Jacobs embraces interactive visualization for infrastructure projects

Jacobs was commissioned by the local council to put together a video containing real-life footage, infographics, and 3D visualization. Its purpose is to help explain the development and its advantages and impact, and show how each part of the program would support the others. 

“The choice of local pictures, use of computer-generated visuals, and the birds-eye flythrough of the scheme gave a really informative, easy to understand, and yet technical representation of the proposed bypass and station. Being a local resident, I am excited about the project and look forward to delivering it,” explains Paul Crick, Director for Capital Investment and Delivery, Essex County Council.

Fast rendering that slashes review times

As one of a number of senior visualizers across global teams, it’s Styles’ job to put visualizations together, organize the team, and act as the main client liaison. “In the end, my goal is to make sure the project achieves the desired outcomes, comes in on time, on budget, and to the highest possible quality,” he says.
 

For the 2D infographics, Jacobs built a normal 3D scene in layers so they sit on top of each other correctly, then recorded it with an orthographic camera. “Once everything is set up and working, it’s a simple task to render out the clips in Sequencer, and the saving in time is incredible—especially on a project like this with many iterations and client requests,” says Styles.

Real-time technology has also taken the guesswork out of visualization, explains Adam Dotlacil, Graduate Visual Media Specialist at Jacobs. “When it comes to real-time versus offline rendering, the most commonly known benefit is ‘you get what you see’. With offline rendering, you do a quick preview of the scene and the more experienced artists will be able to imagine what the result will look like even with small changes,” he says. “The advantage of real-time technology demonstrates itself when a more impactful change is made such as adjusting the lighting setup.”

Dotlacil’s focus on the project was the 3D visualization, which was created using many of Unreal Engine’s Open World tools. “We had to cover about 48 square kilometers, so procedural workflows were absolutely essential,” he explains. “Our heightmap was created by combining CAD data with real-world height data to fill contextual space.”

A major challenge the team faced was ensuring visual fidelity from aerial distance as well as at eye level. To achieve this, the team blended Quixel Megascans textures together with aerial footage for the landscape material. It also used Unreal Engine’s realistic Sun and Sky Actor to get accurate lighting representation and the Procedural Foliage tool to quickly populate the area with contextual foliage.

The time invested in building tools like these has been well spent, as the team now has useful resources they can reuse for projects going forwards. “We can now iterate, improve, and expand what we have made before,” says Dotlacil. “For example, I’ve put together a demo project that includes a complex, yet optimized, landscape material and a collection of various vegetation assets that are ready to be dropped into any future project.”

Impressively, Dotlacil created these tools despite not considering himself a coder. “I have little coding experience and if I had to put together the same tools using some scripting language, I don’t believe I would be as anywhere near successful,” he says. 

For Styles, facilitating faster and more frequent iteration cycles is where real-time rendering comes into its own. “Sequencer is faster and more agile than the old CPU render farm,” he says. “This means we can do reviews more often, and can respond to feedback within 24 hours. You can't remove the need for iteration, so having tools that make you agile is a huge bonus.”

Fast, flexible real-time technology

The flexibility and speed real-time technology affords means the team can not only create something faster, it can also easily move things sideways during development—producing 2D, 3D, stills, video, and interactive content as required. 

What’s more, because it is all with one main program, time can be saved on retraining teams on different software. “CAD, a 3D modeling package, image editing software, Unreal Engine, and simple video editing software were all that was required,” says Styles.

Beyond its infrastructure visualization projects, real-time technology is driving innovation at Jacobs in intriguing new ways. With the recent restrictions curbing in-person client and stakeholder interaction, Jacobs has leveraged Unreal Engine to develop a compelling way to interact with projects. 

The company’s Virtual Event Space was used as part of the wider communication programme for the Chelmsford project to provide their stakeholders with an interactive, virtual experience that they can easily access straight from any computer or mobile device, when traditional face-to-face engagement was no longer possible as a result of Covid-19. 

The success of projects like the Chelmsford bypass and the potential of innovations such as the Virtual Event Space mean Jacobs is set to harness the power of real-time technology for a long time to come.