BUILD Architecture Awards 2022 34 Arkio works closely with its community and has received a lot of feedback from designers, for example, over the past years on how to best integrate Arkio into their existing workflows, and that has guided the roadmap quite a bit. Hilmar comments, “In many ways, the traditional scale models used in architecture are the original inspiration. We asked ourselves, ‘what if you could create virtual scale models with other people in minutes and then jump inside them to continue designing and experiencing them at human scale?’” So, what’s next for Arkio? Hilmar shares, “Being able to mix realities and modify the real world with Passthrough is pure magic, and we’ll continue to expand those capabilities in the near future. Expect to see additional parametric components as well to design even faster and even the ability for users to create and share their own components. We’re also working on enabling users to create and import ever larger scenes and to export their Arkio scenes to other design tools and online platforms. In many ways, we see Arkio as the ideal spatial design tool — not only for physical architecture but for virtual architecture as well.” He continues, “As well, it’s exciting to see the reaction from students using Arkio. This next generation of designers will use VR and AR by default and no doubt come up with all sorts of creative uses for the medium, whether they’re designing real or virtual architecture.” Arkio is only just getting started on this journey to bring seamless and intuitive spatial design to everyone. It will continue to expand its modelling capabilities, multi-user features, and integrations with other design tools and platforms as it pushes the boundaries of what’s possible. To try Arkio for free, it is available for download from the Quest Store. All the modelling tools are available in the free version, and you can try out the Passthrough modelling and multi-user as well. Share what you think on the forums on arkio.is - https://support. arkio.is/hc/en-us/community/topics or on Discord - https:// discord.com/invite/JX3V93Vdk8 — The team is always looking for feedback on what it can be doing better. Company: Arkio Contact: Hilmar Gunnarsson Email: [email protected] Website: arkio.is rkio wants to give you design superpowers. To enable you to come up with better design ideas faster. To work with people in a more intuitive way than before possible. To move entire skyscrapers with your hands. To experience the future before it’s built. Today’s VR and AR technologies along with the easy availability of mobile devices make this entirely feasible. There is no reason to accept the limitations of flat-screen design tools or the challenges of getting work done together just because it has always been that way. On March 31st, Arkio was launched on the Quest App Store. This was an exciting step forward in the development of the software as collaborative spatial design gets more effortless and accessible for the community of professional architects, designers, game developers, and hobbyists. Arkio Founder and CEO, Hilmar Gunnarsson comments, “The release was in many ways our biggest yet, adding new features that are pushing the boundaries of what’s possible with spatial design in VR.” This version adds Meta avatars and Passthrough modelling on Meta Quest, parametric components, a bi-directional Unity workflow, and more. The focus here is on the Unity integration and its challenges. Arkio has developed a Unity plugin that can export a Unity scene directly to Arkio via the cloud. This opens up all kinds of use cases for anyone working with Unity, be it game designers, Metaverse designers, or architects. Arkio can also export back to Unity, so if GameObjects are moved around in Arkio, the original GameObjects will be moved accordingly. Anything added to the scene inside Arkio will also get added to the scene in Unity, naturally. The main challenge is to propagate changes from one side to the other while objects are being created, removed, and possibly duplicated on both sides. Arkio ended up tagging objects with unique IDs to be able to robustly match them back and forth during imports. Arkio’s logic treats objects differently depending on whether they originate in a scene or not, ensuring original objects aren’t clobbered with duplicates during roundtripping. There were also a few challenges with making this work with Unity’s geometry import pipeline. Leading Providers of Architect & Designer Collaboration Tools 2022 Arkio enables anyone to create, collaborate, and review spatial design using VR, desktop, and mobile. Users can design interiors, buildings, virtual spaces, or game environments and make better design decisions faster. In light of this revolutionary technology’s awards success, we take a closer look at how it makes the lives of architects, designers, and game developers easier. A Jan22564
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