What’s happening ladies and gentlemen,
this is Minh from Architecture Inspirations.
Today I’m going to show you a new Realtime render
and Virtual Reality software called Eyecad VR.
Let’s get started.
Eyecad VR is a software
where you can import your 3D models
and quickly create realtime renders
as well as Virtual Reality tours.
You can download a free trial by going to eyecadvr.com
After you have signed up
you can download the program and run the installation.
When you have installed the program,
you will see this window.
There are two options: Designer and Explorer.
We will start with the Designer option
because we want to import a 3D model.
Here you can log in with your email and the license key
that they provided after the sign up.
After you logged in, click here to download the latest update.
When it’s done, click this button again to launch it.
When you first opened Eyecad VR,
you will see a window that lists recent projects.
In this case, we will be creating a new project.
There are also demo projects that you can explore here.
When creating a new project,
you can give it a name and specify a folder location.
After a project is created, you can see that Eyecad VR
has a very nice and simple user interface.
Down here are the different sections
that you can use to modify your scene.
I will cover these later.
Now, I will import a 3D Model
by clicking on the eyecad VR logo
and select Import 3D Model.
Eyecad VR supports many types of 3D files,
but in this case I will use my Sketchup model.
Another way to import a Sketchup model
is by using the Eyecad VR Sketchup Plugin.
You can download it from the extension warehouse
and then install it using the extension manager.
Before I import my Sketchup model into Eyecad VR,
I need to do 2 things.
The first thing to do is to make sure that my model
does Not have more than 150 materials.
Exceeding the limit might result in an error in Eyecad VR
You can go here to see your Model info
and go to this section
to see how many materials are in your model
If there are unused materials in your model,
then you can use the Purge Unused feature
to remove materials that are not in use.
The second thing I need to do
is to make sure my geometries are facing the correct direction.
When I use the monochrome style,
I will be able to which geometry is facing the wrong direction.
By default, the front face in Sketchup is white,
and the back face is blue.
So you can see that this object has reversed faces
To fix it, I can just select those faces
and right click - reverse faces.
Now I can save the model,
and click this button here to import it into Eyecad VR.
Then a dialogue box will open in Eyecad VR,
I will leave these at the default settings
and just changed the Used Software to Sketchup and Import
It will take a while to import your model,
depending on how large it is.
After it’s imported, you can see the model here
in the personal objects section.
To navigate in Eyecad VR,
you can use the right mouse button to look around.
While holding down the right mouse button, use WSAD to move
You can also use Q to Move Down and use E to Move Up
Holding down Shift will allow you to move faster
Using the Middle mouse button will let you Zoom and Pan
To select an object, use the left mouse button.
There we go, now let’s start setting up our scene
First I will go to the Environment Tab
to adjust the lighting of the scene
by changing the time, date, location, and orientation.
I can also change the cloudiness using this slider here.
The weather tab will let you change between sunny,
rainy, and snowy weather.
I will cover this in more details later.
Finally you can turn on HDRI here.
Eyecad VR comes with a selection of really good HDRIs.
Each of them comes with 2 options,
one with the sky on, and one with the sky off.
The option with the sky off
will allow you use the background of the HDRI
while using the dynamic sky and clouds of Eyecad VR.
You can also import a Custom HDRI using this button here.
When using HDRI, you can adjust the brightness
and the rotation using these sliders here.
There we go, now you can use these options
to set up the perfect atmosphere for your scene
Next is lighting.
For this model, I will only use the area light.
After I have added the light,
I can use the Modify tab to move,
rotate, and scale the light to fit my model.
I can press W for the Move and Rotate tool
then use the gizmo to position the light.
You can also enter a specific value here if you want to be more accurate.
And I can press E for the Scale tool,
and size it to make it fit the scene
It’s important to place the light on the inside of doors and windows
shining toward the room.
When adding the light,
you can also hold Shift to activate angle snap
to make it easier to rotate the light accurately.
As you can see,
the area light is a great way to enhance the sunlight
and make the scene more realistic.
Next, I’m gonna go to the Effects tab
and add a Reflection Probe by dragging it in like so.
This is a good way to increase the quality of reflection on materials.
Now I need to place it in the middle
and size it to fit the room.
To make this easier, I can use the view cube
and turn off Perspective mode.
It’s important to make the external area of the Reflection Probe
touch the walls, ceilings, and floors
but do not go over them too much.
Stay inside the walls when you do this.
I’m going to edit the glass materials
so you can see the reflection easier.
As you can see,
the reflection probe makes your materials have better reflection
making it more realistic.
Once finished, I can go to Settings
and hide the Reflection Probe with this option here.
And I can hide the area light as well.
You can see that the area light and reflection probe
still work even though we hid them.
Next is Editing Materials
When importing a model into Eyecad VR,
all of your materials will be located in the Materials Tab,
in the Personal Materials section.
You can click on a Material to see its settings.
By default, Eyecad VR will automatically convert materials to PBR materials
by giving textured materials normal and reflection maps.
This will help your materials editing process a lot easier.
If you want to edit a material more,
then you can easily adjust it using these sliders here.
Remember to Save material after editing,
otherwise, it will reset to its default.
Instead of finding the material in the list,
you can also select an object and right click - edit materials.
There we go, just use this workflow to edit the materials in the model
You can also create a material from scratch by clicking here.
Then Import a custom texture here.
and now you can use it in your model
Eyecad VR also comes a huge library of materials that you can use.
These are web based so you can download whichever you want.
After it’s done downloading,
it will be under Personal Materials.
and now you can drag it on an object to apply it
Here you can see an object that has reversed faces
which we forgot to fix in Sketchup.
We can fix it here in Eyecad VR
by selecting the object,
right click - mesh settings - reverse faces.
For materials like leaves that only has one surface,
reversing it doesn’t fix it.
So you can edit the material, and turn on two sided mode.
Eyecad VR also comes with a library of objects
in different categories such as bathroom,
decorations, tables and chairs, etc.
You can use these to populate your model very quickly and easily.
When you’re done editing materials and adding objects,
you can go to the Settings tab to make some changes to your image
such as adjusting the quality and resolution,