Experience Your Architectural Designs in 3D

Are you an architect or interior designer? What about a real estate agent? If your work centers on designing or showing off buildings designs and interiors, you’ll love our new cloud rendering feature: Stereo Panoramas.

Even better? [UPDATE] This feature is FREE until August 31^st (extended from May 31st)!

 

 If you’ve ever wished that you could visualize and show off your designs in 3D, now’s your chance. Using virtual reality cardboard goggles (more on how to get those below), you can experience your designs in 3D by rendering stereo-panoramas of building interiors. 

If you came to Autodesk University, you might have already seen our panorama site and may have even got a pair of your own DodoCase DIY goggles to view the panoramas.  If you didn’t, you can still check out the samples on our Autodesk Cardboard site, and try it out with your own designs now by following the instructions below.  For some background on stereoscopic panoramas and how they are used with Virtual Reality Cardboard viewers, check out this blog post.

Here’s the step-by-step breakdown for the new feature:

1. Login to your A360 ‘My Renderings’ portal and choose the design and view you want to render.
2. Click on the “Render as” arrow in the lower right-hand corner and select the “Stereo Panorama” option.
3. As your panorama starts rendering, it will generate a render thumbnail and then display the final raw stereo asset when it is complete.

   

4. Go to My Renderings. Click on the stereo panorama thumbnail to expand it. At the bottom of this image, you will see a check box, “Preview on your phone”. Check that box and a URL will be generated. Send this URL to your phone. 

5. Load the gallery image URL on your mobile phone or tablet, and slide it into a pair of cardboard virtual reality goggles or viewer.  You can order DodoCase’s DIY Virtual Reality goggles here. Please note that stereo panorama works on iPhones and Android devices. The supported browsers are Safari and Chrome. Also make sure that you have installed the latest OS updates. This feature will not work on Windows phones or on Android phones without Chrome.
    
6. Shift your goggles left, right, up, down to navigate around the 3D panorama.
7. Stuck?  See our Help page for more information or post your feedback in the Rendering forum.

Comments

[sandesh]

What an awesome find and post. Thank you for sharing this!

[TC]

Is there going to be educational licenses that will be able to use this feature for free after march 31st?

[Terry]

If I have autodesk 360 on my pc, do I need to download autodesk A360 to use this stuff? And if so where is the download button for A 360 as opposed to 360 which I already have
?

[edgar]

great nwes from you people really apriciate the love for design.

[Alison Geering-Kline, Autodesk]

Hi Terry, thanks for your question. Autodesk A360 is just the new name for Autodesk 360. You should just be able to make an account on our Rendering Gallery portal and view your renderings there in the ‘My Renderings’ tab. From there, you can choose the “Render as Stereo Panorama” option. Please let us know if you have any other questions.

[Alison Geering-Kline, Autodesk]

Hi TC. Yes, all types of rendering will continue to be free for educational users.

[Jaypolding]

Any way to make this work with my Oculus Rift?

[Mark Thurnauer]

I am excited to give this a try, but one thing I don't quite understand is that the instructions above indicate how to preview the 3d stereo panorama, but what do you do with the finished rendering? I have downloaded the finished jpeg images. Do I load the jpeps on my phone and use a certain app to view them?

[Ana]

Mark - After you render, you to My Renderings, https://rendering.360.autodesk.com/mygallery.aspx and click on your thumbnail. At the bottom of the preview, you will see "Preview on your phone". Once you check that box, a URL is generated. Load the link on your mobile phone browser to view.

[Alison Geering-Kline, Autodesk]

The finished rendering is what you view on your mobile phone with the Virtual Reality Cardboard viewer. The URL allows you to load and "Preview" (or simply, view) your final rendering on your mobile device, and is a final rendering.

The jpegs can only be used if you are able to build a more advanced web viewer that can load them. We'll be publishing a technical blog on this process at a later date. Stay tuned!

[john]

Thought I would share this. If you have an iPhone with iOS 7.1.2 or earlier, you will need to update to iOS 8. WebGL was enabled in iOS 8.

[Barbara]

Is the app available to customize? I'd like to add music and be able to scroll through different renderings to show before/after comparisons.

Thanks for staying on the cutting edge!

[Nerd]

Does anyone know about linking panoramas so as to form a walkthrough effect?

[Alison Geering-Kline, Autodesk]

Barbara and Nerd, we don't have those features at this time, but we will let you know when new features are added for the stereo panorama renderings. Thanks!

[Christine]

I would love to download the images and use with an app instead of through the website. Anyone know any apps that work on the iphone?

[Mark]

How come you can't re-render a panoramic to be stereoscopic? Why am I re-rendering a still?

[Alison Geering-Kline, Autodesk]

Christine- there is a technical blog coming that will outline more options like this. It will give a walk-through of how to download the image, cut it up into left and right eye, and feed it into an oculus rift player.

Mark- all panoramas, whether they are mono or stereo, need to be rendered from the original image. If you rendered a mono-panorama from the Revit plugin, we suggest rendering a small/fast regular image first, instead of a panorama directly, then going to the portal and rendering a stereo-panorama from that small/fast image.

[Alison Geering-Kline, Autodesk]

For more stereo panos details, see our FAQ post: http://forums.autodesk.com/t5/a360-rendering-general/faqs-stereo-panorama/td-p/5511895

[Harvey]

Hi Alison,

Is there something wrong with the help link and the URL generator? My rendering is complete and I'm eager to use my new goggles; but the Preview is cycling endlessly and not producing an address...

[Robyn]

I am having the same problem as Harvey, every time I have tried to generate the URL for the past three days it just loops forever...

[Alison Geering-Kline, Autodesk]

Hi Robyn,
Harvey’s problem was solved with a re-render. Can you try a re-render and see if that helps? If it doesn't resolve the issue, please send us an email at [email protected] with your AutodeskID or email so we can debug it further.

[Robin]

Hi Alison,

Will the URLs for our stereoscopic panoramas still work for sharing with others (for example, via posting in emails or on website) after the Mar. 31 date ending the free rendering period?

I guess I am wondering if the plan is for all these URLs to be permanent?

[Alison Geering-Kline, Autodesk]

Hi Robin - Yes, the URLs for sharing stereo panoramas will be permanent.

[Corey]

Ive set up and rendered a stereo panorama through the cloud but when i go to the options for download, there is no option for a link to send to my phone. any help?

[Alison Geering-Kline, Autodesk]

Corey- Currently, there is only an option to generate a URL for your rendering, which you can email to yourself to view on your phone or tablet.

Please see our FAQ on stereo panorama renderings for more info: http://forums.autodesk.com/t5/a360-rendering-general/faqs-stereo-panorama/td-p/5511895