Digital Twins

Here is a demonstration of using Digital Twin to display building information, including sensors captured from IoT devices. You can download the app here. zip. 268MB,

instructions:
right mouse clicks an object to open the BIM dashboard.
right mouse drag to change the camera angle.
left mouse click sensor to open IoT dashboard, and other web-based data.
Middle mouse button to zoom in/out.
M” to switch camera views.
W, A, S, D, Q, E to navigate.
space bar to jump.

 

 

extract BIM info from Revit.

Check more info about Digital Twin from Autodesk Forge and Unreal digital twin and 51 world

Book Chapter: Cyber-Physical Experiences

Book Chapter

Turan Akman, and Ming Tang. Cyber-Physical Experiences: Architecture as Interface

in the book Virtual Aesthetics in Architecture: designing in mixed realities. Routledge, 2021.

  

Virtual Aesthetics in Architecture: Designing in Mixed Realities presents a curated selection of projects and texts contributed by leading international architects and designers who are using virtual reality technologies in their design process. It triggers discussion and debate on exploring the aesthetic potential and establishing its language as an expressive medium in architectural design. Although virtual reality is not new and the technology has evolved rapidly, the aesthetic potential of the medium is still emerging and there is a great deal more to explore.

 

Cyber-Physical Experiences: Architecture as Interface

Turan Akman [STG Design] and Ming Tang [University of Cincinnati]

Conventionally, architects have relied on the qualities of elements, such as materiality, light, solids, and voids, to break away from the static nature of space and enhance the way users experience and perceive architecture. Even though some of these elements and methods have helped create more dynamic spaces, architecture is still bound by the conventional constraints of the discipline. With the introduction of technologies such as augmented reality (AR), it is becoming easier to blend digital and physical realities and create new types of spatial qualities and experiences, especially when this is combined with virtual reality (VR) early in the design process. Although these emerging technologies cannot replace the primary and conventional qualitative elements in architecture, they can be used to supplement and enhance the experience and qualities architecture provides.

in order to explore how AR can enhance the way architecture is experienced and perceived and how VR can be used to enhance the effects of these AR additions, the authors have proposed a hybrid museum in which AR is integrated into conventional analog methods (e.g. materiality, light) to mediate spatial experiences. The authors also created a VR walkthrough and collected quantifiable data on the spatial effects of these AR additions to evaluate the proposed space.

Check more info at Chapter 9 | Cyber-physical experiences

Project Stage

Project “Stage” is a stand-alone rendering engine developed by Ming Tang, using runtime load asset, as well HDRI backdrop methods in UE4. It is a windows application for users to quickly load their FBX file into a virtual environment for first-person, and third-person walk-throughs.

This stand-alone program allows users to load external 3D models in runtime instantly. The Stage environment includes UI to load FBX models during runtime, several HDRI lighting domes, and interactive characters. The Stage promotes iterative design and encourages designers to explore the creative potentials through real-time feedback. Project bus stop and burning man were both developed using the stage as a pre-VIZ tool.

The Stage allows students to (1) present their 3D model to the reviewer without waiting for renderings. No packaging time is required. Design is ready instantly in a game environment. (2) Control an avatar to navigate space and explore the form through first-person or third-person views. (3) By loading design iterations in Stage and examining the frame rate and loading time, students learned the importance of optimizing a model. (4) Test the UV mapping, and scene hierarchy (5) Test the low-poly collision objects and navigation mesh. (5) Have fun. There is a hidden Easter egg to be discovered.

 

download windows application “Stage” here. ( zip) 660MB

( password “stage”)

Tutorial 1.  how to use Stage

Export model from Rhino or 3dsMax as FBX, Create collision object with “UCX_” preface. Use standard material. import into Stage. Customize material. Notice. You might need to clean up your mesh model in Rhino or optimize at 3dsMax before exporting to FBX.

 

Tutorial 2. how the application was built in Unreal.

Third-person character, HDRI backdrop, FBX runtime import plugin.

 

Easter Egg

There is an Easter Egg in Stage, see if you can find it. Clue:

An invisible scroll,  only the hero can see

Not in the fall, but in the green

on the plain surrounded by trees

find the trail that leads ten feet underneath

to the fiery domain of Hades

paper at SIMAUD 2021

Ming Tang, Mark Landis’ paper titled “Fixed shading device design with the performance-based-design and energy simulation” is accepted at The 12th annual Symposium on Simulation for Architecture and Urban Design (SimAUD). 2021

This paper presents a performance-driven design (PBD) tool developed by combining the energy analysis abilities of Ladybug, Honeybee, and EnergyPlus to inform shading device design decisions. Consider architects as the user group, the PBD workflow presented in this paper demonstrates the optimization of fixed shading devices for cooling and heating loads while providing multiple aesthetic options by not limiting the shading device typology at the beginning of the process. The PBD produces iterations that perform similarly, yet effectively, in terms of energy savings so that a designer can design shading devices based on other criteria such as aesthetic concerns or constructability issues. With a customized user interface (UI) for PBD, designers can move between different shading typologies and add their own creative, artistic interpretations while not being required to run complex simulations after each design change. This paper presents how this PBD process with new UI (PBD-UI)  can be agile enough to handle frequent design changes. This method was tested by a group of architectural design students and demonstrated that the PBD-UI is more in-line with the parametric design process than traditional shading device design methods. Combined with parametric design tools and customized UI, it can facilitate more creative, innovative design solutions based on performance criteria such as reducing heating and cooling loads.

The source code and tutorial of the tool are available here.

Virtual Reality for caregiver training

Assess the effectiveness of using Virtual Reality for caregiver training

Urban Health Pathway Seed Grant. PI: Ming Tang. Partner. Council on Ageing, LiveWell Collaborative. $19,844. 03. 2021-3.2022

Result: COA EVRTalk 

EVRTalk virtual reality caregiver training

 

This project aims to investigate the effectiveness of using Virtual Reality to build empathy for the care recipient by allowing the caregiver to experience day-to-day life from the care recipient’s perspective. Ming Tang leads a research team to work with COA and LiveWell Collaborative to develop and evaluate an expandable set of VR training modules designed to help train family and friends who are thrust into the caregiving role. Ming Tang lead the LWC team and design the simulated decision trees, scenarios, and hand-tracking technologies in an immersive VR environment.

Team members: Ming Tang, Matt Anthony,Craig Vogel, Linda Dunseath, Alejandro Robledo, Tosha Bapat, Karly Camerer, Jay Heyne, Harper Lamb, Jordan Owens, Ruby Qji, Matthew Spoleti, Lauren Southwood, Ryan Tinney, Keeton Yost, Dongrui Zhu

 

COA is awarded $25,000 from the CTA Foundation Grant in 2021.

In the UC News. share point.