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: Begin Room Layout

(You can click any of the images below to enlarge)

We begin this project by placing our floor.  If your room is rectangular (as the example shows) it is pretty easy to plot it out.  I started my room in coordinate 0,0, entered 144" (12 ft.) for the length and 120" (10 ft.) for the width -- and then specified 3" for the floor thickness.

Next I began adding walls by specifying the length, height (I did 96" for 8 foot ceilings), and the wall thickness (I did 3" -- but remember to add to your room length when adding walls)

Next I added the remaining walls.  After you get two connected walls you can simply copy and paste to make new walls.

I remove one wall so I can see into the room easier -- similar to a dollhouse view.  I also add a doorway and window opening by doing a boolean difference.

Next I began adding some details.  In this case, a mattress and box springs (two boxes with filleted edges), and feet for the bed.

I continue adding details by adding "lofted" curtains (2 curves lofted together), a pillow, and a rug in front of the door.  I am also in the process of adding a poster to the wall -- in this case just a box (.25 inches thick) with a texture I will apply next.

I add textures, lights, gloss, transparency, etc for my nearly finished scene.

Rhino: Basic Room (Floor & Walls)

Today we are going to create a basic "room".  Really, it's just a floor and two walls, but we will use it to display some of our Rhino creations.

The room pictured here has a floor (with a texture and a bumpmap), two walls (with texture), and a couple small trim pieces.  I also added some lighting effects.

You may want to create a few different "rooms" (some with wallpaper, some with wood floors, some with wood or painted trim, etc.  Again, these will be your "stage" to showcase some of your creations.

If you are adventurous, you can copy your table (from yesterday) and put it in the corner:

1. Save your Room
2. Open up your table file
3. Select everything (drag a box around it or CTRL+A should do it)
4. Copy it (CTRL+C)
5. Open the Room file again
6. Paste (CTRL+V)
7. Scale your table (and anything that came with it) to fit nicely in the corner