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View To.

AI-assisted
  • csharp
  • unity
  • compute-shaders
  • speckle
  • data-viz
View To

Design teams at Sasaki needed a way to understand the views being developed during projects. That required an application that could generate, store, and visualize viewshed data from teams' 3D models. View To started as a sketch in Unity and quickly evolved into an internal design tool used across all project types.

How it worked

Viewshed data was generated rapidly using Unity's compute shaders to rasterize a view inside a model and count the pixels of the things we wanted to see. It integrated Speckle for the backend and shipped plugins for Rhino/Grasshopper, Revit, and Unity.

Hongqai viewshed study of park visibility
Hongqai viewshed study of park visibility
Runtime UI for PC users
Runtime UI for PC users

Studies

The tool was used to compare existing conditions against design proposals across a range of real projects.

Colorado University — visibility of nearby campus from road
Colorado University — visibility of nearby campus from road
Viewshed comparison overlay
Viewshed comparison overlay
Perspective viewshed study
Perspective viewshed study

Deliverables

  • A Unity PC app using compute shaders to generate pixel-based viewshed data
  • A backend database to store analysis and geometry
  • Frontend connections to set up projects

View To was a wild developer journey and a major contributor to my evolution as a developer — prior to it I'd only made a few simple projects that never saw the light of day past my own computer.

Role

Full-stack developer, product designer · Nov 2019 — Oct 2023