Following last week’s post about the new Rutgers School of Business we published into Unity3D game engine, there were a lot of questions about whether we had imported the BIM file directly from Revit, or if there was an intermediate process necessary to make that work.
In the past, I had been able to export Revit models, and use them to create Unity3D walk-throughs, as seen in this video tutorial: Importing Revit into Unity3D. However, in releases following Revit 2010, the exported FBX model has become much more difficult to use. Materials aren’t assigned, geometry comes in as one linked mesh, etc. I haven’t done a lot of testing with this personally, but from what I’ve been told, it doesn’t work as well as it did in that video tutorial that used Revit 2010.
Geometry generated with Revit and other BIM applications is high poly for a good reason, so without some kind of intermediate process that can process high poly models down to intelligently reduced realtime-ready formats, there won’t be a dynamic connection between BIM applications and Unity3D any time soon.
In the meantime, we’ve come up with a very efficient method of interpreting BIM models and blueprints into a more realtime-friendly format that runs well in Unity3D, and we offer this as a service. Send Arch Virtual your BIM, CAD or pdf blueprint files, and we will produce a Unity3D project that can be published into any format Unity3D can export to: embedded in a web browser, installed as a stand-alone applications, accessed from an android mobile device, iPad, etc. To contact us about your project, send us a note here: https://archvirtual.com/contact/
