technical architecture. » Portfolio

Architecture – Revit to Max to Unity

Dave Buchhofer — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 21:42:19 +0000

Here is a Revit -> 3dsmax -> Unity project that we worked on earlier this year.

the videos below are captured in HD in unity directly from some premade itween paths

Realtime HD Architecture, Captured in Unity3D from Dave Buck on Vimeo.

Basic workflow was to export out the WorkSets from Revit as individual FBX files
Import them into 3dsmax with the file link manager, usually set to combine objects by material
from there run a set of scripts that collapsed / welded / AutoSmoothed / split meshes that were too large (65k verts is a pain) cleans up the layers, replaces materials, and exports the now unity friendly layers into different FBX’s for unitys consumption

Inside unity there are a few small steps needed, done mostly with AssetPostProcessors that hook up any external lightmaps that we generated in max, replace/reconnect any materials that are in our standard material library, and attach any components that are supplied in the max user properties fields.

bake the lighting to suit, (In this case, just give us some AO and Sunlight since we needed to be able to turn around revit design changes -> working webplayer overnight with minimal user babysitting.)

this workflow allowed the building owner to ‘walk’ around the design very rapidly after it was changed.

There are a few more captures up at http://vimeo.com/vsai/videos/ for anyone interested.

ArtBreak, MiLB Stadium

Dave Buchhofer — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 19:55:34 +0000

A little Art break, here’s a few shots from a recent set of renderings done for a minor league baseball stadium.

What have you done for me lately?

Dave Buchhofer — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 17:10:09 +0000

I’ve been working on this tool for a while now, here’s a quick captured demo of some of the features of my hospital room design application in action.

Interactive 3D OR/ICU design tool from Dave Buck on Vimeo.

here’s a current video of my OR/ICU design project, created in unity3d, with fully configurable parametric models rigged with both IK and FK, and a tool to quickly draw out any layout of walls, windows and doors to spatially visualize the placement and reach of equipment needed in an operating room space.

Animoto..

Dave Buchhofer — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 18:35:56 +0000

I was asked to build a few basic slideshow type animations to play in the background at a company event, which is all well and good, except “we dont want to spend any time on this, but can you make them look good?” Thanks!

So in comes a fun little toy of a site Animoto. You simply feed it a selection of images and a music track and it does a little magic in the background for you, and out comes a fun little ‘slideshow’ here’s a sample of one of the animations it outputs:

Nifty eh? If there was a way to feasibly add video clips in, and per slide titles, then this could be a pretty badass little toy to use as a baseline.

DMG Reel

Dave Buchhofer — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 19:37:22 +0000

A quick dmg reel one of the guys cooked up a few months back, page: EwingColeDMG
[kaltura-widget wid="jp5u0sa7ug" width="410" height="364" addpermission="3" editpermission="3" /]

testing out this Kaltura video plugin..

Recent work

Dave Buchhofer — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 22:03:36 +0000

I’ve been a bit busy this month oversee’ing a fair sized animation project, so I’ve been a bit away from the scripting fun of late. There’s a few useful tricks I’ve picked up and will work out some posts shortly

Here’s a couple shot snippets from one of the latest projects. 2 out of 20ish from a pretty large site