Fortnite game developer aids BIM design company

BIM design specialist Tridify has been awarded a ‘MegaGrant’ from the Fortnite video game maker Epic Games, to develop a new BIM streaming service.

The service would enable AEC (architectural, engineering and construction) professionals to view interactive BIM models rendered with Epic Games’ Unreal Engine, streamed to any mobile device.

Designed to improve collaboration at all stages of the construction process, the service aims to make existing workflows more efficient and increase the quality of the viewing experience, when sharing large BIMs remotely.

Currently, as a result of the size of data and restrictions of mobile devices, viewing large models makes collaboration difficult for project stakeholders operating remotely.

The new streaming service will break down existing barriers to sharing large BIMs, working with any size of model on any device.

Tridify says users will soon benefit from uninterrupted workflows, seamlessly interacting with complex models from any location.

Tridify’s new service automatically publishes any IFC (industry foundation classes) file to the Unreal Engine and streams it to users via a URL. As the model is streamed directly to a device, there is no need to download any additional applications.

The service will be available during October via a range of different priced packages and is an addition to Tridify’s existing set of BIM publishing tools.

Alexander Le Bell, Tridify’s CEO, said, “Being able to view any type of BIM model on any device, rendered in the industry’s highest quality game engine, Unreal, is a major milestone in the streamlining of AEC workflows.

“The service solves the problem of how to share complete models of large-scale developments such as airports, hospitals or shopping malls with everyone, anywhere, without any technical or financial barriers.”

David Weir-McCall, Business Development, Unreal Engine Enterprise, at Epic Games, said, “The new Tridify service opens up amazing opportunities for the AEC community to benefit from the power of Unreal Engine visualisations, as they work more remotely with increasingly complex BIMs.

“Making Unreal Engine more accessible in this way will allow the AEC ecosystem to understand projects more easily and open communication between designer and client.”