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Product Review: Real-Time Rendering with Fuzor

As the BIM manager for an architectural firm specializing in residential, commercial, retail, and hospitality, I am always looking for new ways to present our designs to clients as well as to have ways to better interact and visualize our designs.

There are various rendering and visualization tools that have the ability to add accurate materials, light, and entourage to create a realistic sense of the final architectural product. Some of these tools are complex and some not, but all of them have something in common: it takes a certain amount of time for the completion of the rendered view or animation. If more changes are made to update the original scene, there is often additionally waiting involved to get the updated result.

For those of you working in Autodesk® Revit® who want to be able to realize your visualizations in an effortless environment without compromising on speed, quality, and, accuracy, meet Fuzor, a high-quality, real-time rendering application that integrates seamlessly with Revit.

What Is Fuzor?

Fuzor is an application developed by Kalloc Studios (a former game design company with offices in San Diego, California, and Hong Kong) for the AEC industry. The application takes after a sophisticated live link engine originally designed for game designers working in Autodesk Maya to enable them to see their gaming assets directly in the game. The AEC application to live link allows designers to immerse their Revit models into the live link (gaming) engine and interact with it from a third person (desktop) or first person (mobile) perspective. As tested, Fuzor Ultimate consists of the following major toolsets:

• Getting Started
• Navigating the Model
• Presenting the Model
• Extensive Device Support

Figure 1

Getting Started

The value in Fuzor lies in the design synergy between Revit and Fuzor. The bi-directional live link between Revit and Fuzor is quite impressive and has enabled me to have my projects visualized in real time effortlessly. All that was required was to click on the launch Fuzor command from within the Fuzor Plugin tab. On launch, Fuzor loaded all the 3D content and its lightweight engine was able to not only have all RPC content realized accurately, but also offer a range of four render modes (sketch effect, realistic, abstract, and consistent). Next I made sure my View Sync option was checked on, thereby ensuring that navigating to any view in Revit will have the same view in Fuzor. This is useful as it allows for easy sectioning in Revit and being able to view the same view with rendered materials and lights in Fuzor without the excessive wait times that would be endured if rendering solely in Revit.

The next interesting toolset was the bi-directional linking. Here, any change made in Revit such as changing the location of a chair updates the Fuzor file in real time. Additionally, deleting another chair in Fuzor can delete the chair in Revit if the changes are synced back. Moreover, since Fuzor logs all the families in the Revit file, additional instances of the families can be placed in Fuzor and synced back to the Revit file as needed.

Figure 2: Fuzor Plugin tab.

Figure 3: Revit + Fuzor.

Navigating the Model

There are a variety of navigation modes in Fuzor. There is a choice between using basic Revit controls, Naviswork controls, free camera control, Avatar control, and Oculus Rift control. I personally prefer the Revit controls to orbit the model, zoom and pan to a desired camera location to set up a scene and save a view. The highlight of the application is the ability to navigate the project model per an avatar’s point of view. There are a variety of avatars available—you can choose between being a man, woman, or child. There is also a range of avatar customization, from construction worker to formal, casual, and even a fitness theme. Additionally, we can have a vehicle if the project in question involves an Infraworks model.

The avatar control uses the direction keys to walk through the model and uses a PhysX engine for physical simulation of movement and material rendering. The movement through the building appears seamless and can be assisted with a mouse for directionality. Some navigation pointers use space for jumping, hold shift for running, and use the right-click to open doors.

Figure 4: Avatars

Fuzor inherits the location of the project from Revit and is able to further control the time of day using a simple clock dial. This dial controls the exterior ambient lighting and dictates when the interior lighting should go on and off. In addition to lighting and time of day, we can also control the weather—from a clear sunny day to a dark stormy night.

Figure 5: 2D mini map

To assist with navigating in a controlled manner and to assist in navigating vertically through a project, Fuzor provides all users with a 2D mini map usually shown on the top right-hand corner of the screen. The map can be clicked on to allow the avatar to be teleported to specific locations in the project model. The 2D mini map also has the ability to accept X, Y and Z coordinates to teleport the avatar to a specific location. To teleport vertically, the 2D mini map has a drop-down to select specific Revit levels to teleport to. Unfortunately, I was unable to customize this to not show certain levels in the selection criteria. By default, Fuzor takes all active levels and has them available as a teleport option.

Presenting the Model

Once set up, the model can be presented in several ways. A fully functioning standalone cache file can be created by simply saving the project as a Fuzor Cache File (*.che). This option allows us to open Fuzor as a standalone application without the need of having Revit open and providing all the features in Fuzor Ultimate.

There is also an option to create a Fuzor viewer file where, once saved, all the settings of the project as set up before are committed to a self-executable (*.exe) file, which can be opened on any computer even if it does not have Fuzor. This has been a great way for me to share project models with clients and consultants. Not only can I share the entire project in an application that is intuitive and easy to use, but it is also a read-only version of the file, which ensures that no one viewing the file has the ability to accidently or consciously write to it.

Figure 6: Screenshot 1

The mobile cloud panel has the ability to save the Fuzor project to a mobile device running on an Android or iOS device. There are three options to create a Fuzor mobile file (*.fzm): we can save the file to Google Drive, Dropbox, or to a local/network location. I personally like the in-built Dropbox integration and have used this successfully to save the Fuzor mobile file and access the same via my iPad. Please note that the mobile platform is currently in beta and needs further development.

Figure 7: Measurements

HD screenshots can be saved as an image file (*.png) and there are several resolution options available during the save process. Selected views can be saved as Fuzor snapshot project (*.fss) within the project or exported as screenshots individually.

Animations can be saved in two ways. They can either be saved as a pre-determined walkthrough or flythrough. The walkthrough follows a first person view that has me create a path through the project to experience the space in the model. This can then be exported as a MP4 (*.mp4) file. A cinematic video option has a lot more features allowing for a frame by frame reel that can accept more effects, annotations, visibility options, and view orientations. This can be saved as a Fuzor Movie Project (*.fmp).

Figure 8: Screenshot 2

Extended Device Support

Fuzor has extended in-built support for various devices. All Fuzor suites are compatible with:

• Oculus Rift
• 3D Connexion mouse
• Mobile device: Currently in beta (Android & iOS)
• USB Gamepad

Additional Features

There are several other features of Fuzor that are interesting:

• Design Option tool
• Linked file support
• Real-time lighting adjustments
• Real-time foliage/tree placement
• Real-time door animations
• Spawn particles, fire, smoke
• CCTV design and simulation
• Clash analysis and report generation
• Light meter measurement and report
• Footstep counter measurement

Installation and Licensing

The installation is pretty straightforward. You will be directed to download the package after you have purchased the software.  Just follow the onscreen prompts and you will be ready to go. It is not an MSI install so Revit cannot be open during installation or any updates / upgrades.  Fuzor uses the Autodesk Revit API and SDK, thus it has the ability to translate native Revit families to Fuzor content making its bi-directional link possible. After the install, you will have a new tab in Revit titled Fuzor Plugin. The first time you click on the tab it will prompt you for your license key, which you should have received after your purchase confirmation. Enter the key and you now have access to all the Fuzor tools. Fuzor, though complex and powerful, is pretty intuitive and can be learned by exploring over a few days. But some uses may opt to get some formal training.

Customer Support and Training

The company’s customer service and the training personnel I talked to are very friendly and knowledgeable. They are experienced training professionals not only with their product but they also understand Autodesk Revit and have a very good idea of how the design process works within an architectural office.  They have support staff available in their San Diego office available from 9am to 5pm Pacific Time. Their reseller network consists of Redstack for Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam, Taiwan, Germany, and Australia. YTC is the reseller for South Korea. CTC (CAD Technology Center) is the reseller in the Midwest (USA). They also have a lot of feature videos and are always happy to jump on a call with you to answer specific questions.

What Will it Cost and How Can I Get it?

Fuzor offers monthly or annual subscriptions and perpetual licenses. The monthly subscription for Fuzor Ultimate costs $300 and an annual subscription costs $3,250. Perpetual licenses are offered as standalone or networked. You also have the option of purchasing other modules if you do not need Fuzor Ultimate. To purchase the software or for more information, go to the Kalloc Studios website www.kalloctech.com or email them at info@kalloc.com.

Pros and Cons

Pros:

• Ease of installation, use, and speed
• Rendering quality is good
• FBX support
• Software is capable of producing standalone viewer for clients
• Easily integrated with Revit
• Price – has an easy pay-as-you-go monthly subscription
• Mobile device support
• Oculus Rift support

Cons:

• Not quite a design tool in itself, but does integrate well with one
• Some of the BIM workflows are anemic so using it as a standalone tool is hard
• Mobile support in beta
• No ability to have dynamic movement of objects in animations
• No formalized training curriculum and materials

Final Thoughts

Fuzor is a powerful application with great ambition. Every update to the software has seen some major enhancements and it has gone from strength to strength since the first time I used it more than a year ago. Its ease of use, minimalistic interface, and incredible speed worked exactly as advertised. If the annual commitment is too much, I recommend a pay-as-you-go approach and use it as needed. I give it 8 out of 10 stars and urge you to try it.