Extending Design Options to Virtual Environments

MACHIEL ODENDAAL: Good morning, midday, evening, or midnight, and welcome to today's presentation of Extending Design Options To Virtual Events. We will be looking at connecting Revit, 3dsmax, and Unity Forma to create a virtual environment so you can showcase design options to your clients. I hope you enjoy the session.

So let's go through a little bit of the introductions to get things rolling. So if you haven't read this the presentation slides before, so just have a quick of what we're going to look at. We're going to look at Revit, 3dsmax, and Unity Forma and the possibilities around that. The learning objective is really to create a concept environment out of Unity Forma, leverage some of the latest technology in the ArchViz workflows, and establish some engaging platforms for you and your clients.

A little bit about me-- my name is Machiel Odendaal. I'm coming from South Africa. I am a Software Explorer, Product Explorer, and a Workflow Developer. I really like my hands on new products, new services to really push the industry.

I am a registered professional in the field of architecture, and I've been working with the company, Modena AEC and Infrastructure, for four years now. This is my first AV presentation, and I'm really excited to present today and nervous.

So as it was a little bit of a footnote, I don't see myself as an expert in any of the software I'm going to showcase today. And I guess that's also why we are at AU is to really learn from each other and really take our skills to the next level.

A little bit about the company I work for. So Modena AEC and Infrastructure is based in South Africa. Yes, that little place at the bottom that's always mentioned in movies like the Avengers. And yet we are one of the biggest partners in Africa for Autodesk products and also a platinum partner as such.

And do remember, because it's Africa, we have a Hulk. So come join us, and if you're in South Africa, pop by; we would love to meet. So let's get into what we're going to do.

So what is Unity Forma? Unity Forma is really a platform designed for product development and showcasing. It's meant to take your CAD models, vred files, and bring it into an environment where marketing specialists can build a configuration tool and publish it to clientele. Now, it started off all products, and we're going to really look at how the AEC industry can utilize these new technologies.

So I'm going to showcase first with the end in mind of what Unity Forma can do as a possibility item. This is going to stop my screen.

So-- Unity Forma. So this is one of the examples; we can actually learn unity former as a product on a website and navigate around it in a clear environment. Now, we won't be going to this level for this presentation. We will be showcasing more of a Windows based execution file-- executable file-- and begin from there.

So as you can see, we've got a nice little product; the car-- the Aviera sample file from Unity-- where you can actually navigate around it. Now this is a fully customizable platform. We're just going to work with the base form, but you can have anything plugged into this. So you can open up doors, change the color of the car to different color schemes along the way; a really intuitive platform to build on.

On top of that, they've recently showcased how you can use a WebGL environment. So it uses a lighter, model-less complicated geometry and kind of build the same process within this space. This is ultimately where you want to take our product development in the AEC industry-- to really make it available to clients on a easier platform. So let's get into it.

OK, so Unity Forma has developed this workflow of how you take your geometry through three different stages. Import, where you take your geometry various data files, you bring it into Unity Forma, and you start configurating your platform or product within the Create tool. They developed it to a certain point. You publish it to whatever environment you want to go to. As you can see in the list, you've got Mobile, WebGL, Cloud Streaming. You've got AR, VR, which is not currently available, but coming soon, and Hybrid Streaming. On top of this, you've got the executable files that will also export or look at exporting out.

So having a look, let's take a step to where we want to start. As most AC forms, we like to start at authoring tools, Revit 3ds Max, Fusion, whatever the case might be. For our example, we're going to really kick off with Revit and 3ds Max, and this is a little bit of a pre-state to the import tool. We want to start with our base information before we can really import the process.

So this is where I'm going to start at Revit. Now, for my example, I'm going to jump from Revit into Max, and then take it into Unity Forma. However, Revit and Max can coincide, depending on where your skills are.

So what is my example? What does it look like? So I've got a little bit of a bachelor unit, a little space to play around with. With just a small kind of environment, I've created 3D views of different options and then also have different materials. Ultimately, we'll take this product, or project, out into 3ds Max and bump it up a little bit in there, as well.

So let's have a look. So the way I've set up my Revit project as a bachelor flat is a really small environment to showcase the living room area with different options. Now, the options I've built was really just two variations, so the one is the Desk kind of environment, our primary design option. The second one is a little bit of a Bookshelf environment.

Now, I'm going to complete this one in 3ds Max, just to showcase how you can leverage different platforms to generate items. On top of that, I ensured that my materials within Revit has been set up to be unique, so that selections in Max and in Unity can be simplified. Now, always remember our little Share hand to have that information there. And that's basically the process of what we want to do.

Now, how I like to set up my Revit files is I would like to set up a 3D view of what I want to export out. So here I've got my 3D view of just my base building, and a 3D view of my design options for 1 and 2. And like I said, too, we won't really bring up to 3ds Max, but this will just place all the family components. That's setting up our initial project.

Now, taking the next step, we will go into 3ds Max. We will import our Revit files. We will merge some other Max content from different environments, so it could be any platforms, any other software-generated items. We will group our information to create, again, our design options, and ultimately export that out as an FBX for Forma.

So just to showcase our design options, we've got Design Option 1-- again, it's our little Desk environment-- and Option 2, which is mostly Max-generated, is our furniture, our workshop option.

So for this example, I did kick off with a clean project, and all I'm going to do is start importing my Revit files. Actually, you can use your company templates, existing material libraries, et cetera. Now, once you've got your environments up, the first thing I'm going to do is look for my 3D views, so my base build and my design options. And those are the ones I want to bring into Max.

So once we've loaded it up, we can see Select A View. That's where you can select our base build. Now, I've got a preference of bringing in my materials by my combination rule, as category and material, with a variety of other options you can go for. And ultimately, bring that in, and bring all the components with it.

Once it's loaded, we can now see base build is in. Now, one of the key things is really organizing, we'll see in Explorer, like grouping your geometry together. So that's just what I did, group base build together, and now we're going to import our next stage, or design option. Same file, same process. Just make sure you select the correct view. And [INAUDIBLE].

And there we go-- got a lot less items, but you can bring all of them in. And naturally, it all comes in the correct location because it's all based on Revit's coordinate systems. And we'll follow the same process of just grouping our elements and give it a name, Design Option 1. So that is bringing in my Revit geometry for later use.

And then we're going to really start, and then we're now going to bring in our other 3ds Max content. So I'm just going to merge an existing project. We have set up a bachelor unit layout, with different furniture pieces already in the correct location. And I'm going to bring in all my content geometry. I don't need to bring anything else because it's only the geometry in there.

Now, ultimately, our geometry will overlap over each other, and that's perfect. Because we're creating design options, we do want them to be like that. Now, just to make sure, again, same process-- group our geometry together to create a new design option. That will be usable in Unity Forma. And there you go. That's the initial setup that you want to go through. And you can just double-check that all the geometry has been set up and just verify that we've got Design Option 1 and Design Option 2. So there's our Design Option 2, and then Design Option 1 is now visible.

Then you can spend more time, setting up more design options, more geometry, however you want to break it up, your project. And on top of this, you can now add a lot more materials if you need to bring in any additional colors, material maps, that you have. You can utilize all of that still within your Max environment and just bring it across to Unity-Forma-related development for tweaking and things like that. And there we go, our first iteration of the item.

Now, once you got your model set up, color scheme, design, everything ready to go, we do want to start the process of exporting our content. Now, it's simple enough. You basically export your files in FBX out of 3ds Max. Always make sure you select the latest version. And you also make sure you just select materials to go up. Embed media, like materials, and then make sure the latest version of FBX selectable. And you could just say, OK.

And that's as simple as that, to get everything done. Now it's really time to go into Forma and create whatever we need to create there. So the new stuff, Unity Forma. So what we're going to do is just a quick overview of Unity Forma. So you guys are familiar with a little bit of the navigation tool, the features within the platform, what you can do.

So kicking off, when you look at Unity Forma, I've got a sample file that I have here from Unity, again, open. Now, because Unity Forma sits on top of Unity itself, you've got the back-end functionality of it. In the top left corner, we've got a typical drop-down menu with all of our commands and things like that. Then we've got a configuration tool at the left-hand side, and this is where you're really going to spend time, customizing your product and make it look and feel the way you need to.

You've got a product, which is going to give variations. We've got our backdrops, or environments, camera setups. Move all this, if you really don't want to drag on showcases. We won't be showcasing this. And the final step is running a build-out of our products and variations.

In the center, we've got our view navigation, which comprises of two components of C, which is our active working environment, and our game, which allows us to run a variation of the process. And on the right-hand side is our last item, which is our product, or the loaded geometry or CAD files. In this case, this is where our base build is set. That's really the user interface. But on top of that, you can also see the materials whenever you select a piece of geometry, so it comes with your content.

So that is a little bit of the interface and what you have to navigate and go through. Now the next step is importing of geometry, getting everything into our Unity Forma environment, which is-- call it a three-step approach. So you need to add a product, which in this case is our 3ds Max FBX file. We need to add an environment. And in the last step is-- we try [INAUDIBLE] to do-- is a little bit of a camera setup while working and figuring out. It doesn't have to be my final camera setups.

So currently, you've got the Aviera up first. And you're going to use this template and just build on top of it. So the place we need to go to is our profile settings. We can access it by selecting the gear and just go to Profile Settings, or from your Windows, Profile Settings tab.

Now, your profiles have been set up in such a way where you can have multiple profiles or different build types. But the idea is that a profile contains one product, so we should technically get rid of the Aviera. So I'm going to create a new profile, rename it to become a AU presentation. And from there, I can start setting up the quality level, what I want to work with, and then also load a product.

So the product is really what we want to focus on. That's our FBX. Now, easy part is, you add. You've got two options-- From File, From Unity Product, or Project. So the File, simple enough-- upload from your desktop. There you go. For simplicity, I've already loaded my unit in Unity Projects. And from there, I can just search for my bachelor unit as an FBX and just load that into the Products. And then all you need to do is, from there, click and drag it into my current project profile, and in our FBX, load it with the options. And you can see the groups, how it made our model information simpler to be.

The last step, and there you can see the last step is to change our backdrop. So I can just go back into Profile Settings and Environment. So there are some standard environments. These are a little bit more product-based than showroom-orientated. And we can still load our own environments that you can set up in Unity, or you can use the basic white, or whatever the case might be.

So I've just got a little one called Sky Scene. Again, double-click to load it, and then you can just click and drag it into your environment. And that will become the option at the back. So nothing has been updated, because we have to make this Bachelor our active project, so you can set that as active. And now we've got a unit within Unity Forma.

So there are some materials that do get lost during the process when you're in [INAUDIBLE] FBX, depending on what material types you're using from Revit or other software and things like that. Now, as I mentioned, a lot to set up, a little bit of camera slots. This is a sample file. Ours is getting starting point.

So because I'm only going to change a little bit of my living room, I'm going to get a little bit of the top angle and just add a camera. We're going to also showcase a little bit of floor changes we're going to work with. So I'm going to add a camera that'll mark environment. Then a little bit of a last one is playing a little bit with the feature wall in the background. We'll just add a camera in there, so we can highlight those changes, as well. Now, we'll be looking at the camera settings a little bit later, so I'm just using some standard camera setups for this iteration.

And that's effectively the Import setup, and we have started moving slowly into the Create function. So the Create is where you start building our product variations and set up anything you want to set up during that stage. Those are the key points we need to understand when setting up a product. As you get two types of product variations, one is a Visibility item. The second is a Material one. Now, the difference is, the Product Visibility is being able to switch between geometry, and the visibility of the Material one is to make sure that we can switch between different color options on that item.

So coming back into a little bit of a viewer, I just hid one design option to make it easy. Now all we need to do is really just select our groups of our FBX. That's why it makes sense to have it like that. And all you have to do is click and drag it across into your product. We'll get a dialog box. What do you want to do? Is it a Material Visibility, or is it a Geometry Visibility item you want to set up?

In this case, we want to go with the visibility of objects. And Unity Forma will realize there's two variations we can work with, Design Option 1 and 2, and we can select that. And it will automatically populate that information for us. There we go-- switch between them with a click of a button. And we can always just rename what this variation should be. So there's our Furniture Layout as an example.

So that's step 1, Product Visibility. Step 2 will be to start looking at how to bring Material Visibility across. Now, because I'm going to work with my floor panel, I can either select it in the view itself or from the drop-down list. And I can also select the bedroom and the kitchen floor. And again, click and drag them across. It'll tell you, bring in two items across. What do you want? Material Visibility, in this case. And there, we created our two sets, one for the bedroom floor and one for the kitchen.

Now, currently, we've only got one material applied to this, so we do need to add more materials onto the surface to give us a method of being able to select that. We're just navigating to that little bit of a camera view to get our item set up. So in order to do the changes, we need to open up our Material Picker, and this effectively will load all the materials within a Unity project. So you can have standard materials for your organization loaded in here. There's also materials that could come from 3ds Max or from other locations, and you can just do a search to find all the materials you need.

Now, it's easy enough. You can just click and drag a material on, and it will change that material visibility or kind of item. Or to make a material variation, you can select the different materials you'd like to have and click it onto variation there. And now that will populate more materials into this project. And now, again, as you can see, we can jump between them quite easily and quite nice.

You can also go and change an existing item, so for instance, tile floor. I want to change that item. I can just go and pull something on top of that material there. So you can see tile floor. I'm going to do a search for another tile finish. I will look at what we have available. Tile's white. Click it on top, and there we go. We've got a variety of tiles that we can look at.

OK. That's as easy as how you can set it up. Now, we'll be doing it, reiterating the process over again with a new variation quarter at the back, so just renaming everything so it makes sense. That's our kitchen floor. And that'll be our bedroom floor. Again, just click a few items, then click and drag it across.

We're now looking at our feature wall in the background. So I do want to add some stone to it, or whatever the case might be. Again, just remember we need to have the product base, so let's select the wall. Bring it across. It's going to be new material. And there we go-- simple process of creating our different products. This is where you'll spend most of your time, getting all your different variations set up on the different items.

Now, one of the last things we do want to make sure we set up with some variations is to create thumbnails. Now, the intent of a thumbnail is just, once a product is loaded, that you can actually get a little bit of an icon of what you're looking at. Now you can close our Material Picker, and you can decide where you want to go to. So you want to assign a little bit of our floors.

So when you go into your thumbnail, make sure you select your product's level, so the top item in the group. And if you scroll down, you'll see there's a thumbnail editor. Then once you open it up, you get a nice, little view. So we can still pan around and get a view we'd like to have, to really showcase what we need to showcase. We can just save the thumbnail, then ultimately populate it across the board. So this will create a little bit of an icon, and each variation now will get a clickable icon that represents its materials across the product.

You can do the same with your furniture now. So again, get a view that you like. Maybe pan around, like go there to there. Go back to your product list, select the option, Thumbnail Editor, same process, Save, then Populate. OK. And that will, again, create a variation between each furniture layout for you, so no screenshots capturing all the information. It basically does it for you. That's the simplicity of actually setting up your product to be able to spin around with a different setup, being set up differently.

So once you've got everything set up, our furniture, our materials, however you want to go-- even your cameras you can set up concrete and things like that-- we do want to take a little bit of time and go play around to see if what we've done is correct. So I've added a bit more camera. So I've added a little more color schemes to our product, just to get it a little bit more full.

But ultimately, this is where you want to go and, say, go to our Game mode. We want to test out our product. And we want to hit the Play button to get the actual experience our end users will get. So it will take a little bit of time, processing the content and loading it. Once loaded, we can see it will default into certain default settings. And from there, we can start playing around.

So you can have this menu there on the side, which is standard with Forma's. You don't have to pull the menu bar. And there, we can see the furniture layout, jump between there. We can jump between the different materials associated to our floors. Then we can also play around with the feature wall in the background, loading that kind of content across the board. And the same with all seats. We can play around with the different materials, and this should be in Design Option 1. So we can play with different colors of our furniture.

And then, lastly, your different cameras will be visible. And you can navigate between them. From a user's point of view, this is actually quite nice. And now you can just focus on specific areas. And I can also look around, pan around, walk around, whatever we want to do, to get a good feel for what's happening on the project. And once we've navigated and made our notes, decide what needs to change, we can just go back to our scene environment and then just go back into whatever we want to do. That should stop the game first. Oh, and there we go. Time to move on to adjust and make any changes we need to do.

So having a brief overlook of what you can do with the cameras, currently, I'm just looking at about two of the multiple tools that's available to you. The major one is our Behavior Type. So this is how your camera really operates when we're using [INAUDIBLE] in the platform.

So the free look is full flexibility. The user can look around, what I want to do. You've got the rotation, walk around, or with pan and not. Now, what's nice about this, you can either restrict the person to a specific view, so they can only look at what you're showcasing, or you can give them a freedom of walk-around or any combination thereof. It does help a lot in help navigating the users the way you want to do it.

And on top of that, you've got the blend tool. And this will allow you to navigate from one camera to another in a seamless way, so either ease out or ease in. You can select from any camera, move across another camera, and how you want to do it. So in this case, I might want to do an EaseOut, and it might take us two seconds or three seconds to go from one camera view to another camera view. And we can have multiple lines of this. And at the top, we've got a default lane, which will ease out automatically.

Then one nice feature I like about Unity Forma is a Cinamachine, which allows you to create walkthroughs on [INAUDIBLE] across or throughout your product. It's really up to you, how you want to do it and how you want to set it up. You won't be looking into it, but I know this is a really cool tool to utilize. And that's ultimately the basics you need to set up for your cameras to really get it going.

So now we've ultimately finished up our Create platform. Import, create, and now we're ready to publish our product out for the rest of the world to see. Again, look at the formats. It's quite a nice list, currently. And it's quite simple. You've got a tab. You create a profile or a build profile. You do a little bit of the settings, and you export it out.

So it's the last option in our configurator. Go to drop-down. We can go build. We'll create a new profile. Now, always rename the profile to match whatever you need it to be. The profile we want to work with, we do want to use our bachelor unit, so this is where you can set up different profiles for different environments. The product we want to use, the Build Type, are equal-- the configuration application is what we want to use for the entire project. The target is, at this point, Windows 64, and in all the other devices will become available, or it will be available, depending on how you set up your Unity environment.

So once you selected that build on the target, you just hit the Build, and that will create your executable file for you that you can basically save out. So I'm just going to place it into my assets for Builds, and need to just give it a name, which I'll get to now. And this is a mass executable file. You can zip up, send off to a client, send off to someone else, and they can really walk through a platform without you having to be there, that they can play around with the different environments.

And that's basically the end of the process, which is, ultimately, how do you create a product with Unity Forma. I mean, it's a nice platform, but simple to use once you've got all your geometry, and then you know how you want to present it to a client.

So coming into a little bit of a QA session, I do want to say, thank you, everyone, for attending this session. My name is Machiel Odendaal. Connect me on LinkedIn if you want to discuss more about Unity Forma. Go look at Unity Forma's webinars, a great series they have provided. And then also go have a look at the handout. There's a lot of additional resources presented in there. And I'll leave it open to a Q&A session. Thank you, everyone. Hope you had a great time.