Being in a Frank Lloyd Wright-designed creation elicits a one-word reaction: Wow! But even the greatest architect of the last century would have to wait until after his designs were built to experience his wows. He would not get wows from his sketches. How could a 2D sketch convey the sense of space and light of Fallingwater? How could a scale model convey the grandeur of the Marin County Civic Center? The 21st century brought new technology that enabled architects to get their wows sooner, with 3D models, rendered images, animated walk-throughs—and most recently, virtual reality (VR).
With VR, an architect or interior designer can place the client inside the building while it is still a computer model. The building will be full scale and three dimensional. The client can share your vision, see the space as if they were in it, get a sense of the building’s light, the height of the ceiling, the matching of the colors … the beautiful natural edge tables, almost smell the coffee brewing.… In short, be wowed.
Yulio, a company exhibiting at Autodesk University held last September, helps clients get the wow now.
“It’s been possible to create VR content for Revit for years,” says Ian Hall, chief technology officer at Yulio Technologies Hall, breaking down the barriers to widespread use of VR in the AEC community. For all its potential to be a game changer, VR has been agonizingly slow in terms of its adoption.
“Up until now, the workflow has been clunky,” admits Hall. “You had to have a third-party vendor to create the VR compatible scenes. You needed to publish to some sort of VR engine. You had to do some sort of enhancement for viewability. And then you had to package it up for presentation. That’s a lot of steps. It works, but it is time consuming and it requires a degree of expertise.”
But here comes Yulio.
“Now any Revit user can create VR,” says Hall. It’s practically push button. “All you have to do to see VR now is to keep your headset charged up.”
Yulio lets users create VR walk-throughs. The application can automatically create “hotspots” that the user can follow and visit in a sequence through the virtual space. Notes, audio and links can appear as the client moves through the space.
Architects can create not only VR of designs but also VR models of completed projects that can be displayed in a virtual portfolio.
Yulio will also do augmented reality (AR). For example, you can tag a model of a table in Yulio and have the model appear in the camera view of your iPad. The computer model will be on the floor, where it belongs, in full scale, and can be rotated and moved around the room.
You can render still images at any time with Yulio, which will work with a variety of popular rendering applications, including Lumion, Enscape, 3ds Max and V-Ray.
About Yulio
The company was founded in 2016 and is based in Toronto, Ontario.
Yulio has a 30-day free trial version, but the price jumps up to $600 per seat annually after that. Users can, however, have an unlimited number of projects. Get information on pricing and the free trial here.