I have a question regarding using blender to create a fly through for a Architectual drawings.
We use AutoCAD 2006 and a product called Revit, this can generate 3D drawings on the fly, but they really arent that good.AutoCAD suggest using 3D Studio Max to generate their fly throughs of buildings,but I am looking at any alternate programs as well.
My questions is can Blender import drawings from CAD and Revit and Render flythroughs for us…if not what would the process be to do this,as going through the Blender mag we are very impressed some of the results that have been presented
Hello
quick answer from a non-specialist
Forget the drawings ( or use them just as a guide to “build” the architecture model by hand)
The good and fast aproach is to export the house/building/environment as a 3d object, 3ds or Obj format, import them and setup the fly-mode in Blender
Bye
OTO’s descriptionis pretty much what I do. Simply extruding flat drawings can give a basic idea, but it does not really breath life into the work.
More often than not, I use the original drawings and build a new mesh. It does not actually take as long as you’d think as long as the architecture is pretty conventional. If objects are already available, then I just import them, scale to a reasonable relationship (I usually use 1.000 blender unit to the metre), do whatever clean-up is required then do the texturing.
There are automated processes out there (like the one that you suggest), but nothing beats human intervention.
I usually build the walkthrough paths based upon a simple camera ipo animation, or sometimes have it following a path - all depends upon what type of panning motion I want to have the camera doing at the same time as forwards movement. When it gets complex, I tend to fall back on keyframing as it’s easier to fine-tune on a frame-to-frame basis.
Are your CAD drawings 2D or 3D (within ACAD/Revit?) Suggest reading thru this thread (and searching for others) as this topic has been discussed in detail from a 2D AutoCAD -> Blender workflow standpoint.
For 3D out of AutoCAD, suggest exporting to 3DS files (3DSOUT command with the FACETRES variable controlling mesh density) then importing them into blender. (Works best on ACIS solids, don’t know about other 3D mesh entities.)
I’m currently using Blender in my firm, and we just did a quick fly-around for a client to show an addition. It can be done. Here’s a few pointers:
Search this forum for information using “architecture” as the key-word. Lots of threads on this topic, so I won’t go into too much detail below
Blender can import an ACAD 12 .dxf file. It takes some adjustment, but I’ve had success importing a plan as a .dxf into Blender and simply extruding the lines.
For a real-time walkthrough: You’ll need to download the “walkthrough” template from the Blender3D site and append your model (sort of like inserting a block) into it - or simply start in the template and rename it. Be aware that the game engine is what is used for this function, so the graphics are limited (for now…).
For an animated movie, you can use the rendering engine in Blender for some really nice results. Just give yourself a lot of time. A few seconds of animation can take hours to render.
Blender is not a CAD program, so be aware that there’s a pretty steep learning curve for a CAD jockey. (Speaking from experience…)
As I said, do a search and you’ll get some other opinions as well as lots of great links. Blender is a fantastic program with unmatched community support, so I say go for it.
Parenting your camera to a path, as well as setting it’s “track to” to point at an empty, then parenting the empty to another path (if desired) seems to give very good control as well as smooth motion (spline interpolation.)
Yeah, I do that as well. TBH, whether your tweaking the camera position/rotation or the track-to empty, it pretty much 6 and two 3’s so it really just depends on upon what mood I’m in.
If I need multiple cameras in a scene, I usually just go straight to the camera as it’s easier to keep track of the objects in a complex scene.
In your case 3D Studio Max will do the job most efficiently. No problems importing your models and you can quickly and easily do high quality materials, lighting and then animate it.
Blender will give you endless problems importing the models, with no 2d info included (CAD drawings) and you will have no scale. That will be a problem if you need to do some last minute editing.
I’m not knocking Blender, it is a great app with a lot of passion and very loyal user base, but for professional architectural viz, it lacks some basic features. You can see this by following some of the threats here about arch viz.
Perhaps this seemingly brash statement could use some quantifying. Your geometry will be imported to Blender’s 3D space using the same numeric coordinate system that any 3D program uses (AutoCAD inluded), the cartesian coordinate system. Thus, one AutoCAD unit will equal one Blender unit.
And yes, AutoCAD simply uses a numeric unit system. Upon this is layered an integrated software “translator” which conveniently converts AutoCAD units into what we consider to be “real world” & understandable unit systems. This “translator” only kicks in when AutoCAD must interact with the real world (at the plotter & in the UI) or with another 3D application (at geometry data i/o.) Internally, its only numeric units.
I think what ebow3d means is that Blender simply lacks this built-in “translator” at present. However, this does not mean that you “have no scale”. It simply means that you must do your own translating and converting. Blender provides many methods of constraining geometry during editing (tho they are admittedly limited in comparison to CAD apps) which will allow you to maintain relative scale. And when it boils down, its really all about relative scale, isn’t it? Its like Einstein theorized: just like time, space (or geometry scale) is only important or meaningful when in the context of its relationship with other geometry.
