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Comment by jondiggsit | Hacker News Reader

My team uses this technology on a daily basis at my company. I run a design / build firm in the Hamptons, USA. We start all of our design projects with a 3d-first approach. Schematic design starts in 3D using Rhino3D or Revit. We use visualization plugins, like Enscape, to render the models and stream to a Quest 3 headset.

So when clients come in, and feels adventurous, we'll setup the headset, set the display height to their actual, and let them walk around their beautiful new home.

The response has been powerful. My clients are able to truly understand the scale, the proportion of rooms, ceiling heights, and the smallest details.

We're able to make real-time changes to the model (within reason) and provide instant design feedback.

I've been using this technology for years and I'm surprised it's not being adopted faster - good for us right now though!

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This comment almost made me quit my job and pursue my original passion in architecture. So the job was, all along, as fun as I imagined it… And the full-stack knowledge to make it happen is still rare? I am currently designing my house in Blender and was planning to import it into Unreal Engine to make it navigable. HN has a way of serving me the content I’m looking for at the right time…

I love hearing statements like this.

I want to learn how to import into Unreal Engine... also throw a rocket launcher in there with some destruction physics.

I will caution tho, converting the Rhino models back into CAD for construction drawings, etc. is time consuming. One of my architects is skilled in Revit, but we haven't explored the real time rendering / 3d visualization abilities enough with it.

Start with a parametric program like solid works

Revit is parametric, but something like Rhino (going off reputation, never used it myself) gives you more free-form modeling control.

It’s like starting with a pencil sketch instead of going straight to SolidWorks, once you start building that more nailed down drawing with its explicit flow of sketches and operations in relationship to each other, it becomes much harder to make large structural changes.

https://help.autodesk.com/view/RVT/2023/ENU/?guid=GUID-71F2C...

Rhino + Grasshopper is the gold standard for all the curvy geometry in anything resembling Zaha Hadid’s work. It is also parametric. There’s even a plug-in to use it inside Revit. Solidworks is great for designing the chassis, but the body was probably sketched in Rhino or Maya.

>I want to learn how to import into Unreal Engine... also throw a rocket launcher in there with some destruction physics.

When they bail ?

Blender has a wasd controller walk mode. Shortcut is shift + backtick

Uhh, I have a laptop near me where I was planning to throw my drawing to get a 3D model in blender. I have no experience with blender, but I have a dwg file architect gave me (for a house where I already live in) and I was ready to make AI do the rest. I want to make some reconstruction, plan to buy/calculate stuff I need for the walls/floor, etc and just a fun project to visualize my home.

Anyways, I learned that AI can't read DWG, so converted it to DXF using trial AutoCAD. The LibreCAD couldn't even open my dwg as it was some newer version.

I also have a plan to make some "what-if" scenarios - we want to remodel kitchen, remove this wall, put this here and there... basically that can help visualize and that can understand how big stuff is to calculate BOM and such.

Is Blender OK for it or should I target some SketchUp for my "3D feel"? I'm looking forward to using some free tools.

Is there even a free cad alternative that would understand "newer" dwg file formats? Is there other software than AutoCAD with MCP capability that would allow navigate dwg/dxf?

None of it is very good yet. It’s got a long way to go.

> pursue my original passion in architecture

Do it! You have the knowledge, you have the interest, you now have confirmation someone else was able to do it, so can you! No time to wait, just jump in and start planning, then execute! I don't know why people hesitate so much, you do literally only live once, and who has time to sit around thinking "what if?" when we're old and just want to chill? Worst case scenario, you fail, learned a bunch, lean back on what supported you before, maybe in a slightly different way, but with so many more fun memories.

> I don't know why people hesitate so much

Money? It's hard to stop getting revenue suddenly for an undetermined time. Especially with a family behind.

> Worst case scenario, you fail, learned a bunch, lean back on what supported you before

That's to my opinion very simplistic very often not true and dependent on the job market (which isn't that great right now!)

They're a developer, money is probably a pretty weak excuse.

True, the job market is worse than it's been before, but it'll also eventually get better, as before. Things go up and down, can't really skip out on your dreams just because it's a bit difficult, then you're just giving up as easily as everyone else. Gotta fight a little :)

Freebird XR is available in blender plugins for VR display

You might want to look at these videos with regards to using archviz in Unreal Engine with a photogrammetry visual set. BIM output can be used if you have more experience with architectural CAD toolsets. The plugins are available now except the BIM which is slated to be open by the end of August/Summer.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oiiKeAlm6Ow This Put Me on Stage at Unreal Fest Chicago

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ehoHM-uzRQ From Scan to Stream: Open Pipelines for Large-Scale 3D in Unreal Engine

For those that don’t know, the Hamptons are full of very nice places. The uber-rich have second homes, there, that are bigger than Gold Coast first homes.

This company probably makes a lot of money, but they also have serious competition, so they need things like the 3D walkthroughs.

Summer traffic in the Hamptons is a nightmare, though. Many uber-rich have helipads.

You are 100% correct. My company is fortunate enough to have the working capital and time to explore ideas, which is honestly, one of the most fulfilling parts of my business.

And the Hamptons competition is very serious. It's insane really. Construction in the Hamptons is the Olympics of high-end building. There are atleast a dozen excellent, amazing builders and over 250 active companies in total. My company sits near the top of that list and the only one, to my knowledge, actively leveraging technology to our advantage.

No private heli-pads, they banned it long ago. There's a little known heli-pad on Meadow Lane in Southampton. So from your SoHo office to your beachfront house is under an hour. There's also Blade service to EH.

One of my clients often arrives by seaplane to check on the progress of his Peconic Bay waterfront project. It's pretty cool.

Ah. Glad to hear they banned them. I guess even the snobs got tired of having their teeth rattling out of their heads.

Glad to hear you guys are doing so well.

I did this circa 2021 (with SketchUp, Enscape, Quest 2) during our house remodel. It was very successful in reducing the number of walls my wife wanted to move around after they had been finished

Reducing?

Virtual visit, get feel for house layout, get walls moved on the plans before building, less walls to be moved after building.

I think parent comment was surprised that there was _any_ moving of walls after the fact, which "reducing" implies..

Never get married, man...

There is a continual stream of TV programs about housing which tell you every problem can be solved by knocking a wall down, building an extension, installing bi-fold doors or a granite worktop.

If your partner watches this stuff then you are in trouble.

My house has definitely been opened up over time since I bought it. Not really the upstairs but the ground floor is much more open and lighter. In fact, it's where I mostly do stuff on a laptop in spite of having a full-fledged office upstairs.

Me and my partner did this as well, only using a HTC Vive. We modeled our bathroom in two different versions and could toggle between the two while "standing inside" the bathroom. The VR simulation was the deciding factor between the two layouts, as one just "felt" better in person.

Do you recommend an application in particular to make it easy to do something like that (record a video walk through that you turn into a rendering on a PC in VR)? I happen to have a Valve Index with dust on it.

And I mean for someone with no specialized architect/design skills.

Speaking of which, it seems like evolution in the headset world is slow or stalled at least commercially.

Heh. Like 10 years ago I was designing retail stores for a company expanding their franchises. Each location had to be a bit different, depending on the quirks of the building they were leasing. I was doing the 3D layouts of the interiors, so I built a webvr app to let them jump through the renderings (not a walk-around; it mapped out a bunch of different fully raytraced stereoscopic skyboxes from different positions that you could navigate between). We used to send out an oculus rift to the new franchisees while they were in the build phase so they could check out the renderings and request changes as we were finalizing it.

Do you find the value of VR/AR to be in the communication of design intent to clients unfamiliar with traditional 2D representations, or do your designers leverage VR/AR during the design development process as well?

Absolutely both. Internally, we'll model something, move an element, etc., and we're able to evaluate the idea until it feels right.

For clients, I don't know any other way at this point. Showing a novice a 2D elevation does nothing for them. They will nod, make comments, and play along, but until you sketch a person into the drawing, they don't even understand that the front door is ten feet tall.

"I don't know any other way at this point. Showing a novice a 2D elevation"

I think 2D prints aren't the baseline, and since at least the late 2000s even run of the mill architecture firms have been using 3d studio-type renderings with clients. Maybe I don't understand how the visionpro works. Your clients arent actually physically moving their body, right? What's the advantage of looking around the space in a visionpro vs large monitor?

I’ve been through this (but with different software than the author used). The level of immersion, the sense of being there, is dramatically better with the Vision Pro.

It was the biggest unlock when it came to choosing a staircase design. Hard to picture ahead of time and expensive to change later.

I worked with DUS Architects in Amsterdam on a staircase designer / visualizer for their enormous fused deposition modelling (FDM) 3D house printers, using Rhino + Grasshopper + Unity3D.

"Complexity is free when you are drawing with a nozzle."

One thing about their use of plant-based bioplastic is that if you didn't like your staircase or house after printing it, you could shred it, melt it back down, redesign it, and print out a different one again.

>On a plot in Amsterdam-Noord, DUS Architects turned a six-metre FDM printer called the KamerMaker into a research laboratory disguised as a house — extruding honeycomb rooms from plant-based bioplastic to ask whether a building can be downloaded, printed on site, and shredded back into feedstock when it is done.

https://houseofdus.com/

https://web.archive.org/web/20180509103603/http://3dprintcan...

https://www.studiomatrx.org/guides/3d-print-canal-house

>The KamerMaker: a desktop printer, grown enormous

>The instrument at the centre of the project is a machine called the KamerMaker — Dutch for "room maker" — installed on the site from September 2012. Conceptually it is disarmingly simple: it is a fused deposition modelling (FDM) printer, the same layer-by-layer, melt-and-extrude technology found in a hobbyist desktop machine, scaled up until it stands roughly six metres tall inside a movable, container-sized pavilion. It was developed by DUS in dialogue with the desktop-printing world — the Ultimaker community was part of that lineage — and it can print single elements up to about 2.2 × 2.2 × 3.5 metres.

Much earlier (1997-2000) I worked on The Sims architectural editing tools for walls, floors, windows, doors, swimming pools, ladders, diving boards, object placement, etc, including the staircase placement tool, which was extra tricky because it spanned two stories, punched holes in the floor, and reserved two contiguous floor landing tiles upstairs and downstairs. Orchestrating the undo/redo edit records in the right order was diabolical. ;)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-exdu4ETscs

The Anti-Heisenberg Teleporter added by House Party was not actually classified as a staircase although it spanned two floors and had landing tiles. But it worked since the staircase tool (and other specialized tools like windows, doors, pool ladders and diving boards, etc) were actually just special modes of the generic universal object placement tool.

Stairs Aesthetics In Every Sims - Sims 1, Sims 2, Sims 3, Sims 4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=43IwecyTHYU

The modular clown themed roller coaster construction kit in Makin' Magic was amazing!

The Sims 1 Was Made in 2000...and it's still amazing:

https://youtu.be/x00rH9eIJgo?t=216

LGR - The Sims 1 & 2 Legacy Collection Review

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZUDt4BoMg-s

I'm amazed hearing about how your skills and knowledge extend to multiple disciplines. First time I've heard of DUS Architects - this is real modern architecture, sitting the crossroads of art and science. Very cool.

Really? Who? I've worked with two dozen AD100 Architecture firms. Most will farm out a couple static renders that will never again be updated throughout the evolution of the project.

Yes, they can move around if they want. We set a boundary in the foyer of my office, so they have about 15 feet of movement.

If you haven't ever put on a 3D headset, it's hard to describe the advantage. Do I think it's 100% necessary vs. just looking at a screen, no, but it's cool.

Yeah sorry I was mistakenly thinking about non-interactive 3D walkthroughs. But still, that would be better than prints as a point of comparison.

> What's the advantage of looking around the space in a visionpro vs large monitor?

A lot of people don't grasp scale correctly when looking at a monitor. It's not an intrinsic skill in the same way that our perception of being inside a 3D space is

Are there any productive tools or workflows you employ for modeling directly in VR? Or is it more useful for review and evaluation of models developed on traditional workstations?

I'm AEC adjacent and am trying to talk myself into picking up a pair strictly for personal architectural projects..

We really only use it for architectural intent. There is a dream that is BIM on residential projects, but unless the project has an extreme level of technical constrains, it's often cost prohibitive to model EVERYTHING. I'm really hoping that AI assisted design tools will bridge the gap. Imagine uploading architectural and structural drawings and AI correctly modeling HVAC duct size, mechanical room requirements for pumps, boilers, etc., modeling electrical chases, vent pipes, exhaust ducts, ERVs, etc., in a local code compliant manner. I know it's coming and I can't freaking wait.

We have on occasion used our Matterport 3 lidar scanner to model existing structural conditions to help us figure out a problem.

Re Matterport 3 - we use it as a communication tool for remote work sessions with engineers, architects, clients, etc. Saves everyone a trip to the site. Helps us document progress, preserve historical details, uncover discrepancies between field and plan, etc.

I am working on this at bear.build. It's early, but I would love to get your feedback if you have some time. justin@bear.build

We tried using this software - https://www.prevu3d.com/digital-twin-use-cases/design-engine...

It looks cool, but it wasn't applicable for our day-to-day.

Wow I’m incredibly impressed that you’ve decided to embrace VR technology. When renovating our house, it was incredibly hard (and still is) to visualize how everything. So far we just got lucky but the basement is going to be a challenge as we’re making structural adjustments.

How did you get your team to get onboard with the process? How is the ROI?

My team design team are graduate architects, on the younger-ish side - 29 and 40. One worked for Santiago Calatrava - who, if you know, obviously models all his work. So it was second nature to them, I just pushed them to lean into it. Rhino is not without its drawbacks. It is time consuming but it's worth it because, as a sales tool, it wins every time. I'll have first time meetings with perspective clients where we'll wireframe a design on their survey (if we know some particulars of the program). Blows people away.

The ROI - the salaries were a negative on the books for two years, but now we're choosing our projects, ones that any AD100 firm would kill for.

Not vr/ar but 3d visualisations and walkthroughs were a thing like 20 years ago. I did try to leverage it with the clients but what happened was that once people could see everything they had more opinions about how to change it. It helped me to get clients though. Sometimes it would go on for quite a ”few” iterations. I think it is more scalable not to do it, i.e. not to be on the cutting edge, unless the customer pays premium for it. I am pretty sure vr/ar has the same challenges where people are like “oh I thought the ceiling was higher, can we increase it by 2 inches and move the stair case a bit?” then you do it and something is wrong again.

I'd see that as evidence that the visualization is doing its job. It's much cheaper to discover "I wish the ceiling were 2" higher" before anyone starts building than after. The challenge is reducing the cost of each iteration. That's where newer tooling starts to matter.

I really hope that one day I am so incredibly rich that I can hire a team like yours. It would be amazing to have a professional firm design a house for you. I’m guessing you have to be in the 1% for that.

This comment got me curious, as it felt attainable/more commonplace to me. I did some searching, and according to gov.uk stats 7-10% of homes in UK are custom/self-build homes. That is actually surprisingly high!

Impressive. Where I live you get a flat assigned and you put your old furniture in. Maybe you paint the walls, but they have to be white when you move out.

If you are doing well for yourself you buy a house from a project. It will be 150 identical homes next to each other. If you pay extra you get to decide the color of the kitchen and what tiles you want in the pre-designed bathroom.

Designing your own home is some Jeff Bezos stuff.

It's quite common in the USA ... but since we have massive sprawl they will build whole neighborhoods at once, give you a choice of 5-10 different model homes and then you can customize on top of that. Sometimes a customization can be a whole floor.

If the builder does it correctly you really have to squint to tell which homes are the exact same since they are all slightly different.

I would bet a lot of those are still not being designed by a team that is working for you specifically. It's also important that if the statistic is 7-10% of homes, that's very different from 7-10% of people living in such homes.

I would guess the majority is catalog houses.

In the UK market architects are kinda common.

For a lot of building projects you need both pictures to send the government to get permission before you break ground; and also evidence of the structural calculations, and that the structural elements were built to design.

You can do these things without an architect, but there's enough demand to support an ecosystem of small businesses (say, 1 architect and 2 support staff). Not every project/architect uses a full 3D model - some architects produce a set of 2D drawings.

> 7-10% of homes in UK are custom/self-build homes

Worth to note that there is a huge practical difference between a "custom" and a "self-build" home.

- On "self-build" you take full personal responsibility for finding land, securing planning permission, managing the budget, and hiring architects or builders.

- On "custom" you buy from a developer who already has pre-approved planning permissions, often for a huge serviced plot targeting 20-30 homes based on some copy/paste concept, managing all aspects of the construction while you can influence minor aspects of the layout, style, and interior finishes.

Custom-built homes are very common in rest of Europe. It's a common scheme to buy a plot of land, plan a low-cost project of very densely placed, similar looking houses, reusing as many elements as possible to simplify permissions, and then allowing customers to pay for additions within those fixed boundaries.

The possible individual modifications are usually minor then, everything that requires re-submission for (structural/council/...) approval is not economic.

Then there's the "I self-build, my dad is a carpenter and I just bought this toolbox" category, which is such a minefield of fatal mistakes that movies and reality shows were made around it.

I think the market for "self-build but fully outsourced to a premium developer" is the ~1-2% bracket only...

Agreed, and from the people I know who fully self-build say they will never do it again. The amount of decisions and time it takes can be very stressful.

But when you go to very high end neighborhoods where you essentially pick a plot and a architect, no 2 homes are close to the same, all completely custom.

Toolbox minefield made me laugh.

I guess I'm in the .001%: my father in law built homes for a living and built his own home and every piece of furniture in it himself. Everything lasts longer and works better than in professionally built homes in my experience. He's a real marvel.

I suspect there may not many more people with his skillset after his generation passes.

not really when less than 70% people own their home

You're posting on a tech forum that includes readers from the highest income sector of the economy.

There are a lot of 1 percenters here.

Can you please do a separate post about your job? The technology sounds amazing and I'd love to know how AI is now interacting with this stack. Also, which firm? Might need a design soon!

Wait, you actually have an empty building/area the size of a typical custom design home? Aren't those typically rather huge? Do you partition the previews?

Why would you assume they physically walk around the entire space instead of teleporting/moving in VR?

> Do you partition the previews?

It's the Hamptons, these houses are for some of the wealthiest people on the planet.

I'd make them wear a giant visor over their face rather than have to talk to them directly too. They're also some of the most insufferable people you'll ever meet.

The Quest has joysticks to control your position. We managed to get one of our 70 year old clients to figure it out.

Okay I have to ask - do the joysticks move you forward like they typically would for a character in a video game? Or do you use teleport controls? Because the former would absolutely make me (and I think most people?) motion sick

It's as good as any VR FPS game.

This is wonderful and amazing, but isn't there a risk to over promise? Reality can never be as perfect as a 3D rendering...?

But reality is never as perfect as the design. It seems to me that being able to "stand" in a rendering and look around is going to put you much closer to reality than looking at blueprints and a front elevation. So i don't think the question is "could VR and the end product be different" it is "is VR closer to the end product than other options" and I think the answer is likely, yes.

Hey mate, I'm a builder in Sydney, Australia and I'm currently trying to implement something very similar in my business. I'd love to connect and have a chat about the ins and outs if you'd be open to it? If you could reach out that would be awesome. My email is in my bio. Or reply to this comment if you need another form of contact.

Do you believe Apple will continue to spend billions on a device that caters to niche enterprise use cases and is today selling in single digit thousands per month, if that? If so, qhat other Apple products out there suggest that enterprise is something Apple cares about enough to maintain a distinct product line? This isn't Mac Pro where 95% of the R&D and production costs are shared with half a dozen other major Mac SKUs. This isn't MacOS. It isn't iOS. It isnt even iPad OS which it was initially based on. Excepting the SoC, the hardware is entirely bespoke. It doesn't seem realistic to me that they'd continue it without a real consumer audience that the last 2.5 years proved does not exist. Hell, even the lowly Quest, that cost Meta over $100B so far, sold nearly 30M units and Meta's clearly bailing on that as it pivots to non-enclosed facial computers like glasses. The whole category is a failure outside of a few enterprise cases.

The comment your replying to used Quest 3. No need for Apple. Steam Frame will probably have a color camera module too and be even more flexible as a real computer.

MacBook Neo is a clear business win. Cheap, available, consistent, works with standard Jamf MDM, and trivial warranty repairs/replacemnts.

Most small to medium enterprises run off SaaS. The most common local tool is Office suite, which now has feature parity with the Windows version.

OK, go off.

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