Monday, February 16, 2015

VR Yourself with Autodesk Cloud Rendering

VR (Virtual Reality) is definitely the focus of the year more than 3D printing. Especially with DIY kit or the affordable Google Cardboard that you can immerse yourself into this technology, I finally got my hands on trying it myself in the recently days. I first learn about the new added feature from Revit Kid where Autodesk cloud rendering now offers the "Stereo Panorama" render service of your design and one can view them with one of the cardboard VR goggles.


Good news for me is I happened to have some previous projects that are still stored in the cloud. All I have to do is to log in to the site and select the project to be rendered. From the project, choose the down icon --> Render as --> Stereo Panorama. Click the "Start Rendering" icon and you are good to go. **This service is now offer for FREE until March 31.**



When it is finished, you can click to see the finished rendering but it doesn't do much for you. You have to select the image to open the preview. At the bottom of the image, there is a check box where it says "Preview on your phone" and it will generate a web link. Email the link to yourself and open it via the browser on your phone.


Since my phone (Samsung Galaxy S3) runs on Android OS, according to Autodesk, it said it only supports in Chrome browser. (iPhone will have to launch it with Safari) For some reasons, it doesn't even work on Chrome on my phone. I found this link where you have to enable the WebGL in order for it to work; However, it still didn't work for me. I finally was able to get it to work with Firefox browser for Android and it works beautifully.

Luckily my colleague had one of the cardboard goggles hanging around when he attended AU and got one for free last year so I just borrow it from him to test it.


I have to say the quality of the render is very impressive. Although controlling the view takes some practicing to navigate, I found it very easy to use. I have played with Samsung Gear VR version of the Oculus rift before and this affordable version is pretty awesome. 

Besides, Autodesk provided this link where there are a few samples of the finished "Stereo Panorama" images that are ready for viewing.

I could see this could be a good media for the designer to showcase their work to the clients.

I also test it on my randomized Curtain Panel with this feature and you can copy and paste this link to view it on your own.



Below are some of the projects that I tested with.



Go ahead and try it yourself now. Did I mention this service will be FREE until March 31st?



3 comments:

  1. Hi Phil.... Great post! I am from Autodesk. I am wondering why it did not work on Chrome on your S3, even after you enabled webGL. Can you let me know
    - version of your Android OS
    - version of Chrome
    - have you enabled javascript?

    Thanks,
    Ana

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hi Ana,

    You can either contact me using the contact form from my blog or leave your email address as a reply. I will get back to you either way with the info you asked for.
    Thanks.
    Philip

    ReplyDelete
  3. Appreciate this post. Let me try it out.

    ReplyDelete