Realtime ArchViz: SketchUp to Unity Workflow

chippwalters

Hey guys,

Back on the PBR to Unity pipeline and workflow. Spent tonight documenting the sum of what I’ve figured out so far in three videos:

How to build and quickly UV map in SketchUp for Unity
How materials work in Unity (not the way you might think they do).
How to create your own PBR textures and materials from pictures you take on your phone or files you find online

Some of the images I knocked out tonight for the tute:

And here are the videos:

pilou

Astonishing that programs can make! (and humans)!

kaas

Interesting to see your process & Unity (just saw the first video). Looking forward viewing the other two.

pilou

Ps Protrude by Jim is cool, but Joint PushPull can makes the same!

Else Protrude is very cool for the randomize panelling!
(+ Lattice Maker by Tig) (+ FredoScale)

chippwalters

Monsieur Pilou! Thanks for sharing. Didn't know that. Did you use Fredo scale to make the curved geometry? Also what to do you use to make your GIFs?

JonFar

Hi,

sorry for my ignorance in the following questions, but I'm really interested in Unity and realtime rendering, even more after seeing that it's rather simple to import Sketchup models into it.
But I would like to understand a couple of things before investing time/money in learning a new software.

I know it all depends on the quality and personal preferences but, once you learn how to work with it, is it easy/quick to set up scenes? or is it complex (like rendering in VRay) and requires you to tweak a lot of options and test the lighting and stuff until you reach the desired results?
Unity can export animations like walk around 2 minute movies, right? But what about interactive animations, the ones where the client can walk around using WASD and mouse. Does "the client" have to have a powerful GPU/CPU/RAM/etc to run it?

thanks for the help

pilou

@Chipp

@unknownuser said:

Did you use Fredo scale to make the curved geometry?

Yes of course!

@unknownuser said:

Also what to do you use to make your GIFs?

The nifty free GifCam

chippwalters

@jonfar said:

I know it all depends on the quality and personal preferences but, once you learn how to work with it, is it easy/quick to set up scenes? or is it complex (like rendering in VRay) and requires you to tweak a lot of options and test the lighting and stuff until you reach the desired results?

Yes and no. The application of materials is pretty straightforward. Lighting is too, if you're outside. If inside, you'll need to add different lights such as light portals around windows (see my videos). Unity 5.6 has a new progressive lightmapper which makes it faster to set up lighting as you get a pretty fast read. The most cumbersome part is doing the final 'bake' for lighting, which can take up to several hours, once everything is set up.

@jonfar said:

Unity can export animations like walk around 2 minute movies, right? But what about interactive animations, the ones where the client can walk around using WASD and mouse. Does "the client" have to have a powerful GPU/CPU/RAM/etc to run it?

Of course. Once you bake your lighting, it's easy to navigate and should not take any special computer to be able to navigate WASD your scene.

pilou

@Chipp
And the animation itself was just using the incredible LightUp!

sipi_2

Hi!

   These tutorials are very helpful, it helped me a lot, thank you very much!

I also use SketchUp and Unity to prepare my thesis. And with your tutorials my game looks much better now than it was 1 year ago!

I'd like to ask for advice, I just discovered a new problem.

As a thesis, I make a 3D labyrinth game (for testing path search algorithms) and it is made up of 20X20 meter models (actually prefabs). If I put only few models in the scene, it will bring about 60 fps. But in more than 20 models, I get extreme fps drops if the camera is in the direction of a large number of models. All this despite the fact that there is a wall between them. But overall, they lose a lot of fps.

That is why I tested my models in an empty project without all kinds of effects, textures and lighting.Only SketchUV and basic Sketchup textures remained on them.

First I put 1 model into the scene and it's got about 90 fps. The same applies to the 4 models.
But in 10 models, it was only 70 fps. For the 30 models it dropped to 40 fps.
The problem is that I need about at least 200 prefabs per scene, but rather more.

What could be the problem?

My config:
CPU: Intel i5-3470 3.20 GHz
RAM: 20 GB DDR3
GPU: Radeon 6570 1 GB DDR3

The video card is pretty weak, but I think this pair of models should just endure.
I'm sorry, my English is not the best ...

Thanks in advance!

chippwalters

Please review occlusion culling:
https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/OcclusionCulling.html

sipi_2

@chippwalters said:

Please review occlusion culling:
https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/OcclusionCulling.html

It works! I very thank you!