Supplying-Arch Viz Demo with UE

Development Architectural and Design Visualization
1

Hi,

Trying to get me head around this and would appreciate some pointers.
I’m experienced with Max and V-ray, stills and animations but new to UE
I’ve watched some tutorials on lighting, mapping and even making an animation and that’s all clicking into place, however I’m hoping I can use this for a living project and I’m not sure if I can; or where to start.

Forgive me if this is long winded.
I want to create a "living project " where items change on a regular basis, and I’d like to output it as a playable demo on each revision.
As the design develops I need to change furniture arrangements, wall arrangements, finishes etc.

This would be a long term project (2+ years) with edits coming 1 a month.
I’m trying to figure how do I supply the demos to my client privately,as in not for everyone to see, in a game playable format, rather than an avi.

My questions are related to how my client can view the demo and what they need on their end to play ?
Forgive my ignorance, I buy my games “boxed” and have never downloaded a game or demo.

I signed up and want to view one of the Arch-viz Projects to see if it will run , however I got the demo into my cart, started launcher and was prompted to download the Engine which is a few gigs.
The guys I deal with have issues downloading Quick-time so I feel like if I’m getting confused at this point, they will be lost.

I really haven’t started into the package so maybe I’m asking some really silly questions and going about it all wrong,
My clients are looking towards Lumion and I’m not overly impressed with the output and want to give them an alternative and keep quality high.I know the ability to walk around would be a great benefit but I have to think of the practical application also.

I’m trying to find out if this is realistically possible

Any help greatly appreciated, pointers to tutorials focused on Arch Viz playable Demos rather than animations unmercifully appreciated :), and laughter at my ignorance expected!

I’m going to go look for ideal 1 machine arch-viz system specs also in the forum now, if anyone can point me in the right direction I would be grateful.

Thanks

2

You can send the packaged project (aka a .exe of your project) via wetransfer or a similar service. Your client may need a powerful pc if your ‘‘demos’’ are well made and of high quality. If you send your client a uproject file, he’ll need unreal engine, but you can package it and they won’t need the editor. It’s gonna be like any other app, you click on the .exe and you’re good to go!

Here is an example of a packaged demo of a loft. Download it and see for yourself how it run on your pc. London Loft by CGcloud

3

For the super sexy ArchViz scenes you may have seen from this community, your client will need a $1500 PC built specifically for games. If you connect some sort of remote desktop client, you could go in and install your latest versions without anyone knowing. And like phil said, you can create a shortcut that just launches your demo fast and easy.

For my company, we are doubling our efforts to make ArchViz that runs on PCs AND mobile (which takes a lot of optimization). For something like iOS, it is very easy to push the latest version of your app to your client. If you use a service like Installr, you can circumvent the App Store and your client will get an email whenever you update the app.

4

I’m really putting hope on streaming services like amazon appastream and x.io (easier to setup) to let my potential clients play their very high quality demo on any devices they want. I’ve done some tests and it’s almost there, the mouse controls are just a bit rough right now but the streaming quality is pretty much there. I’ve played demos like Unreal Paris and London loft with the max quality on a laptop, on a tablet, in my browser and even in my phone. Can’t wait for X.io to exit beta phase!

The way it work with X.io is you upload the app on your account (or your client’s account if he prefer) and you get a code that you can embed anywhere. The client click the code (link) and the demo and is streamed within the cloud. :slight_smile: currently they run their stuff on quite good computer with grid k520 gpu.

5

Thank you for the link to the London Loft.Getting any production onto clients machines is going to be a challenge.
x.io looks like it has potential.Fingers crossed you get it working seamlessly.I’ll try and get a basic scene together and get it running.

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I don’t presume this is going to be easy , but I hope it will be beneficial to clients and I’m looking forward to the learning curve. I’ve only ever built rendering machines and I stick to my xbox for gaming so its a whole new world…
I dont think I could convince them to pay out for a "gaming " rig , but being able to specify Ram, Processor and Graphics card to use as a tool might do the trick. I’ve lots of reading to do on my side, and looking forward to it.
Installr could be good.Thanks for getting back

7

I made a quick test the other day. This is Koola’s demo scene (with extra movie and assets) being streamed by X.IO. Running in my browser. It could run at the same quality/speed on a laptop or a tablet. It’s not too bad I guess.

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Thats great to see, thanks.Just wondering Are you using a game pad or keys and mouse to control it?I think I’ll have to adopt x.io into my pipeline.It will take a while to get my scene set-up but its definitely worth looking into further .

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mouse and keyboard. I sent an email to the guys at X.io because the mouse input isn’t working great (the mouse is not locked to the game window, so if you move too far on each side, you lose control of your in-game character) but they said they’re working on it. They also said 1080p and 30 fps is the max quality for now. I guess going higher would require huge bandwidth.I tried game pad and it does not work for now but hopefully it will in the future! They stream application with a gpu equivalent to a GTX 680. Take that into consideration since it’s not the newest gpu on the market but still a decent one.

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Howdy KM2015,
Welcome to the Unreal Archviz club!!!

I feel you and i have been looking for ways to present to clients in a seamless, easy to use experience.

There is a ‘plugin’ available for touch navigation. swipe, point and the sorts. I think this is a ‘must’ for easy navigation on tablet. Will cost about $10USD though.
https://www.unrealengine.com/content/ef6a59e5f9354b4dab3e4902a84aa8fc

Like what heartlessphil suggested, i think appstream or X.io(never tried this myself) is the way to go. Put it all together and you get something like this!!!
Realtime UE4 Archviz on android tablet. - YouTube

All your client needs to do is download an app on playstore and a good internet connection. :slight_smile:

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I have not found how to make amazon appstream work yet, but I will…I will.

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Hi heartlessphil I saw the video that you attached and I noticed that my x.io window is different from your: as you can see there is the browser frame that contains a black frame (the one with the “X” at the top right corner) and another frame that displays the Unreal scene. The navigation experience it’s really awful :frowning:

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Are you sure you are playing your UE4 application on full screen mode?

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If you have some development experience you could make an initial app with UE4 that would then connect to your server and download new updates which would make it easier so that they don’t have to keep installing new builds.
HTML5 is probably the easiest, as far as things go, but there may be bugs and stuff like that, and still requires a powerful enough PC to run it, but at least they wouldn’t have to install anything special.
For mobile if you do Android you can easily output an APK, though there’s some extra steps that they would need to do to install it on their Android device, plus potential compatibility issues depending on what device they use.

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Hi rabellogp, when I press Alt+Enter the scene goes into full screen but, as you can see it fills only the black part of the screen (not totally full screen)

235dfa4ad652a5a88f5a1f26b3dd773023207867.jpeg
235dfa4ad652a5a88f5a1f26b3dd773023207867.jpeg1920×1080 287 KB

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Seems like X.IO is easier to set up and have better quality. Gonna try it out!!! :slight_smile:

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I think that is a “limitation” of the easy API they offer. If you want to change that, I think you are going to need to mess with their javascript api streams/:stream_id

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I emailed Otoy and they said there is no fullscreen mode implemented yet. The service is still in beta! Hopefully it will come soon. This cause mouse problems too, like limited distance you can rotate on each side. I tried to solve this by playing with a controller but it doesn’t seem supported (yet?!?) either.

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Hi guys, any of you have this issue when using x.io? I am not sure if i am doing this right. I have packaged my ‘game’ into an x.io package file using appetizer, and upload the game.

However, the upload has been in full bar for almost a few hours now. I have relaxed more than enough. Is this common? Anyone have faced this issue before?

i can't relax.jpg

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That appened to mee too, with two different projects, it seems that the project is uploaded but it isn’t. I tired uploading once again and it finally worked