Sweet Home 3D: Importing Floor Plans

Yesterday we finished working on our Sweet Home 3D house design. You should have taken several "photos" of your house and uploaded them to your portfolios. We also got grade printouts and corrected any errors or missing assignments that weren't uploaded.

Today we are going to continue using Sweet Home 3D, but we will be importing a pre-made floor plan.  You can locate floor plans from a variety of locations on the web.  One place to find nice plans is TheHouseDesigners.com -- a site which includes the ability to search for single stories, a certain number of bedrooms, etc.  Another way to find plans is to do a Google Search.  The important thing to remember is that you will need a plan with some measurements so we can correctly scale our models.

We will import the base floor plan, set the origin point [to the upper left], draw the walls, add doors and windows, and then decorate and furnish our house.

When finished, we will post the floor plan and "photos" of our completed model.


INSTRUCTIONS:

1. Locate a floor plan with dimensions and save the image to your Thawspace
2. Open Sweet Home 3D
3. Go to PLAN > IMPORT BACKGROUND IMAGE... > CHOOSE IMAGE
4. Select the image (floor plan) you saved in step 1
5. If the image looks correct, click CONTINUE
6. Adjust the blue line to span across a room with known dimensions (i.e. a room that is 10'6")
7. Enter the number of inches your line represents (in the example 10'6" would be 126)
8. When asked for the Origin Points just leave it at 0,0 and click CONTINUE
9. Draw the walls as indicated on your floor plan
10. Create rooms using the Room Tool
11. Add windows and doors
12. Add colors/textures to the walls, doors, windows, ground, sky, etc.
13. Lock your "Base Plan" to prevent changes
14. Furnish your house
15. Make necessary adjustments (you may need to unlock the base plan)
16. Begin creating "photos" of various locations / points of interest in your house
17. Add your floor plan and photos of your house to your portfolio

Sweet Home 3D: Design a House

Today we will begin exploring features of Sweet Home 3D -- a free 3D home design program which does rendering, animation, etc. The program has an active developer community and a lot of extra models you can download for free.

Sweet Home 3D: http://www.sweethome3d.com
Sweet Home 3D Models: http://www.sweethome3d.com/importModels.jsp

Our goal over the next couple of days is to design a house with at least one bedroom, a kitchen, a living room, and a bathroom.  You are welcome to create additional bedrooms, a family room, a garage, a workshop, or whatever.  Just have fun with it.

When you are finished, take some "photos" (renderings) of different rooms and/or angles to put on your portfolio.

Other web sites with 3D models

The following sites offer also some 3D models at OBJ, DAE, 3DS or LWS formats supported by the furniture import wizard of Sweet Home 3D:

		Google 3D Warehouse (a big choice of models at DAE/Collada format)
		Resources.blogscopia (free well designed models shown also here)
		ArchiBit Generation (various well designed models)
		Flying architecture (various models with regular updates)
		Kinnarps (office furniture)
		Free the models (furniture tested in Sweet Home 3D)
		Kolo (bathroom furniture)
		Creative-3D.net (a lot of importable furniture, but monochrome)
		Klicker (a few chairs and trees)
		Model3D.biz (various models, but a few models can't be imported)
		Baumgarten Enterprises (a few interesting models, generally for industrial purpose)
		3DPlants.com (a lot of plants but without colors, except for the Plant of the month)

OTHER USEFUL DOCUMENTATION:

Create Multi-Story Homes:   http://www.sweethome3d.com/multiLevelHouseGuide.pdf

Creating Sloped Roofs/Ceilings/Etc:   http://www.sweethome3d.com/slopingCeilingGuide.pdf

Plug-Ins & Extentions (Haven't checked yet):    http://www.sweethome3d.com/pluginsUserGuide.pdf


This video tutorial does a pretty good job of showcasing the tools in Sweet Home 3D -- although it's a much earlier version:

Rhino: Award or Trophy

Today I would like you to create some sort of award or trophy.  Maybe it's a trophy for best trombone player, a plaque for "my favorite web page", a monument for "best friend forever", etc.  You can use Rhino [and Bryce if needed] to showcase it.  You might try using letters and then boolean difference to make them look engraved.  Be creative.

In this example, I added some chrome effects, included a 3D model from a previous project, and did some lighting.  I also added some virtual screws and rotated them to different angles for added realism.

Rhino: Rubber Duck

Today we're going to learn a few new tools and techniques to build a Rubber Duck. If you need to follow a printed tutorial later, you can check out The Training Manuals online (see previous post).  Today we'll be using Rhino Training Manual Level 1 [pages 156-169].  Following a tutorial from a book [particularly an online book] can be difficult, so I will work through this one with you as well.

The Basics (see illustrations below):

1. Create two spheres (head and body) in the RIGHT viewport
2. Select both spheres and type REBUILD
3. Set dialog for 8, 8, 3, 3, Delete input, ReTrim, OK
4. Select the body (or de-select the head)
5. Turn Control Points on (F10)
6. Select the bottom 1/3 of Control Points (on the body)
7. Go to TRANSFORM > SET POINTS and Set Z and Align to World
8. Drag upward to have a flattened bottom of the ducks body
9. Drag around some control points to select them and stretch the body to look more "duck-like" (i.e. puff out the chest, pull out the tail shape, etc.).
10. Turn Control Points off (F11)
11. Select the head (sphere)
12. Follow the same select > drag/stretch to form the bill and head shape
13. Right click on RIGHT to select Ghosted as the view type
14. Draw a curve (I usually use the free sketch curve) COMPLETELY intersecting the head shape
15. De-select everything and type SPLIT
16. Follow the prompts by selecting the object to split (the head) and then the cutting object (the curve)
17. The bill and head should now be separate objects so you can color/texture them as you wish
18. Draw a straight line cutting through the base of the head
19. Copy and paste the straight line, then drag it to intersect the top-right section of the body (copying and pasting keeps the lines perfectly parallel)
20. Type TRIM and select the pieces to trim (or delete) and press ENTER when finished
21. Go to SURFACE > BLEND SURFACE 
22. In the Perspective window (I find this is the easiest to work with in this step) select the first edge of your cut object then press ENTER
23. Select the second edge (the other cut object) and press ENTER
24. Check the PREVIEW box and adjust the "bulge" to look its' best 
25. Add colors/textures/gloss 
26. Add some shapes (i.e. spheres, ellipsoids (flattened spheres), etc.) to create eyes.

Please Note:  I am trying to teach you the basics of editing shapes (split, trim, blend, etc.) and not necessarily how to build a rubber duck -- so experiment and have fun with it.  You don't have to have a duck that looks exactly like mine [in fact I like creativity].  Here are some examples of creative ducks.  :)

Rhino: Wooden Pull Toy

Today we are going to be creating a wooden pull-toy which will include wheels, axles, a rope, etc.  Remember that a wooden toy for children typically has rounded (filleted) edges.  Because there isn't a definite pattern for this project, I expect it will take a couple days to find a good design, model the body, create the wheels, etc.  Over the next couple days [while you are working on this project] I will also be grading your projects.

The basic outline for what we're doing includes:

• Add a "BackgroundBitmap" 
• Trace with a complete "Control Point Curve"
• Remove the BackgroundBitmap
• Extrude the Curve
• Cap the Curve
• FilletEdge (if possible) -- although complex curves almost never work
• Add a base platform (if necessary)
• Add wheels (cylinders) and axles (cylinders)
• Draw a curve for a rope/string
• Bend the rope/string curve to "hang" to the ground
• Pipe the rope/string curve
• Add a floor and walls
• Texture all of your pieces
• Add lighting as needed

Here are some examples of wooden pull toys that I found simply by typing "wooden pull toys" in Google.

Notice the different ways that wheels are done, different painting styles, different types of wood pieces (spheres, flat wood, beveled edges, etc.), and different methods for ropes/pulls.

 

You can also find woodworking plans on the Internet which you can actually use to create 3D models.  Here are a few examples:

Something else you might want to try is doing a search for "silhouette animal".  Here are a couple examples:

Using the camel silhouette, I traced a curve, extruded it, capped it, filleted the edges, and created the following pull-toy: