Exterior modelling

[vaughan]

Hi developers

I am playing around with the software to generate exterior views of a building.

I have drawn the site plan and the buidling on the site and am populating the site plan with trees (in approximately the right places) and also using various 'rooms' with paving texture etc to replicate paths, patios and driveways.

I have two questions:

firstly does anyone have an asphalt texture? (I am presnetly using a dark grey colour, but it all looks to 'uniform' in the rendered picture.

Secondly, is there a way to increse the ambient light level / intesity for rendering external views?

I know that Sweet Home is excellent for the internal visualistaion and modelling; and maybe I am attempting to use the package for a design use not intended! But having the facility to improve ambient light levels for external rendering would be good. I have been using the sunlight tool in the advanced rendering tool, but while this lights up on face of a building very well, other walls are in very dark shadow.

Great package. I am finding it a little addictive presently!!

[Puybaret]

firstly does anyone have an asphalt texture? (I am presnetly using a dark grey colour, but it all looks to 'uniform' in the rendered picture.

Look here

Secondly, is there a way to increse the ambient light level / intesity for rendering external views?

If you use a texture for the sky, try to use a brighter one. Blender for Architecture web site proposes some nice ones.

[vaughan]

Hi Emmanuel

I tried the textures and then tried no sky texture at all.

SUCCESS! [B-)]

Setting the sky to a darker blue colour and not applying a sky texture gave me good illumination results. It also had the effect of eliminating multiple shadows that seem to be created from multiple light sources as the texture wraps around the model - dont know if I have explained that well enough sorry!

Anyway, if anyone is wanting to do some exterior visualisation and modelling, set the illumination up high and do not apply a texture to the sky.

Regards to all.

[db4tech]

Hi vaughan,

When you were seeing multiple shadows was the quality of the render set to Fast or High?

I noticed that the Fast setting always produces multiple shadows outside but once High is chosen for the final render there is only one shadow even if a sky texture is applied.

db4tech

[vaughan]

I was using the high setting and was using the photo utility - I was not ussing the latest reder utility.

The file size is quite large (trees etc are quite large 'furniture' items) and if I used the anvanced renering tool, the programme would quit or else the render programme would not create anything.

Here is an example:

[hansmex]

Vaughan:

The dark picture is easily "cured" using Picasa, or something similar.

Hans

[vaughan]

Hi Hans

I did use a picture editor to adjust brightness and contrast, but the multiple shadowing made some areas very dark.

Anyway, I was able to get the result I wanted by not using a sky texture.

Thanks for the advice.

Vaughan [:)]