How to create architectural VR walkthroughs with online tools, Pt. 1: Sketchfab
Looking to create a VR walkthrough of your design? In this video tutorial, we show how to easily and quickly create a VR walkthrough using SketchUp and Sketchfab.
Virtual Reality (VR) has a ton of potential when it comes to communicating architecture and conveying the beauty of your designs in an immersive, jaw-dropping format.
Yet, for many architects, creating a VR walkthrough of their design remains slightly out of reach. It can require expensive gear, complicated software, and perhaps a few days of testing before getting a decent result.
Fortunately, this doesn’t have to be the case, as there are many free (or very cheap) and easy-to-use solutions available.
In the video above, we show an easy, step-by-step method to create a VR walkthrough of a residential home design using SketchUp, Lumion, and Sketchfab, a 3D model sharing website. With the addition of a VR headset, you can immerse yourself and others into the center of your design and heighten the feeling of space and dimension.
Check out the video tutorial to learn how to apply these VR techniques to your own projects, and make sure to save this blog post for future reference, as it breaks down the steps into an easy-to-follow, instructional guide. You can also find time markings so that you can connect each step to the visuals provided in the video.
But first…a little background about the tutorial.
Lumion has no commercial or business relationship with any of the tools or companies covered in this tutorial and the next. We simply spotted them on the market and felt that they were useful solutions that some of our customers would really appreciate.
We felt it would be valuable to explain how Lumion and SketchUp users can easily add these free tools to their workflows, tools that can be especially useful when physically getting to clients is difficult or not possible.
How to create a VR walkthrough with SketchUp, Sketchfab, and Lumion
Lumion makes it easy to capture the vision you have of your architectural designs and show them as beautiful, high-quality images and videos. Additionally, Lumion enables architects to easily turn their rendering projects into 360 panoramas that you can use for a multitude of purposes.
For instance, by directly uploading your 360 panoramas to MyLumion, you can instantly share an interactive presentation of your project online, letting clients conveniently click around and explore the design from a first-person POV. You can see an example of this below:
You can also render 360 panoramas for viewing on VR headsets. Typically, these 360-degree images are more than enough for design collaboration meetings, client presentations, and more. However, you can’t seamlessly walk from room to room (Lumion only allows you to jump from one 360-degree photo bubble to another).
If you want to have the option to freely walk through your design, you can use a combination of SketchUp (or several other CAD programs), Sketchfab, and Lumion.
If you would like, you can access the 3D model used in this tutorial here.
Let’s begin!
Step 1: Upload your CAD model into Sketchfab (3:16)
a. From your CAD software, export your model as an.FBX file.
b. Zip the file along with its textures.
c. Upload the zipped file into Sketchfab.
Step 2: Make preliminary adjustments to your model in the Sketchfab 3D editor (3:50)
a. Make windows and glass surfaces transparent. To do this, locate the ‘Materials’ tab, click on any window, and move the ‘Opacity’ slider.
b. Switch to first-person navigation in Sketchfab: Go to ‘Settings’, ‘Navigation’, and then ‘First Person’. You can also view your model with ‘Orbit’ navigation.
c. Adjust the sunlight by going to the ‘Lighting’ tab and locating ‘Environment’. Choose a lighting scene that works for your project; in this tutorial, we used the ‘Kirby Cove’ environmental lighting. Adjust the ‘Orientation’, ‘Brightness’, and ‘Shadow’ sliders to get the best result.
d. Add and adjust the ‘Ambient Occlusion’ (SSAO) in the ‘Post Processing Filters’ tab.
e. Save your position and viewing angle by clicking on ‘Annotations’ and then double-clicking anywhere on the screen.
f. Scale the model and set an initial starting point under the ‘AR/VR’ tab.
g. Move the person inside the house and scale that person to 39.
h. Save your settings to publish, and then hit ‘Exit’ to inspect your model in the browser.