Hey guys, I want to let you know about this really cool thing that I found
online, which kind of goes in line with the way I thought always that
arch viz, and virtual reality especially, should be used. So, I have a background in
art history and architectural history have a degree in that and so I've always
been interested I'm a 3d artist but I'm only I've always been interested in just
architectural history and art history in general so I've always thought that
those two things should be combined with each other and especially when you go to
visit ancient sites I always think wouldn't it be cool if we
could walk through this in virtual reality the way it existed originally
right I think that kind of stuff would be super cool so we're not to that point
yet I mean obviously the technology is there and people are working on those
kind of things I know someone's working on recreating the Roman Forum in 3d
hopefully someday we'll be able to walk through the Roman Forum in virtual
reality I recently walked through the Titanic
and virtual reality which someone online is creating for a video game that is
absolutely awesome but there's this other thing too where they're going and
documenting Google is doing this in cooperation with this company called
sci-arc and they have this open heritage product project and they're going around
and actually documenting ancient sites world heritage sites so this is awesome
because they're using technologies like lidar and and photo scanning to document
the sites and create perfect 3d models of them so you can't necessarily walk
through them in VR what what this offers you here is like 360 360 degree
panoramic views that you can click to and go to which is cool you can get in
there and look in any direction and there's photographs all around you and
you go to specific points but I actually think it's way more immersive to be in
there at human scale inside of the premium VR goggles like my HTC vive
because this really makes you feel like you're standing there so with a little
bit of work we can get there and I think it's cool so I
downloaded a sample here if you go to arts and culture Google arts and culture
I typed an open heritage that's the name of the project and I went to the Chichen
itzá 3d model here which is a Mayan observatory and it's pretty cool so I
saw one that was kind of small and they if you click on this you can see that it
takes you to a 3d model basically a 3d scan of that building ok so how do you
take this into vr well you have to know a little bit about Unreal Engine but if
you do then it's actually super easy ok so it's better than just skin panning
around like this you can actually stand right there look up at this thing and
then walk around as you please which is awesome so if you download this model it
gives you something like this ok here it is in three Super Max ok so if you
follow the normal steps to export into Unreal Engine and you can take this
model and get it into something that will work with virtual reality I've used
the export data Smith ok data Smith is the new tool that makes all this stuff
very easy doesn't matter what kind of textures are there if you look at the
textures it's it's completely unwrapped with tiny little photograph chunks
placed all over that model so it's cool it's ready to go already
so if we go into our Epic Games launcher launch Unreal Engine ok and here I'm not
gonna redo everything I've already read I've already created this in VR but all
I did was go to new project new project I went to standard VR virtual reality
here and then I converted to a data Smith project so I could import data
Smith of course you can do it as an FBX 2 with this one it doesn't really matter
but I opened the basic VR thing and if you don't know where to go from there
just check out some of my other videos about using the VR tutorial but I
followed those basic steps I kind of deleted the things in their place my new
model in there and let's open it up and see what it looks like ok so here I am
just in the standard motion controller map I deleted all the objects in here
all the cubes and stuff around I imported my own object
and in fact like I said I didn't need to use data Smith for this I just exported
using basic FBX because this is all just a standard material one material on a
model very easy to import the material looks like that which is totally crazy
but there it is and then all I did was bringing the model set up some lighting
I had to scale it and the only downfall is I don't know exactly what scale this
is that I could go look that up and get this to the exact right size I have not
done that so I scaled it up to something that looks basically right and then my
post-processing and my light mass volumes are both here in post-processing
let's see I turned on a little bit of fog to kind of make this this bloom
going on the environmental fog which is already there in the template and I
baked in some lighting made the lighting just static and baked it in the Sun
coming from that direction off to my right and then the only other thing I
had to do was go into the static mesh here and add a collision which you can
see here just this big box and it isn't perfect because that ground isn't
perfectly flat so I could go in and be more careful about that if I want it to
be more realistic so that my VR character is always walking exactly on
the ground I did not do that I could could compute a very complicated convex
collision over here to fit my object or I could model a simplified collision box
in 3ds Max and import it and use it as the collision here but for now I just
put a box and we can walk around on top of that the only thing to be aware of is
to make sure that you put that collision box in there so that your navigation
works if you hit P your navigation preview will come up and wherever your
navigation navmesh bounds volume which of course you can get over here and drag
into your scene wherever that box intersects with the
collision on our Observatory here then you will have navigation capabilities
with the VR hands and motion controllers okay so that's really all it takes then
you go to the VR preview click on it and here we are in VR we've got our o let me
show you one other thing default in the level is to have the VR
pond right here so there is placed inside that doorway that's where your
player player will start and again I've got tons of videos about the VR template
if you want to learn about that so let's hit play and check it out really dark in
here the auto exposure is working though so it's getting brighter I'm gonna get
my headset and walk around okay I'm inside here here's my hands use my thumb
pads to navigate around you can look up and see some of the ruins that have
eroded up there if we walk outside I've got kind of this little boat going on
around here you can walk over to here stand right on the ground we can turn
around I think this is so cool this gives you the scale let me stand up this
gives you the human scale of this place it makes you feel like you're there I've
never been there in person I wish I had but if I had then I'd probably know this
scale a little bit better Here I am reaching up to the top of the door you
can walk through here and I don't even actually know if you can do this in
person I assume you can here's the stairs coming up to the observatory and
again I can fix that collision to work better so I could actually walk up the
stairs and get this approach right but there it is
there's the observatory at Chichen itzá and it's pretty awesome as you guys
probably know the headsets are the most effective way of of getting that human
scale element and feeling like you are actually in the space getting all the
getting all the proportions set in your mind and feeling like you've really
experienced the space so in short it's the most immersive experience as far as
3d goes that I have found and so I think it's really cool that they make these
models available and with a few little steps you can get them in VR and walk
around now this is a small site but they've got big sites all scanned in 3d
too that you can walk around and experience for yourself so hopefully you
have some fun with that and think it's cool you can check out my dub my you can
check out the link and I'll let you have this little project here if you want to
walk around in it and of course this model doesn't belong to me it is a
Creative Commons license and it comes from psy art so go ahead and check that
out and thanks for watching