Real Time Rendering Engine in Revit

Since 2008 is coming out without a real rendering engine, I give up. This means that by the time it does come out, it will be old news.

Much more useful will be real time rendering. Assuming that we're staying with Revit on Windows, we're going to need Revit on DirectX 10. If you can't beat the Video game industry, join them. This is the first good thing I've seen about Vista... but only if Revit can get on board soon.

Here is a demo of a new real time engine taking advantage of DirectX 10.

http://www.crysis-online.com/video_downloader.php?dir=/video/SD/(Crysis-Online) GDC 2007 Sandbox Demo.wmv

Now the games look professional and the professional tools look like toys.

BTW, even if you don't care about the display engine here, we could also use the site tools here. The "make road level" tool which automatically adjusts the topo (fully shaded in real time) is amazing.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Andre Baros

Since 2008 is coming out without a real rendering engine, I give up.

---

Don't give up so quickly.

To some degree I have to give up for now. We've been implementing Revit for 5 years now... and I have a bunch of users for whom Rendering is the "next step" as they've mastered everything else. I was hoping to hold out and only role out Rendering in Revit, but it looks like I'll have to teach Max. This isn't a bad thing, I was just hoping that the problem would go away before I had to deal with it.

Regardless of that, I think that from a workflow and productivity point of view, it would be MUCH better to have better real time rendering than better "rendering".

The demo is still cool though? huh?

Actually, I would take a look at cheaper alternatives than Max. Even though that's what I use, there are some really good programs out there that are much, much cheaper. One that initially comes to mind is Rhino. It has potential, but it still has a way to go. The import and export options on it are huge. Many different platforms are covered although not entirely smooth in the transitions.

There are also free renderers out there that will knock your socks off. It's all a matter of how you use the engine. Same with Accurender, but that in my opinion is just taking up hard drive space for everyone.

yafray
irrlicht
ogre

those ones are free, these ones are good too

form z
artlantis

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Andre Baros

The demo is still cool though? huh?

---

Oh ya! It blew me away. However, this is obviously a gaming environment. Not a BIM environment where accuracy is everything and control is imperative. In a gaming environment, if it looks right then it's right. That could be good enough for animations and early presentation eye-candy, but not once things move into CDs and the model behind the eye-candy has to be accurate and contract documents built from the model. Although, with that said, the demo was really awe inspiring. If I were a client being shown this with my BIM model in the environment, I'd be giddy with excitement and telling everyone about it.