How to model a house interior?

Support Modeling
1

Hi,

I need to model a house interior and show all furniture and lighting to finally make a walkthrough. How do i start with the interior?

2

Ive just modelled the interior of a church with all the furniture in it.

The key thing is to pick a scale in relationship to the grid (anything else seems to go mad) ie 1 square = 1 metre

Then create the structure - walls etc

You can then model the funiture (or get it off the net). What I did was to model the separate items in seperate blend files then append them into the main building file

I used photographs (side/front etc) to make sure that my models where proportiate, then taking one measurement (like height) I imported the model into the main building file and scaled it up to the right height (and thus all the other dimentions where correct)

For measurement in laying out items, I just created a plane to act as a ruler so I could move it about. Also I put the object centre at the edge of the thing I was moving which meant I could use shift-s snap to cursor for aligning.

The one thing I would say about the walkthough idea is if your planning to use the game engine tools then you’ll be uv mapping and you can be less detailed than you would be if you were doing top quality renders for stills or movies.

I hope this is of some use?

3

Ya of great use many thanks. Tell me how do you start with the walls? Did you model it entirely on Blender?

Can you teach me step by step how did you start with it?

4

Start by sketching or having a photo ref for how the room is layed out.

You have 20 layers so use them to group similar items - it also makes it easier to select things and have different layouts (although you could use scenes for that - I dont understand them yet)

I split the screen at the side and create a text file that I can name the layers in eg

layer 1 : Structure
layer 2 : blender Lights and cameras
layer 3 : Fixings
layer 4 : Seating
layer 5 : tables
layer 6 : junk
layer 7 : people
layer 8 : paths for animation

I then get the floor plan to the right proportions using a plane and sudividing then extruding bits out

I then created plains for the walls (only modeling the visible areas) so rather than making a cube I just extruded thickness where it was needed ie windows etc - these things can get REALLY big and slow so its importaint to keep the vert count down.

Then, as I said, I model the funiture in separate blend files and append in

Its also a good idea to be diciplined about giving your datablocks sensible names eg

Object : Dinning chair

material : Dinning chair fabric

etc

I cant really do a full tutorial but I hope that gets you started

5

that’s a gud explanation for a start. Let me start first with some tutorials to get started with Blender and then start using your steps to create the interior.

many thanks.

6

Another idea, instead of appending, place your objects in the blender libriary script so they can be used again and again, easier to place in a blend file as well.

7

Check out this thread, especially the link to the tutorial, for when you get to the point you’ll be doing the actual walkthrough (after the modeling.) If you’re planning on doing a game-engine walkthrough, you need to pay attention to materials and vert count big time. If you’re just doing a camera fly-by animation, then it isn’t as important (but still makes a difference unless you have a render farm!).

edit: oops, I see my point has already been made…but the link to the tutorial in the thread is still valid, check it out.

8

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9

Ok guys,

Let me try it and if i’m stuck i’ll get back to you.

10

So how did it turn out?