Volkswagen hired Animech to make a VR configurator to help sell their new car — the Arteon. The configurator is a state-of-the-art VR experience, in which a potential buyer can fully configure all parts of the vehicle, including colors, rims, seats, steering wheels, lights, and many other features. All of this while experiencing the visual difference in high quality, real time VR.
Background
During the summer of 2013, Animech Technologies hired me as a 3D artist. One of my first projects there was to create a photorealistic car in Unity. Fast forward to 2016, the HTC Vive was released. In order to show the benefits of virtual reality, we invited potential customers from various industries to a VR night at our office. We showed the few games that existed at the time, as well as a demo we had thrown together a couple of days earlier. We had taken the car from the old Passat configurator, and created a small VR experience out of it. And it just so happened that representatives from Volkswagen attended our VR event.
Even though we didn’t have time to polish the demo, we could still show the potential of VR. We also demonstrated the visual quality of our previous Passat configurator. This was enough for Volkswagen to trust us with a pilot project.
Making the Showroom
In previous standalone applications we had always used Unity as our engine of choice. When working on the VR Passat pitch however, we struggled to work efficiently with Unity’s VR components. Also, we couldn’t easily reach the visual quality we wanted. Since realism was one of the top priorities for Volkswagen, we needed an engine that had the latest and greatest visual features. We began looking at Unreal Engine for its reputation of being more artist friendly than Unity. Epic had also just released their stunning automotive material pack, showcasing the new dual normals and clear-coat features. Shortly after testing Unreal on both the art and programming side, we were convinced to make the jump.
Before we got the order to create the Arteon, we started discussing with Volkswagen what type of VR environment we should have. Ultimately, we decided that we should recreate one of their showrooms. After all, they are designed with showing cars in mind. The nearest showroom was in Smista, Stockholm. So before production started, we took a trip to the location to collect reference material.
During the next 2 months we worked on getting the environment as realistic as possible. After we created the basic structure of the environment, we spent lots of time refining the scene in Unreal. We created all of the furniture as separate props, and placed them in the editor. This allowed us to take advantage of both frustum & occlusion culling, as well as Unreal’s HLOD system. We created prop-specific textures in Quixel, while the environment had tiling materials made in Unreal. The lighting was set up using only Unreal’s built in light sources (directional light, spotlights, skylight, reflection probes, and so on). Since everything in the environment was static, we could lightmap the entire scene. This is one of the main reason of the fantastic result.
Making the Arteon
With the pilot, we proved to Volkswagen that we could deliver the level of realism they expected. They green-lit the project, and soon we received source files to begin working on the Arteon.
The first task we did was to familiarize ourselves with the source data. To make the car fully configurable in our app, we had to have all variants of the car in the CAD files. We also got several data sheets containing information about color choices, trim upgrades, valid configurations, and more. While we had almost all the information we needed, the amount of data proved to be a bottleneck later in the project. We constantly needed to cross-reference our internal documents with multiple of the source documents. For example, it was not unusual that we had 4 excel sheets open simultaneously when assigning materials to the model.
We modeled the car in 3ds Max using the CAD-files as reference. To save time, we ran some of the more sensitive or complicated parts (such as the car body, and the seats) through an automatic reduction pipeline in Houdini. We brought the results back into Max where we UV-mapped, applied materials, and baked the models.
In Unreal, we used the Material Instance system to build our car materials. We divided them into 3 levels:
- MasterMaterials – these are our shaders. We have MasterMaterials for all major material categories (plastic, metal, rubber, wood, and so on). Here we set up all the parameters we want to control.
- BaseMaterials – these are instances of MaterMaterials, tweaked to look like a specific material. So we have materials called MetalGlossyChrome, PlasticMatteRed, and so on.
- BakedMaterials – these are instances of BaseMaterials, with AO/GI bakes in UV2. We baked groups of objects together. So 1 bake for the entire front left door, 1 for the right, and so on.
Interaction
One of the benefits of VR is the ability to interact with the virtual world. One of the first thing users did when experiencing the car in VR was to reach for the steering wheel. We knew we had to implement some form of interaction in our configurator. It wasn’t marked as top priority from Volkswagen, but we still managed to implement quite a few interactive parts. The user can open all doors and the trunk, grab the steering wheel, gear stick, open the drink holder cover and the glove compartment.
We also put in some other stuff for people to play with — a toy car, different balls, books, and other throwable things. It’s fun to see people discover these things, because no matter who they are, everyone becomes a child in VR. It’s hard to resist the urge to pick up and throw away everything you see!
Additional info
This project was a world first, both in terms of scope and visual quality. We shipped the configurator (along with a high performance PC and HTC Vive) to all of Sweden’s 90 Volkswagen retailers. The configurator is built using Aniconfigurator — Animech’s in-house developed software. What’s cool is that the configurator not only updates the VR application, but it also communicates with Volkswagen’s internal sales system. This means that a potential buyer can go from experiencing the car in VR, to signing an order of that exact car immediately.
Since we support all possible configurations, the number of permutations is close to 400 000. A typical configuration of the Arteon contains around 3 000 000 triangles, divided almost evenly among the exterior and interior. The rims were around 30 000 triangles each.
Closing thoughts
Volkswagen VR is by far the biggest project I’ve been a part of. I’m also proud of the leading role I’ve had during the project — from the first demo, to creating the showroom, and finally a fully configurable Arteon. Apart from all the 3D work I did, I was also in charge of creating a bunch of cinematics, screenshots, and other marketing material.
Finally, I would like to extend a huge thanks to Epic Games who have been heavily promoting this application. They’ve showcased us on many major enterprise expos, included us in their showreels, headlined us on their website, and even produced a project spotlight video (which you can watch below).
Learn more about Volkswagen VR on Animech’s website!