VR Design Visualization Pipeline: Sketchup Pro, Unity, Rift

This is the exact pipeline I use! Works really well for me as Sketchup is so much more intuitive than the other 3D modellers, yay for inferences! Once you've got a few plugins installed it's really quite powerful and versatile.

...And you can do some nice renders in Kerkythea as a bonus!!

Anywayyyy, the video and write up are good. Maybe you could pad out the write up by going into a bit more detail?
For the video, maybe add some point/spot lights to the scene in Unity to enhance the look?

Have you tried 'PlayUp Tools' plugin for Sketchup? Not really needed, (I prefer to do it all manually) but might help speed up your asset pipeline.

Great tips, thanks.

I padded out the writing a little bit with some additional notes.

I also added some more complex lighting than just a directional light. It's still pretty terrible, but I guess less so. It's also kind of glitchy, but I can't get to it right now. The direct link for the new video is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QoWDjELor6M

Thanks again for commenting.

No problem! The write up looks more substantial now. Watched v2 of the video and see what you mean about the lights!

Glad I could be of help anyway.

"Boff" wrote:
This is the exact pipeline I use! Works really well for me as Sketchup is so much more intuitive than the other 3D modellers, yay for inferences! Once you've got a few plugins installed it's really quite powerful and versatile.

...And you can do some nice renders in Kerkythea as a bonus!!

The Kerkythea exporter for Sketchup was originally partly based on my Ogre3D exporter for Sketchup from many years ago. :)

Sketchup is cool. I find the standard camera control to be pretty much horrible, but when you add a 3D Connexion controller it becomes one of the best camera systems. It's one of the few 3d programs that allows full camera movement while using other tools (such as orbiting the camera around a model while dragging faces). If you do a lot of Sketchup work, a Space Navigator or similar is amazing, I can't bare to go without now.

Sorry to beat a dead horse. http://youtu.be/mJLK_t0bTYA lighting is getting better.

Any update on the DK2 for this nice app?

Definitely gonna keep an eye on this if you're able to update it for DK2. I'm more of a 3d graphics hobbyist than a game developer but one of the main reasons I got a dev kit was so I could take the stuff I build in Cinema 4D and then walk around in it (or create environments and virtual experiences for other people to walk around in). I'm very new to Unity so I've just been focused on figuring out how to model some simple geometry in Cinema (similar enough to using Sketchup), importing into Unity, and then compiling for the Rift. So far I halfassed my way through getting some shapes to show up in my Rift with head tracking but it was largely a matter of experimenting with settings and then trying every possible way to get the thing to run on the Rift. Sometimes it would work without tracking, sometimes it wouldn't work at all, twice it blusecreened my PC (haha), and then finally I got it to show up properly (if a little "smeary" with motion).

Now, granted, I'm just experimenting my way through it so I'd love to start getting some documentation together to save myself and others from having to spend too much time guessing at what to do. I'm very appreciative of anyone with more experience that puts up some basic guides on what settings to use, what they do, and how to minimize time spent figuring out a workflow. That's more time working on content and walking around in virtual environments ;)

Fixed the blog link in the first post. Sorry about that.

WRT to updating this for the DK2.... The process is exactly the same, it's just a matter of using the newer Oculus character controller in Unity.

SH