WSP Inc. USA, design visualization for the city of Paris

 Before I retired in 2019 I had the privilege of being part of the visualization team at WSP creating interactive versions of the area around the Eiffel Tower. Though many folks contributed to the project, the real-time work was done in Unreal Engine 4.15 -4.18 largely by myself and my brilliant colleague Tracey White. With the tight deadlines and frequently revised goals, we never did get the finished product we would have wished for but nonetheless, I'm proud of the work we completed and I wanted to share some of it.

At it's core, the project was to create a detailed, real-time version of the existing environment around the tower, approximately 2.4 km, large enough to encompass nearby Metro stops, landmarks and areas of concern. The city was hosting a competition for the remodel of this entire area. We would then be tasked with inserting each finalist's revisions into the existing plan. The original goals were quickly revised to include a VR ready version but in the end, due to time constraints and to highlight each finalist's design in an equal manor, a pre-rendered fly-through of each design was created.

Below are some links to read up further on the project, plus a link to download a version of 3D real-time model.

As I mentioned, the project was very collaborative, including all the design team members from the finalists in several different countries, but I must include special thanks to some other 3D specialists at WSP including Kevin Gilson, Mark Kauffman, Glen Loyd, Mathew Kaltman, Eric Martens, Josh Jones, Scarlet Burns and Randy Burton. Mark Kauffman was critical as the Autodesk Infraworks specialist creating much of the core terrain and plan the rest of us worked with.

A screen capture from UE4 showing the 

Paris Eiffel Tower scene created at WSP in Denver, Colorado

Announcement of the competition winner and general overview of the project at Informedinfrastructure.com with links to videos of the designs of the 4 finalists:

https://informedinfrastructure.com/48189/city-of-paris-names-winning-design-team-to-reimagine-the-eiffel-tower-landscape-using-bim-2/

More overview of the project from the Autodesk Blogs including a link to download WSP's core, real-time Paris model (VR and Desktop versions):

https://blogs.autodesk.com/infrastructure-reimagined/eiffel-tower-experience-site-3d/

A tour through the core model created by WSP:

https://vimeopro.com/projectviz/paris-interactive/video/311519755

Some other videos of the project including GPB’s winning bid:

https://vimeopro.com/projectviz/paris-interactive

Online UE Blueprints resource

I came across this wonderful place online where users looking for a way to solve a problem can share their solutions and blueprint code snippets to assist the rest of us. These bits of blueprint can even be downloaded directly from the website. A great resource!

blueprintue.com

Unreal Engine: Overcome the 16 Texture Sample limit.

I mentioned in my previous post very briefly about overcoming the 16 Texture Samples limit in your typical UE Material. This is frankly old news. There have been other posts around the internet forums about this. It's how I learned about the Sampler Source option. I just thought I'd chime in since it seemed like an important topic.

With your Texture Sample selected in your material graph, in the "Details" panel, set the "Material Expression" "Sampler Source" to "Shared: Wrap". See below.

Credit for the image to poster "Numbat" on the Unreal Engine Dev Community forums. The discussion can be found here