1. Architectural Modeling
Assignment 6
Architectural Modeling
By: Yorik van Havre
Source:

2. This assignment is about quick modeling, for building a good rendered image. It will not explore the details of precision modeling.
It won't give you a correct model, that you could use to generate plans and sections. Instead, we'll try to find a balance between speed and correctness.
Precision modeling takes much more care and time. But I hope you'll be convinced, after reading, that we can obtain a pretty good balance, that may not be precise to the centimeter, but that is even so a correct representation of our building.
So we will try to mix a bit of all this and start with a true, real-life, everyday-experienced situation that you probably know too well

3. Assume that, this sympathetic person is your boss
He has drew a very quick project this morning, and he would like you to mount a quick perspective of it so he can impress the client and sell the project.
It is a little apartments building, 12 stories high, to be projected for some location in the city.

4. This is the thoroughly detailed piece of art your boss wants you to transform into an image capable of hypnotizing the client. Before you even understand what is represented there, the boss went away to call one of his very important contacts.
Since there is not much information drawn there, we'll have to invent quite a lot of things. This is quite common in 3D, the person who wants to see the project in 3D rarely has a complete idea of what he wants. Our boss, clearly, has no idea at all.
So don't be afraid to invent, develop, do what you want, as long as he can recognize his "design" at the end.
Actually we are going to use this drawing as a base, but most of the things we'll have to invent when we do it.

5. Lets clean up the picture and come up with a more formal architectural base plane than what the boss gave us.
The elevator is easy to see, at the center of the building. It has stairs around it.
We assume that an elevator is a square of more or less 2.00m x 2.00m. That kind of stairs usually have a width between 1.00m and 2.00m, let's decide 1.50m.
There seems to be two rooms on each side of the elevator / stairs box.
Usually a room has between 9.00m² and 12.00m², let's shoot for 11m².
The proportion of those rooms looks something like 3/4, so that will give us a little bit less than 3.00m for the width. (3m x 4m would give us 12m²).
We can now estimate the total width of that building, it would be something like:
3m + 3m m m m + 3m + 3m =17m.
Let's put it at 18m, because we know that during a project development areas often tend to reduce, because some architects forget things when they begin a project. That 1m more is our little reserve for later.
Straitening the lines and shaping the curves we can come up with something as shown in the next slide.

7. Step 1: The Base Plane
Let's open Blender, and delete the items in your 3D view window
Load the background image from the view menu:
View  background image
Click on “Use background image” button
Click on “load” button”
Select the file “TheBase.jpg”
This should load the file shown in the previous slide on your window

8. Step 2
If you are not in the top view, place yourself in top view (NumPad 7)
Remember that, we have a 18m-wide building. So let's prepare it.
Add a plane (SPACE Add  Mesh  Plane)
Move the place right on the center of the image
Switch to wireframe display (Z) so we can see through it
Scale the image only enough to cover the entire image,

9. Step 3 With plane selected, move to edit mode (Tab)
Click on F9 to see the editing panels if you are not already there
From the “Mesh tools” panel click on the subdivide 5 times

10. Step 4 We want to delete extra vertices to get the shape of the image
You can do this through
Deleting the lines/edges/vertices you do not need
Extruding the edges using E to adjust the lines
Moving the vertices (G) specially when creating curves
However, before we do any modification to the plane, lets delete one half of the plane first.
Note that one side of the mesh is the mirror of the other side. Any modification to one side should be done to the other side.
So to make our job easier, we modify one side, and create a duplicate of it, and attach them together at the end
Box select (B) the right half of the plane, and delete it (X)

11. Step 5
Save your work.
Throughout this project, you need to save your work almost in every step
Redoing the steps can be quite time consuming if you don’t save
Now to start modifying the left half, box select (B) the last three lines of the plane and other lines shown in the picture, to select and delete them (X)

12. Step 6
After deleting the extra vertices your shape should look like what is shown in here.
Select the vertex shown by arrow (RMB) and delete it
Box select (B) the two vertices shown with the red box to the left of the arrow, to select it.
Extrude the selected vertices on the X direction (press E and then press X) by half a meter to go right over the line of the image base
Do the same thing for the other sections shown with the red boxes

13. Step 7
After extruding your shape should look like what is shown in here.
Now let work on the curves on the top and the bottom
All we need to do is to select each vertex that is shown on the red boxes one by one with RMB and move them (G) on the curve
To make it easier, you can box select the vertices shown in the red box on the top/on the bottom, and press the (Numpad .) which is the dot key on the NumPad to zoom that section

14. Step 8
After adjusting the vertices and shaping the curves, your shape should look like what is shown in here.
Select all vertices (A)
Use Shift D to duplicate the half modified plane
Mirror the copy in the x direction (Mesh  mirror  x global)
Move the copy and attach it border to border as best as you can to the other half as shown in the picture
Deselect all vertices (A)
Hide the background image
(view background image )
Turn off “Use” button by clicking on it
Now save you file again

15. Step 9 Go to object mode (Tab) and look at the base in solid type (Z)
If you still have imperfections, enter edit mode again (TAB) and work a bit more on it.
If you reproduce the maximum of details, angles, holes, corners, it will look better under the light. They will create more shadows.
So don't hesitate to add a bit more here and there. Just don't add too much.

16. Step 10: The Main Volume
Next thing, we'll put some volume to our plane. There, we'll need to be a bit smart.
Remember how we extruded things in previous steps, to create vertices where we needed them? We'll do the same thing here. So we need to make a bit of planning: We need to know what heights we will extrude.
We will decide for a standard floor height: 3m. It could be less (or more if you build high-standard apartments), but let's stick with something easy to manage now. What elements will we need to model on our façades? We'll have windows and balconies.
That's about it. So let's see:
balconies usually have about 1.10m
For windows, it depends: what kind of window? We'll certainly have big sliding windows that open to the balconies. They'll go from the floor to, let's say, 2.20m high.

17. What else? We have probably smaller windows, for the kitchen or the rooms for example. We could make it from 1.10m to 2.20m, right? so we'll already have the horizontal lines, and all those things will be aligned, it will look better.
That's about it. Maybe we'll have one of those small bathroom windows too? Let's put another line, let's say they have 60cm height and are aligned with our 2.20m line.
So their base would be at 1.60m.

18. Step 11
So, resuming, we'll need a line at 1.10m, one at 1.60m, one at 2.20m and one at 3.00m, the final one. So let's do it:
Go back to edit mode (TAB),
Select all your vertices (A key until all is selected)
Go to the front view
Extrude (E key) region, type Z to extrude in the Z direction and type 1.10, then press enter to complete the action.
We just extruded all our plan to our first line. Do it again 3 times, using 0.50, 0.60, 0.80 distances.
Your picture in front view should look like this:

19. Step 12 Great. Our first typical floor unit is already there.
We'll now need to sculpt the balconies and the windows.
First, we can already have a look at how it looks with the 12 floors
Move to object mode and make sure you are in front view
Choose the editing box (or press F9)
From the “modifiers” panel, click on the “Add modifier” and select Array
Turn off the relative address if it is not off already
Turn on the constant address and set z to .8
Set count to 12
Your building should look like as shown
Click apply

20. Step 13
We should be able to create some windows around the building using the extruding technique we did before.
Move to top view (NumPad 7)
Move to edit mode (Tab)
From the top view (NumPad 7), box select (B) the section shown by the red box on the top right corner of the building.
Extrude (E) the “individual faces” inside the selected box multiple times to make it shine during the rendering
This is for creating windows
Do the same for other sections shown by red boxes
Save your changes

21. Step 14: The Head Leave the edit mode (Tab)
Make sure you are in top view
Create a plane (space  add  mesh plane)
Make it smaller than the size of base of the building as shown in the following picture
View it in front and side view to make sure the plane in located on the top of the building. If not, move it to the top
Make sure to go back to top view after checking
The building with the added top in all views should look like the following pictures
side
front
Top view

22. Step 15 Move it edit mode (Tab)
In the editing panels (F9), subdivide the plane twice. The subdivide is in the “Mesh tools” panel. This is shown in the left picture below
From the “modifiers” panel, click on “Add modifier” and select “mirror”
Box select (B) the inner vertices shown in the red box , and extrude (E) the edges on the x direction to the left as shown in the middle picture. Note that the other side is extruded too.
Move to object mode (Tab) and click apply in the modifiers panel

23. Step 16 Select the head plane Go to edit mode Move to front view
Press A to select all vertices of the head plane
Now press E and then Z to extrude in the Z direction and type 1.0 and press enter at the end

24. Step 17: The foot side front Top view Leave the edit mode (Tab)
Make sure you are in top view
Make sure nothing is selected
Create a plane (space  add  mesh plane)
Make it just big enough to cover the base completely (slightly bigger than the size of base of the building as shown in the following picture)
View it in front and side view to make sure the plane in located on the bottom of the building. If not, move it below the bottom as shown in the pictures
The building with the added top in all views should look like the following pictures
side
front
Top view

25. Step 18 Move to the front view Select the foot plane Go to edit mode
Press A to select all vertices of the foot plane
Now press E and then Z to extrude in the Z direction and type 1.0 and press enter at the end
Deselect all vertices (A)
Make sure the extruded foot is attached border to border with the bottom of the building as shown in the picture. If not
Select all vertices (A)
Move them (G) to be attached properly to the bottom of the building
Move to the object mode (TAB)

26. Step 19: The Materials Lets give a concrete material to the building
Make sure you are in top view and object mode
Select the building
Press F5 to go to shading
From “Links and Pipeline” panel click on “Add New”
Select texture (F6)
Click “Add New” from the “texture” panel
In the “texture” panel, there is list box called “texture type”. Select image from that list
From the “image” panel click on “load”
With MMB, select any of the three concretes you like (maybe concrete02.jpg )
This assigns this material to your building
You can do the same for the foot and head; or you can give the foot and the head just simple colors as you wish

27. Step 20: Creating your ground and adding lights
Create a plane to be your ground
Do the same as you did in the previous slide to give a texture of a scenery to your ground or just pick up some simple green color
Do your lighting and add a camera, render it and save your work

28. Although this part is not required in this assignment, with minor changes to the ground and the building you can make the rendering looking like this.