I will soon be studying to be a civil engineer and I was wondering how well Blender goes with very complex models like large architectual complexes. Also using the gameBlender feature, I can make dynamic walk-throughs for houses and whatever, can’t I? Are there any other engineers out there that have had to do this kind of thing with Blender?
Thanks.
I’m also studying to be a civil engineer. I’m in the 3rd of 5 years. I’ve managed to model some complex building (but nothing too complex) and it went well.
I’m an Electronic engineer, but you can see my building renderings here
http://www.selleri.org/Blender
Stefano
Thanks, it is good to know that the program will be able to handle complex modelling, because as part of my study, I really want to do walkthroughs and stuff like that and I want to use Blender for this.
ok, Blender does NOT handle complex modeling well from my experience. If you want to do an entire building in high-detail, you will feel the strain.
Blender’s rendering limit is about 2million verts and 256 lights, and in my experience this is quite easy to exceed. Now if you are not beveling your surfaces and not going for photorealistic lighting, than it should have no problem.
Blender’s file system can handle large amounts of data quite well (although the amount of time to save a load a file will climb as you add more detail), and if you break your building up into layers you should be able to circumvent the rendering limits.
For walkthroughs, there is no dynamic face culling (i.e. removing faces from the calculation that you can’t see and would obviosly not be in the frame) built into the game engine, so you will have to keep your models relativly low in detail and the lighting relativly simple.
I hope this helps!
Hey Dani,
My uncle is an architect. I can’t recall the tool he uses, but I didn’t recognize the name (Meaning it wasn’t Maya, Lightwave, 3dsMax, etc). In fact, I think his using that tool was one of the reasons he was hired by his new firm. They wanted to branch out to bigger projects. The firm was using a tool that many other local firms used, but he had been working for years with a tool many of the larger firms (that they hoped to work with) were using.
You may want to ask your professors about what’s popular in the industry, and see if your school has it in the lab, or if there’s a student version. Of course, any 3d modeling experience, even Blender, would definitely give you an edge.
Imp
I agree with stephen2002 100% . Blender is an excellent tool, but it has it’s limitations and intended uses. It is not meant to replace or even compare with products such as Autodesk or AutoCad. I have seen a few fairly complex architectural models made with Blender…but nothing meant for a walk through. The game engine also slows down TREMENDOUSLY with high-poly scenes. The bad side is that professinal software costs money. The good side is that STUDENT DISCOUNTS apply to most software.
Thanks guys, I will take into consideration the limitations when I give the modelling a shot soon. Any other suggestions are always welcome. 