<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="utf-8">
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1">
<title>Viewing home renovations in Oculus VR</title>
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="/style.css">
</head>
<body>
<header>
<h1 class="title">Viewing home renovations in Oculus VR</h1>
<p class="date">2024-03-31</p>
</header>
<p>This is the best, cheapest way that I've found to plan home renovation projects and then visualize them in VR. I use the Oculus Quest 3 but the instructions also work for the Quest 2 and probably anything that runs Gravity Sketch.</p>
<ol style="list-style-type: decimal">
<li>Edit home design in Live Home 3D (mac only). Use as many textures as you can because they end up looking better than solid colors.</li>
<li>Export as .FBX (easiest) or .OBJ (the zipped version so it also includes textures)</li>
<li>Install Gravity Sketch, sign up for an account on their cloud platform
https://landingpad.me/</li>
<li>Login to Landingpad, navigate to "My Files", upload the .FBX file.</li>
<li>Login to Gravity Sketch on the Oculus using the same Landingpad account, go to "File Manager" -> "My Files" and choose your uploaded .FBX file. It might take a minute or two to process the first time you open it.</li>
<li>The camera will be in a strange position. Open the hamburger menu and go to Settings -> "Sketching Aid" and turn on "Vertical Lock" and turn off "Stage Floor".</li>
<li>Most workspaces have a solid floor which will hide the floor of your house design. Go to Settings -> Workspace and choose the "Studio" preset which has an invisible floor.</li>
<li>Objects with flat colors might be rendered with no shading which makes it hard to perceive depth. Go to Settings -> Workspace and choose a custom workspace, then set "Shadows" to "Sketch shadows", turn off "Floor Grid", turn off "Use Gumdrop", turn "HDR" to "Custom Environments", "HDR Source" to "Reference Library" and choose any of the reference sources like Helipad or Machine Shop.</li>
<li>Use the left controller's side trigger to grab the world geometry and pull everything downwards until your head is positioned at the right height.</li>
<li>You can now walk around and inspect the layout. If your Oculus boundary is too small you can use the "Teleport" tool to jump around. You won't be able to jump through doors or windows so just teleport near them and then either physically step through them or use the left controller side trigger to pull the geometry past you until your head is on the other side, and then you can switch back to the teleport tool to move around.</li>
<li>You can edit the geometry, rearrange furniture, draw on the walls and do whatever annotations you want. If you're loading into the file often then you can define a better spawn point that will be your starting position whenever you open the file. Go to the Viewpoints tool, aim your right controller at a good starting perspective, and hit the right controller main trigger to save that viewpoint. Then hit the X button on the left controller to open the viewpoints list, and toggle on the "Spawn Point" switch beside the new viewpoint.</li>
</ol>
</body>
</html>
