UNITY

During the winter I have tested UNITY* engine as a supplement or an alternative to traditional architecture still or animated rendering. The obvious conclusion is that while UNITY* representation suffers from lower quality in light and shadow, and a framerate that depends a lot on the equipment, it possesses big potential when it comes to free movement experience, time reduction obtained by cutting off heavy time consuming animation renderings, realtime update of changes, user interface options etc. The possibilities are wide, still there's some way till its as easy to manipulate as an still rendering in Photoshop.

The Mies van der Rohe Barcelona Pavilion in UNITY project was made as an demo project for the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, School of Architecture, where all bachelor students use the pavilion for their introduction into digital architectural visualization.

The Mies van der Rohe Barcelona Pavilion in UNITY project:

1200 x 675 pixel, 57 MB:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/11840318/MvdR%20Barcelona%20Pavilion%20in%20Unity.html

920 x 520 pixel, 57 MB:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/11840318/MvdR%20Barcelona920x520px.html

Requires rather nice graphic hardware configuration for a positive experience. Since it was made with the free version of UNITY there's no dynamic shadows, no lightmapping or mirroring.

*UNITY is a free realtime gameengine that eg. LEGO uses for their iPhone/iPad games.
UNITY website: http://unity3d.com/