So I recently got an Oculus Quest 2 and wanted to explore my city in VR. I’m creating my own model of Shanghai adding my own skyscrapers to it and tweaking it to my liking.
I want to be able to pan and walk through the city with 360-degree views of looking up or around with any desired direction. I want the textures and graphics to be realistic as possible with reflective materials for the glass as well as weather and lighting conditions. I want anything that will help add depth perception to make it as close as you can to feeling like you’re really there. What would be the best and easiest way to explore your SketchUp models in VR? I don’t want to spend 600+ hrs on development so apps with an easy-to-use user interface would be highly preferable. I also want to explore it in a 1:1 scale so I’m not a giant when I’m walking through the city. What sort of apps and resources are there out there? Perhaps even a real-time rendering VR application integrated within SketchUp?
I kinda want it to look something like this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dIza1CdBn5s
I can help a little. There is a platform by Mozilla called Hubs that I use all the time. You can visit a Hubs room right online with your VR headset, but you can also view it just by visiting it on your computer and walking around. Furthermore, you can meet with your friends in the environment and chat.
The only hitch is, my Sketchup 2017 only exports collada files (.dae) . Hubs uses .glb or .gltf files. I don’t know if the newer versions of Sketchup export these files now or not. Or maybe you can find a sketchup extension that will do it?
At any rate, this is my workflow, if it will help you:
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make file in sketchup, and export 3d as a .dae file
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import .dae to Blender and export as a .glb file.
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open up Mozilla’s “Spoke” program online and import the glb file. This program is the publisher for a Mozilla Hubs worlds. Spoke by Mozilla
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Configure a few things in Spoke, including
-where you want your person to show up when you start the VR experience
-configure where your sun is, and whether it and your models casts/recieves shadows
-publish the scene
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Open Mozilla Hubs online, and choose to create a room. It will start with a default scene. Change the scene to your scene. https://hubs.mozilla.com/
Note: the lighting you configure in Spoke will only be useful to those viewing your Hubs on a computer , like a desktop or a laptop. If you visit the room with a mobile device, there will be no lighting or shading unless you have “baked” a shadow map onto your model in Blender, which is a whole other thing to learn.
