Call for thoughts on improving interior views "labor-free"

Help & Support
1

Dear reader,

We are creating viewer/configurators for houses in PlayCanvas, and a major part of that process is minimizing manual labor in the visualization, as models can and will be updated as the engineers improve the buildings.
With that restriction it has become problematic how undefined the building looks in an interior view:

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We are struggling to come up with ways to improve the interior looks without resorting to the obvious solutions, like baking lightmaps, AO maps, etc. etc.
This type of labor is simply not acceptable when it is a given that the models will be updated steadily as the project evolves.

We’d love some ideas/suggestions that would increase readability of an interior without relying on whether the model is properly UV’d. Simple basic improvements that would just avoid entire sections of your view having the same solid color would help tremendously. Doesn’t have to look amazing, just better than the screenshot included.

Kind regards,
Jango

2

As a first step, I would try some image based lighting:
Image Based Lighting | Learn PlayCanvas.

here’s a tutorial: Introduction to PlayCanvas - Skybox - YouTube

3

I was also thinking you could use a combination of clustered lighting with omni and spotlights: Clustered Lighting Open Beta - Have hundreds of dynamic lights in your scene!

And use it with ambient baking with the lightmapper: Runtime Lightmaps | Learn PlayCanvas

4

If you can provide an example model, I would be interested in having a play with it :grimacing:

5

lightmapper baking requires unwrapped uv coordinates, which is a limitation for this case.

1 Like
6

Ah, good point :frowning: Maybe the screenspace AO post effect then?

7

Sure, that’s an option, but I would use image based lighting as a first step.