Digital Twins with Unreal Engine and blender for dummies
Digital twins are virtual replicas of physical devices that data scientists and IT pros can use to run simulations before actual devices are built and deployed. Digital twins can also take real-time IoT data and apply AI and data analytics to optimize performance.
Here we are going to discuss a 100% open source data based creation of a digital twin of a city using unreal engine.
Software used: Blender, Unreal Engine 4.27, Adobe Photoshop
The city we are going to create is a basic low poly town.
Step 1
We need the data of the buildings, roads and other features that makes a city in 3D form. This can be obtained via OpenStreetMap plugin for blender — BlenderOSM. Install the plugin and extract data as per the document in here.
Step 2
Making lines to polygonal in order to export roads using blender.
a. select the lines
b. Go to object menu->convert-> mesh from curve
c. Go to edit mode and select all vertices
d. Go to Mesh->Extrude and carefully extrude the polygons in X,Y plane
Step 3
The 3D objects needs to be UV mapped for applying textures. And the object has to be exported as a .fbx or .obj for it to be able to imported through Unreal Engine. But if you open it, you will not be able to see roads. This is because line files does not contain polygonal data.
Step 4
Go to Unreal Engine and make a new landscape. Drag and drop the fbx files to your content browser and place them in your level.
This could be re-modelled and beautified with materials and props
Here’s a final view with Procedural building textures.
