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Blender 3D 2.49 Architecture, Buildings, and Scenery

Blender 3D 2.49 Architecture, Buildings, and Scenery

by Allan Brito
Publisher: Packt Publishing
Release Date: September 2010
ISBN: 9781849510486
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Book Description

Create photo-realistic 3D architectural visualizations of buildings, interiors, and environmental scenery with Blender.

  • Study modeling, materials, textures, and light basics in Blender

  • Learn special tricks and techniques to create walls, floors, roofs, and other specific architectural elements

  • Create realistic virtual tours of buildings and scenes

  • Develop a library of textures, materials, and objects that you can use over and over again

In Detail

Every type of construction—such as building a house, a movie set, or a virtual set—needs a project. These projects are made of a lot of documents and technical drawings, which help in the construction of those buildings. These technical drawings and documents are just fine, but when you need to make a presentation of these projects for people who can't read technical drawings, things can get a little difficult.

To make presentations for people who can't read technical drawings, we use tools like Blender. With Blender we can create, texture, and generate photo-real images of a project. These images are helpful to architects or companies to explain their projects in a better way. This book will show you how to generate real-looking architectural models quickly using Blender. You can also create natural scenery, landscapes, plants, various weather conditions, environmental factors, building materials such as wood, metal, brick, and more using Blender.

As you walk through the chapters you will see that Blender is a tool, designed to give you high productivity and fast access to tools and menus helping you to create 3D models quickly for 3D visualization. You will learn how to add people to different scenes as well as other objects to an already existing photograph or a video making it easier to increase its realism.

The process begins by learning how Blender user interface works then moves on and starts to deal with 3D modeling. In the 3D modeling chapters you will learn how to work with polygon-based modeling for architecture, creating walls and other architectural elements. But, a project is not only made of large scale models and this is the reason why you also learn to create 3D furniture.

In the section about advanced lighting for architecture, you learn how to work with YafaRay to use global illumination techniques such as Photon Mapping and Path Tracing, and create photo-real renderings.

In the last section of the book, dedicated to animation, we will create linear animation based on keyframes and interactive 3D applications.

Create realistic models of building exteriors and interiors, the surrounding environment, and scenery.

Table of Contents

  1. Blender 3D 2.49 Architecture, Buildings, and Scenery
    1. Blender 3D 2.49 Architecture, Buildings, and Scenery
    2. Credits
    3. About the Author
    4. About the Reviewers
    5. Preface
      1. What this book covers
      2. What you need for this book
      3. Who this book is for
      4. Conventions
      5. Reader feedback
      6. Customer support
        1. Errata
        2. Piracy
        3. Questions
    6. 1. Introduction to Blender and Architectural Visualization
      1. Architectural visualization
      2. How about Blender 3D?
      3. Hardware and software requirements for Blender
      4. Other tools for visualization
      5. CAD and 3D architectural modeling
      6. 3D models from the Internet
      7. Visualization with Blender
      8. Summary
    7. 2. Blender 3D: Quick Start
      1. Interface
      2. Windows and menus
        1. Multiple windows
        2. Merge windows
        3. Header
          1. Add or remove a header
        4. Active window
      3. Keyboard shortcuts
      4. 3D visualization
      5. Selecting objects
        1. Selecting by name
      6. Renaming objects
      7. 3D Cursor
        1. Cursor Snap
      8. Modes
      9. Creating Objects
        1. Erasing Objects
        2. Duplicating Objects
      10. Transforming Objects
      11. Cameras
      12. Render Basics
        1. Render preview
      13. Summary
    8. 3. Modeling
      1. Types of objects
      2. Mesh primitives
      3. Mesh editing
        1. Transformations
        2. Transforming with precision
        3. Loop Subdivide
        4. Knife tool
        5. Selecting loops
        6. New edges and faces
        7. Merge
        8. Removing double vertices
      4. Extrude
        1. Extrude with vertex
        2. Extrude with edges
        3. Extrude with faces
        4. Constraining the extrude
      5. Modeling example
      6. Modifiers
        1. Subsurf modifier
          1. Smoothing faces
        2. Array modifier
        3. Array example
        4. Boolean modifier
        5. Mirror modifier
      7. Groups
        1. How to create a group?
      8. Proportional editing
      9. Summary
    9. 4. Modeling for Architecture
      1. Architectural modeling
        1. Modeling by proportions
      2. Planning is the key to success
      3. Precision modeling
        1. Edge length
        2. Transforming with precision
      4. Layers
      5. Modeling in practice
        1. Walls
        2. Rounded corners
        3. Symmetry
        4. Openings
        5. Floors and Lining
          1. Modeling using the walls
          2. Modeling with separated objects
      6. Starting from a CAD drawing
        1. Preparing the DXF files
        2. Importing DXF files
      7. Summary
    10. 5. Modeling Details
      1. Level of detail
      2. Windows
      3. Doors
      4. Summary
    11. 6. Modeling Furniture
      1. Create models or use a library?
      2. How to get started?
        1. Appending models
        2. Importing models
      3. Modeling a chair
      4. Modeling a sofa
      5. Summary
    12. 7. Materials
      1. Creating and organizing materials
      2. Material color
        1. Solid color
        2. Gradient colors
      3. Shaders
        1. Diffuse
        2. Specular
      4. Ray tracing
        1. Creating glass
          1. Simple glass
        2. Mirrors and reflections
        3. Glossy reflections
        4. Glossy transparency and frosted glass
        5. Ray traced shadows
      5. Wireframe materials
      6. Self-illumination
      7. Summary
    13. 8. Textures
      1. Procedural textures vs. Non-procedural textures
      2. Texture library
      3. Applying textures
      4. Mapping
      5. Normal map
      6. UV mapping
        1. Unwrapping scripts
      7. Summary
    14. 9. UV Mapping
      1. What is UV mapping?
        1. Why UV mapping?
      2. Marking the model
        1. What makes a good seam?
      3. Unfold the model
        1. Editing the unfolded model
        2. Export the unfolded mesh
      4. Smart projections
      5. Summary
    15. 10. Light Basics
      1. Lamps
        1. Energy
        2. Distance
        3. Color
        4. Controlling light
        5. Hemi
        6. Sun
        7. Lamp
        8. Area
        9. Spot
          1. Volumetric shadows
      2. Soft shadows
      3. Lighting exercise
      4. Summary
    16. 11. Radiosity and Ambient Occlusion
      1. Global Illumination (GI)
      2. Radiosity
        1. Vertex Paint
      3. Ambient Occlusion
        1. Outdoor scene
        2. Indoor Scene
      4. Summary
    17. 12. Global Illumination with YafaRay
      1. Installing YafaRay
      2. Blender and YafaRay
      3. YafaRay setup
        1. YafaRay objects
          1. Cameras in YafaRay
          2. Lights in YafaRay
          3. Selecting a Lamp
          4. Selecting a Sun
          5. Selecting an Area
          6. Selecting a Spot
          7. Mesh light in YafaRay
      4. YafaRay materials
          1. Creating diffuse material for a wall
          2. Creating a mirror
          3. Creating semi-transparent fabric
          4. Creating blurred reflections
          5. Creating glass
        2. Using textures with YafaRay
      5. YafaRay render methods
        1. Rendering an interior scene
        2. Rendering an external scene
      6. Summary
    18. 13. Animation for Architectural Visualization
      1. Animation
        1. Planning the animation
          1. Animatic
      2. Animation and frames
      3. Keyframes
        1. Creating keyframes
      4. Timeline
      5. Managing keyframes
      6. IPO curves
        1. Editing the curves
      7. Using curves
      8. Animating a camera
        1. Adding a target
      9. Rendering animation
      10. Video Sequence Editor
        1. Editing video
        2. Preview the video
        3. Effects
        4. Meta Strip
        5. Exporting the video from the Sequencer
      11. Interactive animation
        1. Logic bricks
          1. Sensors
          2. Controllers
          3. Actuators
      12. Walk-through
        1. Export walk-through
      13. Summary
    19. 14. Post-Production with Gimp
      1. Gimp interface
      2. Selection tools
        1. Selecting regular shapes
        2. Selecting by color
      3. Color adjustment
        1. Color balance
        2. Hue and saturation
        3. Color level
      4. Layers
        1. Create a new layer
        2. Create a new layer from a selection
        3. Adding a background image
      5. Fixing errors
      6. Watermark
      7. Summary
    20. 15. Blender 2.50 and Architectural Visualization
      1. Development of Blender 2.50
      2. User interface
        1. Managing windows
        2. 3D View
      3. Modeling
      4. Materials and textures
      5. Rendering
      6. Animation
      7. Summary