Custom 3D Models?

Reminder: If you encounter any issues with Enscape or your subscription please reach out to our dedicated support team through the Help Center or by using the Feedback button as detailed here.
  • I'm new to the AEC world, I've mostly worked in game industry.So I'm comfortable modeling in programs like Maya and Modo.


    I've really struggled finding a way to get my models into Revit.


    Does anyone know a good workflow for this.


    Thanks in Advance!


    -Drew

  • Right at this moment, Revit does not have a proper way to support UV enabled model. In other words, you are not able to import uv enabled model nor photogrammetry models into Revit.


    You can however, use Archvision RPC Creator to convert UVed model using obj format. However this is very limited due to:

    1. You need to have an active Archvision subscription

    2. Only Albedo map is supported (ie. you cannot fully leverage Enscape's real time rendering power)

    3. There are no ways to make changes to your albedo texture inside Revit once it has been converted to its proprietary Archvision format. (ie. you need to do the conversion thing from scratch if you want to make color changes to texture)


    Hence, Enscape's newly added Asset browser (and upcoming custom asset importer) will become the only hope to get UV enabled entourage models into Revit (Hopefully supporting FBX format)

  • drobbins13 - yes, this is something that is on our development agenda, although I can not give you an exact date at this time as to when this will become available.


    We understand how desirable this functionality is to our users however, although I can see that we have already up-voted this story in the developer agenda on your behalf.

  • This is a huge priority for us as well. Can't wait to fill our Revit projects with high quality assets. We don't necessarily have to have it user friendly. I'd be okay if (in the beginning) it is a complicated process to create an enscape asset.

  • Adding an upvote to this. I've explored thoroughly the ins and out of accomplishing this with the .RPC format from archvision, and found it to be a terribly frustrating conversion process of creating our own custom 3D+ RPC families to drop into our models.


    We recently went through a design visualization phase of modeling every specimen our landscape designer had specified so that we could express to the municipality involved what our vision was for a specific project. I performed the work and the process was tedious. Looking up for plants on turbosquid, cgtrader, etc., opening them in 3DS Max, following Archvision's conversion steps, only to find that each model had a different compatibility to the process, and needed to be treated differently.


    There were four very large issues with Archvision's RPC format, which I would hope Enscape's strategy would remove us from:


    1. All UV mapping must be contained in one bitmap file, and typically every downloaded textured model author's texture mapping would need to be modified in order to compensate for this. Sometimes it would take hours to re-map and re-render something. Ideally whatever Enscape does should eliminate the user's need to re-produce/re-render UV mappings.


    2. Most textured models available for purchase use different proprietary renderers, which therefore means their materials definitions are also proprietary. Some used scanline which is good. Some used vray. Some used corona. Etc. RPC only supported scanline and some vray materials. So it is on the user to convert those material definitions so that they can be properly re-rendered into a combined UV map for the RPC file. Turbosquid has their own manual on converting materials, but nothing is automatic, its all step-by-step, so you can imagine how much time merely converting materials from one renderer to another for a single plant model might take. Hopefully Enscape's method prevents users from having to convert material formats.


    3. Additionally, as stated above, only the diffuse (albedo) maps come in, so there is a lack in realism. Ideally we can take advantage of describing glossiness, shadows, etc.


    4. They use a web-based upload system to convert one model. It requires 4 different files - a hi-rez OBJ, a low-rez OBJ, a JPEG for thumbnail, and a combined UV texture mapped bitmap file created from items #1 and #2. I found this process to be slow and ideally would have preferred to simple export from one of our native softwares. Hopefully you can consider that those of us who are embarking on developing custom assets, or locating them in the marketplace, use industry-standard applications and want our pipelines to stay in them, not require additional widgets that require log-in


    5. Their custom dashboard is horrendous and the drag and drop functionality, while fine, is outweighed by the fact that it does not integrate with the content management systems otherwise available, like UNIFI, AVAIL, etc. Hopefully Enscape considers how we need to see all of our assets in one place, and does not contribute to the strain and stress of needing multiple buckets for things, but rather one indexable database of families, whether local or in the cloud.


    I strongly suggest a file format which embeds both geometry and texture information, like FBX or something similar.


    Thanks for reading

    • Official Post

    mattendler , thank you very much for the valuable post. I've happily added a further upvote and your feedback to the corresponding topic in question! Again, thanks a lot for the elaboration, that does sound quiet tedious and should the ability to add custom content to the Asset Library be implemented, I'm very sure that it'll be more convenient and straightforward. :)

  • Beyond excited about developing my own custom Assets and providing them to an "Enscape Warehouse" for that matter. Especially with trees. We use a very specific street tree design for our projects and presently it's probably the only real thing that Revit can't quite get for us...and also replacing Assets through different visability types in plan and elevation...i.e. Consistent Colors etc.

  • and also replacing Assets through different visability types in plan and elevation...i.e. Consistent Colors etc.

    We've been using view filters to override the assets in our Revit views, and for some styles it works quite well. Unfortunately there's an issue that this only works on some assets, but I'm hoping that will get addressed.


    More info about the method we've been using: Some assets cannot be overriden in Revit