Blender 3D is an awesome software, and its outstanding tools have helped it achieve a greater position among other 3D software, even 2D and 2.5D ones. It has also taken a good position among other community standard software as large studios are currently adding Blender iinto their pipeline.
Blender being an open source software also gives it a huge advantage, which makes it pretty user-friendly and developer-friendly, so you’ll always find that one add-on that you’ve always been looking for in other software.
Today, we’re going to talk about implementing Blender 3D into the pipeline of architectural modeling, visualization, and rendering and how we can reach the best results possible with Blender in this category of designing and let the architects and designers use this awesome piece of software properly. You can find a complete guide to architectural methods and software here. \
Getting Started with Architectural Modeling in Blender
Before starting to work on any project, it’s crucial to get things properly arranged first, and this is where Blender’s awesome user interface comes in. Blender allows you to freely swap between several windows, duplicate others, create your own workspace, and arrange it based on your own preferences.
You can also adjust some Interface options by going into Edit>Preferences>Interface.
Dividing windows in Blender gives you several advantages of being able to visualize the architectural project in several modes, Blender’s capable of merging between 2D and 3D softwares, giving you awesome tools that’d eventually convince you to abandon the old softwares that you are used to.
Essential Tools for Architectural Modeling
1. Geometry Nodes
Geometry Nodes Architecture - Blender Artists Community
Despite being a new tool, geometry nodes has proven its strength at the day it was published with Blender 2.92. Geometry nodes could be used for architectural modeling and instancing and could also be used for many other tasks, but as today’s article’s talking about Architecture & Blender3D for Architects, we’re going to focus more on its strength points when it comes to this topic.
John Hamilton, a 3D artist on Blenderartists, has dropped his own experience using Blender3D and geometry nodes of generating an architectural design, and the result turned out to look awesome, functional and clean in topology, which gives Blender a massive plus from an Architect’s perspective.
Geometry nodes also gives Blender the Parametric modeling advantage which used to lack in Blender and artists had to use some turnaround techniques in order to achieve that level and style of modeling.
2. Sverchok
Playing with Sverchok Addon - Blender Artists Community
Sverchok is definitely a go-to from an Architect’s perspective when it comes to parametric modeling. Someone might prefer one over another when comparing it with Geometry nodes, however, both are considered to be a couple of essential tools when it comes to architectural modeling. Sverchok could be containing more advanced tools than what the Geometry nodes includes, however, Geometry nodes has proven its speed advantage when compared to Sverchok. It’s always been advised to use both though if essential.
3. Blender Modifiers
Blender Architecture 3D Modeling using Wireframe Modifier - Blender Artists Community
Blender modifiers are definitely worth it when it comes to modeling when generally talking, they could lead you to a generation of a non-destructible workflow and get you to the point where you can generate procedural and memory-friendly models.
The Blender modifiers is definitely a long list, yet it’s always suggested to study it properly and try to apply it more on projects in order to be able to know each one’s hidden gems and useful hacks. If you want to learn more information about the future of architecture and construction, check this article out.
Tips for Realistic Architectural Rendering in Blender
Blender Cycles Interior Archviz - Blender Artists Community
Blender comes with the awesome default Cycles render engine which is ray-tracing based.
Cycles never fails to provide awesome sharp and realistic renderings that provide the essential key of interior and exterior rendering and Architectural visualization, which is hyperrealism.
Cycles comes with a great built-in node system for Blender to create the required shaders, however, it’s simple enough to get the required level of hyperrealism with a few clicks, specially after Blender’s Principled BSDF shader release, which made things much easier than before and much more straightforward.
There are also some other ray-tracing based render engines that you could use within Blender like:
- LuxCoreRender
- Redshift
- Vray
- Octane
- OctaneRender
- RenderMan
Besides ray-tracing based render engines, you could always head to Eevee’s awesome capabilities of providing awesome looking renderings, yet stick to the joy of real-time visualization.
There’s a wide list of tutorials out there to learn each render engine and you could always find that one guy talking about a comparison between each of them, so make sure to check these out, however, Cycles has always been the leading render engine for Blender when it comes to ray-tracing based rendering and free-to-use software.
Conclusion
At the end, Blender is an awesome tool with a pack full of plugins and free subtools that’d boost any architect’s possibilities alongside the 3D interior designer and visualization expert.
Whether it’s Blender’s Geometry nodes, sverchok and modifiers for modeling,
Or the variety of Blender’s ray-tracing based render engines, or Blender’s Eevee realtime render engine or Blender freestyle rendering for rendering,
Or Blender’s outstanding User Interface that allows you to work on more than one task, whether it is 2D or 3D.
Make sure to supply us with your awesome Interior and Exterior renderings done within Blender alongside your modeling and planning, don’t hesitate to share these with us.
