Residential house

[Menno]

I've been working on and off on modelling the house my parents are building at the moment. It's "pretty" modern and dramatical, so I thought it would be nice to model it.

I also hope to be able to use the renderings as a floorplan for use in the home automation system (touchscreen that shows the house+rooms).

 

The problem I always have with 3d maxing is the texturing and the lighting. I have absolutely zero experience in these fields (i can texture ofcourse, but making it appealing is another issue), and all my renders end up looking the same: grey, dull and just plain ugly.

 

I haven't assigned any materials to the following scene, apart from the walls (cement bricks 290x90x90mm), the glass and the aluminium windows/facade.

 

Basically it's still very WIP,Ofcourse I will be texturing the house more, but i'm not going for an extreme photorealistic approach, since it's only going to be used as a 3d floor plan for the HA system.

 

To give an overall sense of scale: the house is 23 metres wide, and 17 deep. Ground floor is placed 1200mm above street level, with a basement under the entire house (about 350m2). The overhang above the terrace at the front is 4 metres deep (and not supported by any columns).

 

The roof will be made from polished (60% reflective) stainless steel, panels of about 500mm wide.

 

Has anyone ever done a 3d floorplan (should be pretty topdown view though) for a HA system? I need to cut through the different floors (basement, 1st and 2nd). I could slice everything, but isn't there a faster way (I do need closed ends on the meshes ofcourse)?

[Menno]

and yes, the door on the last picture is very tiny. It's the accessdoor for the technical room with the central cooling etc.

[AJLynn]

That's a pretty cool house. Good modeling, did you do it in CAD?

 

Fastest way to do the plan cuts is using a camera looking down from the top with "orthographic projection" checked and manaul clipping planes - near clip is where the cut happens, far clip is beyond whatever you want to show. You might get some odd-looking insides of the walls, which you can poche in Photoshop. You can also make each level on a layer that can be turned off and nonrenderable, and render the top view with roof turned off, roof and upper floor turned off, etc. I've also done floor plan renders where I wanted to show sunlight penetration using global illumination - for this I modeled one story of the building, with windows cut out, and the ceiling is just a single-sided surface facing down so light bounces off it but it doesn't show in the top view render, and sunlight is done using omni lights at the windows for sky light, and a direct light for sun the hits the windows but not the ceiling plane, and render the top view. Here's an example (WIP, I don't have the final here):

 

 

As far as textures - not that hard, you might just get away with using the library that comes with Max, I think the thing that messes people up the most when they're new at it is UVW mapping, so learn that well if you haven't already. Lighting can be tricky, you'll either need to use several lights to do exactly what you want (good for people with an art background, with some practice you can get a lot of control) or put in the lights that are actually there and use GI or radiosisty depending on what renderer you've got.

[Menno]

modeling is done is autocad yes.

Thanks for the tips about rendering the floorplans.

 

I do understand the UVW mapping pretty good, All the walls have like 6 or 7 UVW maps to correctly show the brickwork (with vertical standing bricks above doors, don't know how it's called in english).

And I also have Vray, so the lighting setup is also pretty easy (sun + daylight i guess... ).

[vertexART]

(with vertical standing bricks above doors, don't know how it's called in english)

 

a 'soldier course'

 

very nice modeling, post your efforts with textures and light, everybody here will be glad to help.

cheers

[pablo scapi]

That´s one of the cooles houses i´ve seen, congratullations.

 

keep posting the progress.

[Menno]

i've been noticing this weird error in the glass (green reflections). Don't know what I'm doing wrong. Anybody knows what's going on? the material is just black vraymat with fresnel reflections turned on (reflect and refract white materials with glossiness 1).

[Menno]

small update, and two questions

 

My vray glass just "suddenly" decided to block all passing light. Is there a way to fix this? (see image).

 

Also, the glass seems to be reflecting some stuff that seems weird. This happens in other perspectives too (and that looks even weirder). I do have 3 panes of glass all pretty close to each other (1 meter). Could this be it?

 

don't mind the yellow wall on the right. haven't textured it yet.

 

What do you think about the illuminated steps? There are going to be LED strips in the steps.

[wodewil]

ello

nice modeling.

ilumination should depend of weather you choose to fit this image, sun or cloudy... with that number of glass it would be much brighter inside . meybe add some Vray plane lights lighting at window for brighter atmosphere inside

 

about glass : I usually use white or light grey bitmap for opacity, You can also try to unselect schadow casting in obiect preferences

 

see you later

[Tommy L]

dont put LED strips in the steps. Its such a sophisticated design, dont make it look like a cinema.If you want to light the steps, put some rebated light fittings into the wall or something.

[liang]

nice modeling