Hey guys, I wanted to show you some things I've been working on in Unreal
Engine 4 arc vis I've been thinking a lot about art vis how it's gonna change
with the advent of virtual reality and I want to kind of stay ahead of the game
for my students and for all you out there so I'm trying to kind of think
about how arc vis can best implement the VR technology and of course I get a lot
of feedback from architects about this kind of thing about what they'd like VR
to be able to do so I'm trying to develop somewhat of a template that has
some of those tools built in so right now it's very rudimentary but I have
developed somewhat of a template and really it's all just in the VR pawn here
so all I have is a basic VR template just default but I'm modifying the VR
pawn to to have some extra tools inside it so I've remapped some of the input
settings so if you go to project settings and input here you can remap
what your buttons do so I've done a couple things I think it's these mode
left and mode right here which are mapped to motion controller left face
button and and motion controller left face button so I made it so that on the
left thumb pad you can change what mode you are which basically changes the
tools which tool you're creating or which tool you're using so if we go into
the blueprint of this it's kind of a mess right now because it's still
work-in-progress I was thinking about a zoom tool I was thinking about lots of
different things there's snapshot tool that's an easy one that's just execute
the console command of high-res shot okay so you can map any button to do
that to just take a screenshot Architects often want a screenshot of
what they're looking at and I'll show you something else I've implemented in
so over here we're just doing some controls of what mode Rin this is really
what's checking the mode so right now there's modes 0 1 2 3 & 4 and each one
goes to a branch if it's true then it runs the tool if it's false then it in
it goes on and finds the tool that is active basically and then each one and
this is all running through the event tick as well so this is the default
event tick stuff going on that is set up by Epic Games for the VR template so
this is just running the basic VR controls but then I put another it added
another pin to the sequence and that's where I'm running I'm checking which
mode I'm in and then running these tools so it's basically while it's in that
mode these tools are being run through event ik and the way we're controlling
whether those tools are turning on and off is with this little boolean here
which is just mode tool is active or it's not so during a vent tick so during
your whole game it will check the mode and it'll go to this area over here and
if mode tool is in fact active then it will run that for every tick of your
game right there that tool so I put in you can see a laser pointer here let's
look at the different modes I've got going on here there's the mode array and
I have interact measure redline pointer and hover hover I haven't actually
developed any code for yet but I want to be able to if you're standing in a tall
room kind of zoom into something up above you or kind of levitate up to it
so you can look at things up on the ceiling too because what I'm finding is
architects want to use this to be able to do design development meaning they
want to be able to get into their project while it's still in the design
phase and examine everything and comment on everything and change things and
really use it as a development tool so that's cool it's not just a kind of
marketing tool or a visualization tool but also a design development tool so
that's why that's where a lot of these tools come from feedback from architects
who want to be able to get in there and make comments do redlines examine their
building ok so this is all kind of a mess in here but that's the basics of
how it was set up so you change the tool I have a button that went when you click
that button it makes the mode tool active and it will run whichever tool
you're set to for every tick of your game and and let's just get in and see
how some of this stuff works and it's not all set up yet but this will give
you a good idea of what I'm trying to do
okay so you can see that I've set up some kind of rudimentary tools in here
like I said and this is basic template stuff just navigating around right now
if you look at my hand it's an interact which is the default mode for this
template so that's just picking up boxes and all that kind of thing so I find
that we use that a lot in our quiz the ability to pick things up and move them
in your design especially things like furniture or equipment or something like
that has been a huge thing to be able to do because people can go in and
essentially user test their building they can move things around themselves
and arrange things the way they want so that so that it's optimized for
efficiency or whatever it is they're trying to do and you guys know already
that being able to change materials in your art fist projects is huge thing
because people like to test different materials and see what they're gonna
look like so that's a big deal as well talked about some of that in my classes
before and how to do it and showed scripts for how to do it okay let's try
some of these other tools so well the way I have it set up is my left thumb
pad if I click right or left it changes the tools so hover like I said isn't set
up yet doesn't have any code associated with it
pointer is basically just a long line with a self-illuminated material on it
so that when people are walking around and other people are watching their
screen or if you have a multiplayer multiple users multiple architects
inside your your scene then they can collaborate with each other and when
they're talking about something the other one will know what they're talking
about because they have a pointer they say let's change this here and can I
have it by yesterday please you know that kind of thing the next tool redline
so if you work in art is you know that architects love redlining so the ability
to walk through and say let's change this here and just hold down your
trigger for the question mark like that and then so that everyone else who's
collaborating with them can see what they're doing and then if you had your
screenshot button set up you could also just snap a screenshot right there and
that will automatically save to your disk drive so then you can go back
through all your notes and what's going to happen the way I have that set up is
that red light that red red line is basically just going to slow
we fade out so the idea is you you make some red lines you snap a photo of it so
now you have kind of a history of the different changes and discussions you
had while in the scene next tool is measure so right now this is just doing
ray casting and you can see it's got the it's got the debug line showing so you'd
need to set that up with with something other than then the debug line because
you can see it gets kind of messy but it serves its purpose for demonstration
here what this does is you sign it on a surface and then it takes something
perpendicular from there and gives you a measurement so fourteen point two feet
right there and it'll go between any two surfaces it's got a hit though okay
right there twelve feet between those two boxes there you can see it in that
point over to there okay so that debug line isn't pretty you set that up with a
particle system or something but that's how the measurement works just takes a
perpendicular right off of there and then you put it on your hand and I'm
seeing that putting it on your wrist doesn't really work that well because
it's hard to see you have to kind of put it out in front of you okay but that's
how the measuring would work if there was a ceiling it would measure up to the
ceiling that's really useful for architects because when they're in the
design process they want to get in and see what the dimensions are okay and
then we're back to interact so I'd love to hear you guys as thoughts on this
what other ideas you have how we can make this better
obviously the UI the user interface really needs some work to be more
intuitive and more clean and better right now I'm just working on the the
basic scripts for the tools but I think this is really one way where arc-v' is
really gonna be changed dramatically by VR because of tools like this where you
can just literally get in and walk around and instead of talking abstractly
about changes we should make on the building or drawing red lines on a 2d
plan you can just get in there and say oh what's this this looked wrong let's
change that so in the comments I'd love to hear your guys thoughts about this
what other tools can be developed what you could do to make the UI better one
thing I don't like is that you change modes with the left hand but you're
doing all the tools with the right hand that seems to be confusing to people but
I also want to be able to write the red lines with the right hand or
maybe it needs to be switched for people who are left hands left handed as well
so you could maybe switch it interactively I don't know but these are
all things that need to be thought about and I think it's important because if
you've tried VR you know that it is the most effective by far hands down the
most effective way to communicate you're you're building to other people it's
more effective than a 2d rendering regardless of photorealism it's more
effective than an animation especially when you're talking about just
understanding the massing the proportions of that building it is so
effective it's very immersive it feels like you're
standing in that room and because it's tracking to your exact height in your
position and your exact motion it immediately communicates to you what
that room is going to feel like inside even if it's black and white that's how
kind of effective it is at that particular thing and that's a big deal
so we want to be able to have nice templates for this thing so that we can
easily just import our models have the tools we need to develop good
architecture so check out my classes if you want to learn more about doing VR
and creating your own VR projects and also feel free to leave comments and
suggestions about what you'd like to see in a template like this or maybe some
work that you've been doing as far as developing templates and tools for arc
vis in VR