Installation & update
About program installation and update, hardware, operating systems, setup, etc.

Complete Newbie

Anonymous
Not applicable
Hello guys, and girls of course, I am completely new to this software. However, I need to admin it's better than what I've been used to ever before. I was trying to find some tutorial for interior desings but with no success. Therefore I would like to ask for a little help.

I have all my drawings ready, but need some details to be added. Is there any easy way how to put materials (tiles) to a specifically outlined surface (part of a wall)? When I use some material it runs all over the wall, through multiple rooms. And also, is there any chance to easily create new materials (tiles, floors) from existing pictures (ex. jpegs).

And finally a last question, is there any way to turn on automatical dimensioning for the 2D drawings? I would like to export or print out an apartment plan with exact dimensions which I could provide to a building company.

Thank you and sorry for such a dumb topic
7 REPLIES 7
David Maudlin
Virtuoso
xman66 wrote:
Is there any easy way how to put materials (tiles) to a specifically outlined surface (part of a wall)? When I use some material it runs all over the wall, through multiple rooms. And also, is there any chance to easily create new materials (tiles, floors) from existing pictures (ex. jpegs).
You cannot place a material on part of a wall, you should create another wall that is only the extent of the material and assign your material (tiles) to that wall. You can then use the Align 3D Texture function to place the starting point for the tile texture.

One way to create a new texture is to duplicate an existing material that is similar to your new material, give it a new name, then assign your jpeg as the texture for your material. Depending on the rendering engine you are using (Internal or Lightworks), how you assign this texture in the Materials dialog box differs.

These topics have been discussed, search the forum and the help files for more information.

David
David Maudlin / Architect
www.davidmaudlin.com
Digital Architecture
AC27 USA • iMac 27" 4.0GHz Quad-core i7 OSX11 | 24 gb ram • MacBook Pro M3 Pro | 36 gb ram OSX14
Anonymous
Not applicable
If the tiles are continuous along the length of the wall you can use a profile wall.

If you only need the tiles to show in interior elevations you can simply them in with fills. This is what many of my clients do since many rooms are only elevated once in the entire set. Modeling every change in wall material can get pretty tedious.

If you really need discrete areas of materials for rendering purposes your best will be to do as David suggests and model all the bits.
Anonymous
Not applicable
There's also the cigraph architile add-on, but I'm a newbie as well so I can't say how effective it is.

http://www.cigraph.it/cigraph/pagetrans.do?action=current_product&prodotti_id=5&lang=en
Anonymous
Not applicable
David:
I'm using the lightworks rendering engine. I'm still fighting with material selection, but I hope to get used to it quickly. Btw. is it enough to build a 'dummy' wall with 0 thickness in front of another wall to apply different material/texture? I tried to do so and it only worked with internal rendering, otherwise the wall texture was distorted or only the original texture of the main wall was visible.

Matthew:
I have played around with fills already, but unfortunately I definitely need the 3D rendering, so I will probably need to start modelling very detailed wall sections

Chris:
Thanks for the tip, I saw these programs while googling around, I will give it a try shortly.


Thank you guys, anyway if you have any other hints, I will be glad to read and try...
David Maudlin
Virtuoso
xman66 wrote:
David:
I'm using the lightworks rendering engine. I'm still fighting with material selection, but I hope to get used to it quickly. Btw. is it enough to build a 'dummy' wall with 0 thickness in front of another wall to apply different material/texture? I tried to do so and it only worked with internal rendering, otherwise the wall texture was distorted or only the original texture of the main wall was visible.
xman66:

To get the size correct for the texture, it is often easier to use the Texture dialog for the Internal Engine, then under the LightWorks Engine, use the "Match with Internal Engine" button, this will also coordinate the OpenGL texture in the 3D Window (which uses the Internal Engine) with the LightWorks rendering. A dummy wall should work, but give it a small thickness, 0 thickness essentially puts the front and rear surfaces in the same plane, which can confuse the rendering engine.

HTH

David
David Maudlin / Architect
www.davidmaudlin.com
Digital Architecture
AC27 USA • iMac 27" 4.0GHz Quad-core i7 OSX11 | 24 gb ram • MacBook Pro M3 Pro | 36 gb ram OSX14
Anonymous
Not applicable
xman66 wrote:
is it enough to build a 'dummy' wall with 0 thickness in front of another wall to apply different material/texture?
Elements of zero thickness are likely to cause problems. You can use SEOs to insert elements into one another.
TomWaltz
Participant
Think about the real world. Is anything zero thickness? If you make the tile its actual thickness (say, 1/8" or 1/4"), your interior elevations will even look better because you will see the profile of the tile along the side walls.
Tom Waltz