Please tell us about the large-scale project showing the city of Osaka.
The project showing the city of Osaka is not for a specific client, but for aerial photography and visualization of urban spaces. This project can be used by any organization that handles urban planning. Similar projects are in progress for Tokyo and Yokohama.
You have generated very large 3D models of Osaka and Tokyo. How were you able to do this? Did you use clever tricks for geometry, texturing, lighting, etc.?
The models themselves were created with 3ds Max. We created terrains and building structures as base shapes based on survey data, maps, and aerial photographs. Each building that could be a landmark was customized. Other building structures used general-purpose textures in order to reduce load.
For your YouTube videos, you have some projects that are an entire city, and some which are one intersection with dozens of people. Please tell us about the intersection projects. How did you generate the crowds?
For those YouTube videos, we made a precise model of a specific area of Shibuya, Tokyo, and we used Twinmotion to represent pedestrians. With Twinmotion we can place foliage, people, and automobiles quickly and correctly, resulting in rich visuals and realistic representations. Since we can check the visualization soon after model data is generated, we start to use it at the early stage of our creation flow.
What are your favorite features of Unreal Engine and Twinmotion?
Since Twinmotion provides a large amount of assets, we can check visuals very quickly. Also, you don’t need technical knowledge to operate Twinmotion, and it runs smoothly.
What does the future hold for CAD Center?
CAD Center currently supports the promotion of urban DX [digital transformation] by creating urban data and providing services related to digital twins and smart cities. For such projects, visualization is an important factor, and so we believe the use of Twinmotion and Unreal Engine is indispensable.
