Creating the house in VR - which engine is best ?

Don't think the engine matters that much, apart from their Oculus Rift support.

Before that, you have to design the environment (i.e. the house and surroundings), which are done outside the engine. Sketchup, Blender, Gimp (for textures). Then with all that exported, you can add in-game props (or props you designed in Blender), lighting, sounds. The hard part is the first step, creating the environment as solid architecture. You will probably need the floor plans, measurements, pictures to help you out.

This is not a trivial project. I would say 6 committed months at least if you've never done this before. Gather the materials you will need first, and work on some smaller scale projects (i.e. design and build a smaller house or apartment). It can be fun, it can be very tedious too.

Thanks Obzen for the quick reply !!

My brother will help me design the environments, I guess in Maya.
He has experience with 3D-modeling.

We've also acquired the blueprints for the house and we have photos and videos.

You've mentioned Sketchup, Blender, Gimp.
I know only Gimp - and from what I remember - it's kind of like a cross between MS-Paint and Photoshop.
What are the other two used for ?

I think Obzen's estimate of 6 committed months is probably pretty accurate for your first project especially considering the quality bar it sounds like you are shooting for. The project after that will be much faster and easier, but be prepared for the time required to get started.

As for game engine, at the moment I would recommend UE4 as it already has some good examples of high quality realtime ArchVis interiors. At the moment there is no automatic UV unwrapping for lightmaps, though, but it is on the engine developers roadmap.

If your brother does the modelling in Maya you dont need sketchup or blender. They
are just two free modelling software options you might want to learn if you model yourself.

In your case I would start with maybe a small room from the house? And that wont take 6 months at all.
Just have you brother model a simple room with some props from the house, then learn as you go form that.
its a very fun excercise, I promise. Its easy to learn the basics of UE4 but hard to master.

So start really simple, and learn the workflow from that. A room, a table and a chair.
Youll get some basic stuff to walk around in, in a few hours or a day´s worth of work.

From my perspective (im a teacher) its better to first get some really simple stuff going. Like from your brothers model to DK2 photons in your eyes :) You will learn a great deal from that.

When you get tired of that you start to learn what kind of time you want to put into details regarding modelling, textures and light setup.

"mattostgard" wrote:
I think Obzen's estimate of 6 committed months is probably pretty accurate for your first project especially considering the quality bar it sounds like you are shooting for. The project after that will be much faster and easier, but be prepared for the time required to get started.

Thanks for the heads-up ! I really appreciate it!

"mattostgard" wrote:

As for game engine, at the moment I would recommend UE4 as it already has some good examples of high quality realtime ArchVis interiors. At the moment there is no automatic UV unwrapping for lightmaps, though, but it is on the engine developers roadmap.

Wish I knew what ArchVis is ... but I guess I'll just Google it and start learning.
Don't know what UV unwrapping is, either...

Do you recommend modelling an entire room in the 3D-Modelling software,
along with all the textures and materials - and then import that entire blob in to UE4 ?

Or import it into UE4 piece-by-piece, i.e. - import the floor model and place it,
then import the room's left wall and place it, then import the front wall and place it,
then import the chair and place it, etc...

"Callezetter" wrote:
If your brother does the modelling in Maya you dont need sketchup or blender. They
are just two free modelling software options you might want to learn if you model yourself.

Thanks ! Even though I just saw that Maya is more for Character modeling and animation,
and less for Architecture modeling... so I'm thinking maybe I should learn Sketch-Up after all ? :roll:

"Callezetter" wrote:

In your case I would start with maybe a small room from the house? And that wont take 6 months at all.
Just have you brother model a simple room with some props from the house, then learn as you go form that.
its a very fun excercise, I promise. Its easy to learn the basics of UE4 but hard to master.

Like I've asked 'mattostgard' above here -
Do you recommend modelling an entire room in the 3D-Modelling software,
along with all the textures and materials - and then import that entire blob in to UE4 ?

Or import it into UE4 piece-by-piece, i.e. - import the floor model and place it,
then import the room's left wall and place it, then import the front wall and place it,
then import the chair and place it, etc...

I am asking because I was told that the proper way is to start with BSP brushes (like a box for each wall)
and then replace them with the actual imported models of the actual walls.
So in that scenario - my brother should model each different aspect of the room separately, i.e. -
model each wall separately, model the door separately, model the floor separately etc...

Is that really the right way to go ?

Thanks a lot for all of your super-valuable tips in helping a newbie !

And also a couple of other easy questions to the genius dudes here !

(1) Do I need to learn Blueprints ? Or is that not needed for a project such as mine ?
(modelling the house so I can walk around it).

(2) What I would like at "PHASE 1" is to be able to hear the footsteps as I walk.
the rooms should sound like walking on wall-to-wall carpet, while the bathroom
will have a ceramic floor, while the garden has a brick path that leads to grass...
Is that too complex to do in UE4 ?

(3) Maybe in "PHASE 1" I would also like to turn on the TV or kettle or things like that...
Not interact too much with the surroundings, but definitely in "PHASE 2" I would like to
add more complex interactions, like picking stuff up, opening doors, etc.
Does that require any special 'foundations' in "PHASE 1" or can that be added iterativelly
in the future ?

(4) Is there ANY tutorial on how to build such an environment in UE4 that will be
Oculus-Ready ? I couldn't find any such tutorial... I'm sure there's *something* I have to do
to tell UE4 to render the game in stereoscopic view rather than mono-scopic view, no ?


Thanks for keeping up with me ! =)

"SilverVR" wrote:

I am asking because I was told that the proper way is to start with BSP brushes (like a box for each wall)
and then replace them with the actual imported models of the actual walls.
So in that scenario - my brother should model each different aspect of the room separately, i.e. -
model each wall separately, model the door separately, model the floor separately etc...

Well I think you are going to get a lot of different answers on that topic. If you are a serious developer working on a project you might wanna do that. Meaning, block out you level (bsp) in UE4 and then piece by piece replacing the blocks with their proper modelled (maya) counterparts. You get a nice feel for a layout that way. You can also ofcourse play around with the blocked out house in VR in UE4 wile your brother is doing the modelling. Its a good way to make it more efficient. Thats my take on it. But I would still start small and learn the workflow maya->UE4 to see how much time it takes for you to produce something you are satisfied with. And to learn what kind dof time it takes you guys to be happy with the fidelity.

1/ Well im not really a pro modeller or UE4 expert. But you dont really need to learn any difficult BP to make a simple stationary house. But I would reccomend you atleast watch the official UE4 tutorials thats availible. You will learn a ton from that. Start from the beginning here:
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZlv_N0_O1gaCL2XjKluO7N2Pmmw9pvhE

2/Setting up soundactors and the areas that triggers different ambience/different soundprocessing in is dead simple. Really. Just watcxh as many tutiorial videos as you can. After that you will agree with me :)

3/ To make button that trigger/control things like sound, light, doors etc is really easy to do too. And well explained in the UE4 video tutorials. A beginner like me be had no problems learning that very fast. Picking upp stuff is probably quite easy to do too. I havent done it myself but clicking on something and have it attached to/dropped from your arm cant be that difficult. Its not like you are trying to build a MMO inventory system here :)

4/ I would start playing in UE4 with the VR template that you can get here:
https://forums.unrealengine.com/showthread.php?12874-VR-Game-Template
Use that and you will have the VR part up and running in minutes. Its really dead simple.