Leveraging the power of real-time technology has fundamentally flipped the archviz business model for Zoan. “That would never have been possible with traditional rendering,” says Rosendahl. Now Zoan can complete 90% of their projects in house, visiting the client’s office to finish the last 10% for small tweaks such as swapping out furniture variations. “They were like, ‘What happened?’ We said, 'That's our new technology. “The client didn't see any difference in the quality, and now they were getting their new iterations quickly,” he says. Miikka recalls a recent archviz project on which Zoan switched from traditional rendering to real-time rendering halfway through the project in order to deliver on time. This has had a significant impact on the studio’s turnaround times, much to the delight of its clients. “Unreal gave us the ability to make those changes in real time, so we no longer have to wait hours for one image to appear.” “Before, we were too dependent on rendering an image and waiting for the client to approve it,” says Medina. Real-time technology is the driving force behind this offering. Zoan also provides architectural visualization through Zoan Digital Building-a virtual design and construction service. “That's something that we couldn't do with the other game engine,” says Rosendahl.ĭigital twins with virtual buildings and IoT technology This was another reason Zoan decided to switch real-time tools.
#BUILD YOUR OWN VIRTUAL CITY FOR FREE CODE#
It provides a gateway into real-time workflows for less technically minded members of teams.įor team members versed in C++, on the other hand, open access to Unreal Engine’s source code provides the freedom to customize and extend the engine. The Blueprint visual scripting system puts Unreal Engine’s programing tools at the fingertips of non-programmers via a system that is visually-orientated rather than code-orientated. “When they realized you have all these cool new tools such as Blueprints that enable you to achieve way more, quicker, they saw that this was actually much easier than they thought,” says Rosendahl. While some of the team were initially cautious about making the switch, any fears were quickly allayed once they dived in. “Then we saw some content pieces created with Unreal that were so visually stunning that we said ‘OK, if we want to achieve that level of photorealism, this is the way to go for us.’ ” “In the beginning, we actually started with another game engine, but we were always lacking that visual quality,” says Rosendahl. In fact, the visual quality factor is one of the reasons the studio switched to Unreal Engine from an alternative solution. “Unreal Engine was able to give us real-time previews of such high quality that we fell in love with it, and we’ve been using it ever since.” “Dealing with large city files was previously unthinkable if we tried to use traditional 3D modeling software,” explains Jonathan Biz Medina, Partner and CPO at Zoan. This is one of the reasons Zoan turned to Unreal Engine to build the environment. It’s been leveraged by Business Finland to promote Helsinki at events such as Slush Singapore, and formed part of Finland’s technology showcase when the city was named the 2019 European Capital of Smart Tourism.ĭeveloping a digital replica of a city naturally involves working with huge datasets. Now, they get all types of content.”Ī digital 3D replica of Helsinki Virtual Helsinki is a 3D digital copy of the city that can be used for everything from VR experiences to real-estate solutions. “This is a totally new concept for clients, because they used to just pay for that one image. “Using Unreal Engine, we can create animation, images, VR, 360 tours,” says Miikka Rosendahl, Founder and CEO of Zoan.
Virtual Helsinki is just one of many projects the studio has worked on that share a common ethos: supercharging ROI by creating many different types of content from one model. The studio’s passion project over the past few years has been a virtual recreation of the Finnish capital city, Helsinki. Zoan is a Finnish company that uses real-time technologies to create different kinds of immersive experiences across a range of sectors. One visualization studio has achieved just this.
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