The Cheat Code
Video: An interactive experience generated using Sequioa.
For a while we just about gave up on pushing this any further than the amount of content scoped for our 3D model…then Sequoia sprouted out of nowhere. If you somehow have not heard of Sequoia, it is basically the holy grail of meshing the un-meshable terrestrial laser scan.
For us, Sequoia brings the possibility of completely sidestepping the modeling process for the purpose of creating rich environments to explore and share. Provided an area is scanned adequately, we no longer need to model all the nuts and bolts, and provide tediously Photoshopped texture maps to mimic the original color detail. Sequoia makes texturing from the scan’s color imagery a much simpler process, and also helps the user break up the large mesh into more game engine-digestible chunks through its Hacksaw process. While our first tests are far from today’s modern high resolution games, they are much closer to that quality than a typical 3D model. I think in the hands of a skilled game designer these tools could produce amazing results with much less effort. Needless to say, this feels a bit like cheating since we can go straight from scan to mesh to game in a matter of hours.
Credits:
Bunker scanned and provided by Dr. Christian Hesse
Crime house scanned and provided by Eugene Liscio
Textured meshes provided by Thinkbox Team
Here is a quick look at a couple demo projects navigated using the Xbox One controller on PC, sorry there is no distributable game to play on your own…maybe next time.
- Quick Demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XEkMbYNxQG8
- Full Demo 4k: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D6-HkIkRJdY
- Alt. Full Demo Bright Ver: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cprebNGpLwo&feature=youtu.be
Other related videos:
- Model Demo in Stingray for comparison: https://www.youtube.com/watch?edit=vd&v=sHerDvyPRzs
- Model Demos from Unity 3D: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=orGu1OwLaBA
- Point Clouds in Unity 3D: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HH_j-Bc-ank