Archinect - News

Zaha Hadid Architects create Fornite experience for London with Epic Games

2024-09-24T08:55:00-04:00

Zaha Hadid Architects and Epic Games have collaborated on an in-game experience for the popular Fortnite video game. Titled ‘Re:Imagine London’, the experience sees an island created within Fortnite that players can use to explore and interact with London’s built environment.

Image credit: Epic Games

Using Epic Games’ Unreal Editor for Fortnite (UEFN), Re:Imagine London seeks to explore the use of the UEFN for practical applications in architecture and “pool creator talent across industries including architecture, landscape, and interiors.” To build the experience, the team used content provided by Zaha Hadid Architects, AccuCities, and Beyond Creative.

Image credit: Epic Games

“Situated around London’s waterfronts, the project investigates urban intensification and community participation in the creation of walkable, mixed-use, sustainable development, the team says. “The experience facilitates rapid optioneering through an engaging and...

Habitat 67’s original vision recreated in Unreal Engine by Safdie Architects, Epic Games, and Neoscape

2023-05-17T07:00:00-04:00

Safdie Architects, Epic Games, and the creative agency Neoscape have recreated the original vision for Habitat 67 in virtual reality. Using Epic Games’ powerful game engine Unreal Engine 5, the entire original master plan for the radical early 1960s scheme has been constructed, marking a significant expansion on the realized segment situated in Montreal, Canada.

Video courtesy: Epic Games

The genesis of Habitat 67 stretches back to Moshe Safdie’s master’s thesis at McGill University. At 23 years old, Safdie submitted the idea to the 1967 Montreal World’s Fair, with the goal of creating a pilot for a new type of housing that would not contribute to urban sprawl.

Image credit: Epic Games

“It began with a journey through North America to study housing,” Safdie recalled. “I came to the conclusion that suburbs weren’t feasible in the long term. They consumed too much land, energy, and transportation. If we could reinvent the apartment building to offer the quality...

For Unreal Engine-savvy architects, a multimedia company offers the opportunity to collaborate with big-name brands and promoters

2022-12-07T13:23:00-05:00

Following last week’s look at an opening for a Senior Associate of Design for the Obama Presidential Center, we are using our Job Highlights series this week to explore an open role on Archinect Jobs for an Unreal Engine Rendering Artist at PHNTM.

The position, situated in Los Angeles, calls for an individual with a degree in architecture or game and entertainment design with at least one year’s experience in Unreal Engine. Responsibilities will include developing "detailed 3D scenes and cinematic photo realistic images and videos," as well as "optimize assets for virtual tours" of PHNTM’s experiential projects.

Related on Archinect: Epic Games unleashes Unreal with the Academy

Why the role interests us

The PHNTM role’s emphasis on proficiency in Unreal Engine marks the latest example of an architectural career’s intersection with immersive multimedia and gaming. Last month, the topic was also the focus on a MoMA exhibition showcasing its own video game collection. Last year, meanwh...

Faculty members from Cornell's architecture department develop virtual reality program for popular video game company Epic Games

2019-06-27T13:56:00-04:00

Faculty in the Department of Architecture have received a cash gift from Epic Games Inc. in support of their work on Virtual Places, a project that is adapting the company's virtual reality (VR) gaming engine, Unreal Engine 4 (UE4), for architectural and urban design.

Three Cornell professors used virtual reality to create and expand on their research project Virtual Places. The study of architecture and video games is a growing focus. Within academia and practice, VR is a tool which helps unpack architectural ideas for learning as well as creating visualization possibilities for clients. Epic Games Inc., a video game and software development company known for creating the popular online game Fortnite, selected Professor Henry Richardson, Assistant Professor Timur Dogan, and Assistant Professor of the Practice Martin Miller as winners of a cash prize out of a pool of invited finalists for the international competition.

Image of Rockerfeller Center - taken from Virtual Places: Real Time Experiential Design and Visualization of Urban Spaces. Image courtesy of Cornell AAP

According to Richardson, "Virtual Places was launched this spring with a research seminar called Gaming Architecture. Both upper-class undergraduates and graduate students 'stress t...

2018 CGArchitect 3D Awards Announced

2018-08-27T08:55:00-04:00

CG Architect has announced their winners for their yearly visualization awards. The CGarchitect 3Dawards have 4 separate categories: Image, Film/Animation, Interactive and Student. Within the Film/Animation and Image categories there are also two sub-categories for Commissioned and Non-Commissioned work. All the work submitted for an award must have been created in the past 2 calendar years. This year's winners include industry vanguards such as Kilograph and DBOX along with potent and creative newcomers from the student categories. Check out the full list of winners and their submissions below.

Interactive

Winner: Kilograph

Image (Commissioned)

Winner: Recent Spaces

Image by Recent Spaces.

Image (Non-Commissioned)

Winner: Bartosz Domiczek

Image by Bartosz Domiczek

Film (Commissioned)

Winner: DBOX

Film (Non-Commissioned)

Winner: Ryan Wai Lin Lam

Student (Image)

Winner: Mano Karlinger

Image by Manó Karlinger

Student (Film)

Winner: San We Kong Jian

Unreal Experience (Image)

Winner:...

Epic Games unleashes Unreal with the Academy

2018-08-19T13:52:00-04:00

Epic Games, the creators of the Unreal Engine, the standard for VR and AR exploration, experiment and implementation has unveiled its Academy. Understanding that understanding and exploring their medium is not as easy as picking up a pencil. Unreal is looking to change this by launching its own online academy meant to bring such software and creative unleashing to the masses. The academy will have a collection of tutorials, lectures and sample files tied to architecture, industrial design, game development and visualization to name a few.

Epic Games Academy

With more and more educational institutions embracing the visual and visceral adoration of such projects that comes from such technology and with a growing portion of such institutional leaders and educators unaware of how to use, teach and implement such software, having companies bridge the landscapes between creator and educator may be a sign of things to come — a much needed one.