The vinery Unreal VR competition
The vinery competition proved for us a perfect occasion to test our realtime and VR capabilities in a production environment. With a set deadline we were challenged to complete this architectural scenery. For us it is selfunderstood that we aim to maximise a moody and attractive scenery which invites visitors to explore and be immersed into an alternative reality.
We consider it essential that 3d can be utilised in multiple channels. Therefor we used the unreal engine to produce high resolution illustrations as well as rendering out a short animation that can be played on youtube, vimeo or offline on any video player.
Last but not least the scene can be accessed by state of the art VR-glasses and is optimized for realtime rendering.
The Vinery – Virtual Reality Architecture – Competition
The vinery was a competition hosted by Ronen Bekerman and Epic Games to stresstest the much acclaimed Unreal Engine for Arch Viz purposes. Our scene can be freely explored and fully supports VR devices.
Conception:
To keep „visitors“ interested it became early on clear that the concept had to be out of the norm. So we decided to move the vinery setting into an unexpected environment. An icelandic setting with a strong volcanic touch delivers the right counterpiece to our architecture. Additionally the vast landscape allowed us to make use of the impressive terraformuing tools of the unreal engine.
Architecturally we decided to have a austere vernacular architecture interact with a angular modern architecture. The rural architecture was heavily influenced by famous architect Valerio Olgiati, one of the key representatives of swiss minimalism. This also lead to various anonymous architectural references. We blended the austere architecture of the ticino alpine villages, japanese simplicity with the chalked materials of greek villages.
For the modern architectural pieces we opted for a style that rather might be found in LA-architects as Morphosis or Eric Owen Moss. Both architectural worlds have their unique strong materiality and contrasting colorscheme to improve readibility and strengthen the experience.
Unreal offers the unique possibility to set up massive environments which can be explored freely; simultaneously detailed interiors with many accessories can be realised – which enables experiences of great depth.
The Unreal Engine proved again to be a very powerful tool to work with allowing us to create the looks that we desired.
To learn more about our conceptual approach, please visit our PDF: Vinery – Concept and Approach.
Workflow:
Creating an interactive virtaul reality architecture experience requires a different approach. The viewer is free to move which requires a different planning a compelling experience. Our team started with rough blocking of the basic volumes to build up a main thread of experience. Once the trail is set our team then could start to detail the spaces visited.
Unreal offers the unique possibility to set up massive environments which can be explored freely; simultaneously detailed interiors with many accessories can be realised – which enables experiences of great depth.
As a final exercise we were demonstrating that compelling imagery in high resolution might be generated inside VR. The same goes for offline animations, which can be generated within very short times.
We hope that through this experience we allow our friends and clients to get a better insight into todays VR – possibilities.
