb.edu/en/publications/strategic-u...
FWIW, I was on Bentley Systems' user steering committee for MicroStation at the time. While one of their junior software devs was doing some really cool new stuff, the rest of their hierarchy fully embodied the belligerent arrogance of the willfully ignorant.
I can recommend ChiefArchitect. So far it has been great. It is within reach for a technical person to figure out, especially with all the training videos available online for free.
It is also powerful enough to do a lot of the details as well, which we are doing ourselves and then sending back to the architect for review.
One important note if anyone does try it, the system of measurement Can Not be changed for a file. I started mine in metric, because I generally prefer metric and it was a nice way to measure using a laser measuring tool. But I live in an imperial world (US), where all stores and contractors work in imperial units and there has been tens of times already that I wish my plan was also imperial. And Chief Architect can't convert the file. I can display imperial units, but the base units are always metric.
Where it was so archaic(least in UI/usability) and extremely expensive that AutoDesk has found success following the Unity/Unreal model. Offering a "free" CAD/CAM software with Fusion 360. With plenty of Youtube presence and advertising with it, letting it grow.
However the problem with Architecture and Building itself, is that building homes and structures isn't really a hobby like Game Dev, 3D Modeling or Manufacturing(is becoming).
I understand they can't use MSAA because they use a deferred rendering path (which they need to support large numbers of dynamic lights) but whatever AA they use looks bad.
Some people might not notice it but it ruins it for me. I'd almost rather have aliasing in VR than "Vaseline on the lens"
* No one will care about your project as much as you and this includes the architect :(
* Few(???) architects and zero builders seem to understand light/wind/circulation like people apparently intuitively did 200 years ago. You might be better off with the average curious engineer designing the house than the average architect. Everyone is astonishingly lazy, even mansions around here have terrible light/circulation problems.
* VR is no match for IRL! It's best to actually get a measuring tape and stake out the dimensions of the house on the land. An even better, get chalk and go to a big flat parking lot and draw out the entire floor plan (compass-correct) and walk inside, looking at the sun (keeping in mind what season). This worked well for me, I should have done more of it. I didn't build a porch though, which is where getting more exacting summer/winter sun angles would matter.
I actually got the chalk idea from the excellent movie The Founder, where the creators of McDonalds try out different kitchen workflow models this way.
* Draw and sketch a huge amount. Sketch facades freeform, with the ruler, etc. The fidgeting will help you discover things.
* Read a bunch of books about old houses. Maybe most approachably: Get Your House Right and A Pattern Language
* Get a pinterest board for you + spouse. We used ours heavily and it was great for keeping track of interior detail decisions.
[1] It's a fundamentally simple house, basically a box that maximizes light and airflow and wood burning heat, so I probably had a much easier task than you. Some of the original drawings: https://twitter.com/simonsarris/status/1183150002002112512
And during construction you are kind of thrown about by the perception of the size. When framing is done, it feels huge. Once all the plaster is on the walls, it feels extremely "small" at first because you were so used to the big openness of the frame, then finally as more finishes are applied it just feels correct at last.
It's hard to describe exactly what feeling happens. But suffice to say it's never easy to get "right" feeling simulations of a structure until you put up literal walls.
For this reason, if you want to build a 5x7 bathroom or 11x13 bedroom or whatever, the best possible thing you can do is find one that already exists. Or find a 11x11 room or something and try to imagine it with 2 more feet. Then you can carry these mental rooms around with you.
At least, that's what I did a lot of.
Is that due to the Field of View being lower in games compared to real life? When you increase the FoV in games then things further away look smaller.
VR would work for me because the sense of space exists in VR where as it does not in floor plans nor on 3D renders views on 2D screens.
https://www.floorplancheck.com
At the moment it simulates the most common scenarios in a home and the paths in the house that correspond to them, for example, getting back home with the groceries bags. Then it tells you if those paths can be improved and suggests how.
Do they map out the soundscape of the area from the impact or even the lighting levels for the building and cast shadows upon the area - heck no. These models are always upon lovely sunny days, and hey - look at those trees in the picture - ain't we nice people to do that kinda level.
But yes, consumer level would love that, for me - things like sound proofing and light impact from the seasonal variations would be more use for me. Be nice to know that the kitchen window wouldn't get much sun and then only in the summer as it's facing North West and will only catch the glancing sun in the summer first thing and last thing. Or indeed the factor that the prevailing wind will mean that as the kitchen window opens at an angle to the west, which is the same as the prevailing wind - seeing all your kitchen smells permeate the entire property and a penchant to set of the smoke alarm if you ever do any toast or worse - blow out the gas cooker hobs and all that entails. Small details, but they all add up.
But really erks me is the level of sound proofing, sure they bung in some loft insulation and double glazing and say that's cool. But most properties these days in out modern times have no/little code to cover noise pollution and as you view properties during the day, have little idea how they are at night. Heck I live in a flat and if I place an ear against any outer wall, I can clearly hear the downstairs neibours as the property was built without any cavity filling and the owner refuses to install any as their architect says it's not needed and how it is the standard way. Yet happily ignores that you can literally follow a standard level of conversation from neibours. Because there are no real standards about noise pollution. Moral being - never buy or rent a flat when they just put up a concrete frame, breeze blocked the inner leaf with brick outer leaf as for noise travel/pollution - they are horrible.
Indeed in my case the heating system (hot water radiator affair) has pipes going into the wall (all nice and hidden), but if say the downstairs neibours hit or bump into their radiator - the sound resonates up the cavity and has sympathy with the pipe and radiator - making it sound like my radiator was hit or knocked. A most unnerving and freaky experience, but at least one in which I worked out why my radiators at night made odd knocking sounds as if somebody hit them.
So whilst a VR walkthrough would be great, for me, better soundproof and frequency propagation of sound mapped per room along with seasonal lighting levels, would be way more useful and whilst for changes, the whole VR aspect would be great. It is and will be mostly used for initial selling and utilised by investor types who may well never even see the property they brought.
Real crux is that to submit plans/changes to your local planning - none of them demand or need a 3D model or walkthru and with that, as they don't have to do it, that has prevailed to the stage that you just don't get it.
But great opportunities to shake up the market here.
Small changes take only hours to complete? It takes only weeks to converge to a general design? Most software project managers would kill for that level of efficiency and predictability.
(A bunch of pictures made in Sketch is not the design. You can surely do that in a few days, but it’s essentially the same as making a bunch of facade drawings and pretending that’s the architectural design.)
I use computer hardware everyday. Does this allow me to give relevant opinions on what are the best processes to build it? Some folks are thinking about it for decades.
Architectural rendering is overrated, it only exists as a way to sell the project to clumsy end users, investors and city planners. The same house but with a different sky, flying ducks, evergreen trees, people dancing and ferraris will look an order of magnitude better. The time wasted on this could be used to better the house itself. Don't forget also that what seems clearly an anachronism is not: 10 years ago computer hardware and software were not nearly there for the "3d revolution" you are asking for.
I just want to understand if I will have the sun shining in my eye on summer mornings when I'm lying in bed, how the hallway will look at night, what the view will be from the kitchen and into the living space, etc. Just trying to place _myself_ in the house and see what I should fix before it's built.
You wouldn't buy a car after merely looking at its 2D projections and a sketchy looking rendering, so I don't think that asking to see how a house would look and feel before committing to building it is such an unreasonable thing to do.
https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/revit-products/learn-...
North: indirect light, the coldest orientation (northern hemisphere of course)
East: morning light, good for bedrooms
South: lots of direct light, the warmer orientation
West: afternoon light, good for living rooms or even kitchens
North-West: dominant winds (in my country)
Right but isn't it overrated because it only exists as a way to sell the project? Surely the software could be improved to the point that you can use it to make decisions?
It was once a free (and standalone) program (it was for some time bought by google) though now I believe the free version is only "online" (and the other ones have become largely Saas):
https://www.sketchup.com/plans-and-pricing/sketchup-free
Though an "offline" normal program is still available:
https://www.sketchup.com/products/pro-classic
though at 695 US$ is not exactly "cheap".
It's an open source parametric modeler and the export to (still) renderers like appleseed, luxrender,... and import to blender is still a work in progress.
I'm hoping someone reads this and thinks "Hey, I can contribute to this" or at least file a bug/feature report.
From site it looks really promising. Will test it out.
There’s a bright future for better design tools but it was very interesting to talk to architects about them. Most are hugely conservative and want tools to fit their current workflow rather than anything that might be too innovative. That includes how much clients are able to get into the design process.
Just in the past two years I've seen them develop, hype, and then quietly drop: their VR editor, AR preview tool, Octane Renderer, Substance integration, UNet, ML integration.
It's obvious they have an incredibly difficult time managing their tools when their platform is fundamentally shattered between multiple releases, versions, render pipelines, and now DOTS vs normal workflow. And it's basically impossible for other companies to manage Unity SDKs with a ground that moves that much.
IMHO it's unrealistic to expect long-term commitment for maintenance / compatibility from ${ANY} new software, unless there's a 5-year enterprise contract with a SLA. Maintenance is difficult work, and only rewarding if the software provides real-world usefulness.
Many successful video game companies use Unity to make their games. It's basically impossible to use except compared to the alternatives, which are just as impossible or more so.
Studios have the same issue. They pick a version to ship with and work around whatever known bugs there are. Upgrading is a huge event and it's never painless.
https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/feed/all/AEC
https://unity.com/solutions/architecture-engineering-constru...
The first move happened with Autodesk releasing Stringray and tying it tightly to 3DS Max. Stingray was not super popular (from what I hear) but its business motivations were real -- there was real-time visualization needs in AEC. UE4 and Unity then started to build out in this area.
I haven't actually seen numbers to back up that there is a viable market here, but there is belief there is a market by all involved parties (Autodesk with Stingray, Epic and Unity.)
I could see them giving source code to people who pay for some enterprise license, but I doubt it will be open source. At least not the part that extracts data from BIM software.
But ultimately, whatever is best for the consumer needs to win out. If freeware knocks out commercial competitors then stagnates (like Internet Explorer), that's bad, and analogous to dumping which is not legal.
If it's just better product and continues to be, like Google Calendar, the world is simply better off.
They're not trying to acquire users for marketing, they're trying to acquire users into their ecosystem and bring more dependence on their tools, their asset store products, and make the unity ecosystem worth more.
It's a land grab. Ditto for VFX industry that they and Epic are trying to get into.
The world is not here to ensure your business model can continue uninterrupted in perpetuity. The world moves forwards (well, mostly forwards), and it is up to you to adapt your business model accordingly.
Don't understand why you're getting so harshly downvoted.