Creating Houses in Blender - Please Advise <3

[GraceLovell]

Hey all,

in real life, I work in architecture as well as being an architecture student at university.

I love Second Life and would love to start creating and designing houses for SL.

I have done lots of research, watched videos, downloaded Blender, and had a play but I am unsure where to start as they are either outdated or not quite what i am looking for.

My main questions are:

• How can I ensure the building is functional in SL for example doors etc?
• How can I ensure people will be able to change the textures in the game?
• I have seen on this section of the forum that people mention physics, please could someone elaborate on this and how it works etc?
• Do I need to know any scripts and how would I apply these etc or anything else to help do this?
• Any other advice is more than welcome!!!

I can use Revit etc, so I have exported a house from there to FBX and imported it into Blender but it comes as a block, I have tried what tutorials have suggested and it doesn't seem to work

Please Help ❤️ 

 

 

Edited May 10, 2023 by GraceLovell
Info

[GreyLasagna]

I think you should familiarize with the basics of building with prims inside of SL. But answering your questions.
 

Quote

• How can I ensure the building is functional in SL for example doors etc?

 In the latest version of firestorm viewer, you can upload your models in a temporal way. Use that to test anything, and for textures, you can import textures temporarily using the local option when you are about to add a texture to your whatever you working on. Also I like to use the default avatar from SL on blender as reference for whatever I'm working on.

 

Quote

• How can I ensure people will be able to change the textures in the game?

As long your creation has the Modify checkmark on, people will be able to edit it. Make sure you unwrap your models properly.
 

Quote

• I have seen on this section of the forum that people mention physics, please could someone elaborate on this and how it works etc?

To make your creations actually interact with your avi, every model should have his own physic model. If you use a fence to block someone from going through your land, that fence needs a physics model to actually stop from entering your land. In this case the physic model would be simply, a box shaped like the actual fence model (just 4 faces). You usually can deal with this inside of SL when you upload your models, but for more complex models, it would be better if you actually do it on blender. 
 

Quote

• Do I need to know any scripts and how would I apply these etc or anything else to help do this?

You might or might not need to learn scripting but depends what you are working on. Learning at least to change certain values on fullperm script it's a plus tho. You can add scripts to object by just dragging them from your inventory to your model.

 

Quote

• Any other advice is more than welcome!!!

 

Like i said. Learn how to work first on SL, then you can try learning blender.

Can't say anything about Revit since i never heard of it. 😅

[Aquila Kytori]

Hi Grace,

 

A complete house is a bit to much for your first SL project.

 

You will learn a lot with a very simple mesh object, an open sided cube.

The project would be uploading Blender's default cube, minus one of its side faces and have it set up so that when rezzed in world you would be able to walk around inside the cube. Also  have it so that you can apply correctly a seamless tillable texture to the outside side walls and another to the flat roof and the same for the inside walls, floor and ceiling.

If you take on the open cube project  it will be relatively easy for one or other of us to help you when you get stuck with something.

And please add screenshots with any questions

A link to the SL Wiki page for uploading mesh :

 

Second Life has a beta (testing) grid called Aditi which has a few sandboxes where uploads are free. You will still be charged L$'s for each upload but L$'s used on Aditi are just pretend money and will not be deducted from your real SL account. 

Link to wiki page :   https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Preview_Grid    

 

and just a little bit on how land Impact is calculated :  

 

Edited May 11, 2023 by Aquila Kytori

[Aquila Kytori]

5 hours ago, GraceLovell said:

Any other advice is more than welcome!!!

 

I downloaded an  .ifc file created in Revit and imported into Blender using the BlenderBIM addon to see how efficient the imported model was with its use or vertices/triangles.

On the large flat walls it was using the minimum number of triangles and would have required only a little clean-up like deleting a few faces that would never be seen :

https://github.com/IFCjs/test-ifc-files/tree/main/Revit

 

But on the bevelled edges of the large window frames, for some reason there were a lot of extra vertices.  Happily these could be easily cleaned up using Blender's Limited Dissolve tool.

In Edit mode with window frame selected > X key to open the Delete menu > choose the  Limited Dissolve option > and increase the Max Angle value until all the unnecessary vertices have been removed.

602 vertices before,  66 after using Limited Dissolve :

 

So later on you may need to do the same on some parts or your imported models.

Also there were no UV maps !     I'm guessing you don't use them when mapping textures to surfaces in Revit ?

 

 

Edited May 11, 2023 by Aquila Kytori

[Chic Aeon]

10 hours ago, GraceLovell said:

Hey all,

in real life, I work in architecture as well as being an architecture student at university.

I love Second Life and would love to start creating and designing houses for SL.

I have done lots of research, watched videos, downloaded Blender, and had a play but I am unsure where to start as they are either outdated or not quite what i am looking for.

My main questions are:

• How can I ensure the building is functional in SL for example doors etc?
• How can I ensure people will be able to change the textures in the game?
• I have seen on this section of the forum that people mention physics, please could someone elaborate on this and how it works etc?
• Do I need to know any scripts and how would I apply these etc or anything else to help do this?
• Any other advice is more than welcome!!!

I can use Revit etc, so I have exported a house from there to FBX and imported it into Blender but it comes as a block, I have tried what tutorials have suggested and it doesn't seem to work

Please Help ❤️ 

 

 

Along with Aquila's excellent advice that I am guessing a few of us were smiling about ----  taking some inworld building classes (both prim and ?Blender (I thihk Builders Brewery still has beginning Blender classes) would be a good start. You are trying to make a very complex object when you don't know the basics. That just doesn't work.

When I was teaching classes and indeed in the Blender videos I made I started just importing a cube with a texture . Honestly that's tricky enough when you have no idea what your are doing. Then a picture frame, a table and EVENTUALLY a very simple building with physics.  

 

Baby steps. For most of us Blender has been a long journey.   Enjoy the process. 

[GraceLovell]

13 hours ago, GreyLasagna said:

I think you should familiarize with the basics of building with prims inside of SL. But answering your questions.
 

 In the latest version of firestorm viewer, you can upload your models in a temporal way. Use that to test anything, and for textures, you can import textures temporarily using the local option when you are about to add a texture to your whatever you working on. Also I like to use the default avatar from SL on blender as reference for whatever I'm working on.

 

As long your creation has the Modify checkmark on, people will be able to edit it. Make sure you unwrap your models properly.
 

To make your creations actually interact with your avi, every model should have his own physic model. If you use a fence to block someone from going through your land, that fence needs a physics model to actually stop from entering your land. In this case the physic model would be simply, a box shaped like the actual fence model (just 4 faces). You usually can deal with this inside of SL when you upload your models, but for more complex models, it would be better if you actually do it on blender. 
 

You might or might not need to learn scripting but depends what you are working on. Learning at least to change certain values on fullperm script it's a plus tho. You can add scripts to object by just dragging them from your inventory to your model.

 

 

Like i said. Learn how to work first on SL, then you can try learning blender.

Can't say anything about Revit since i never heard of it. 😅

Thank you so much for this, it definitely sounds like I am biting off more than I can chew  I'm used to modelling houses in BIM formats to a high level etc so I didn't think it would be much different!! (Revit is an Autodesk softare like 3DS Max but not as complex)

Thank you for your response, ill definitely take it in and start to learn the basics of SL  

[GraceLovell]

Thank you, everyone! Apologies forthe late reply I seem to be in a completely different time zone! I appreciate all your advice and help, I now know where it is I need to start! ❤️

 

Edited May 11, 2023 by GraceLovell
Info

[GraceLovell]

11 hours ago, Aquila Kytori said:

 

I downloaded an  .ifc file created in Revit and imported into Blender using the BlenderBIM addon to see how efficient the imported model was with its use or vertices/triangles.

On the large flat walls it was using the minimum number of triangles and would have required only a little clean-up like deleting a few faces that would never be seen :

https://github.com/IFCjs/test-ifc-files/tree/main/Revit

 

But on the bevelled edges of the large window frames, for some reason there were a lot of extra vertices.  Happily these could be easily cleaned up using Blender's Limited Dissolve tool.

In Edit mode with window frame selected > X key to open the Delete menu > choose the  Limited Dissolve option > and increase the Max Angle value until all the unnecessary vertices have been removed.

602 vertices before,  66 after using Limited Dissolve :

 

So later on you may need to do the same on some parts or your imported models.

Also there were no UV maps !     I'm guessing you don't use them when mapping textures to surfaces in Revit ?

 

 

Hey, Sorry for the late reply! I seem to be in a completely different time zone to everyone who has replied to my post  

thank you for your response this was a huge start and the images/video are great! I will start with the cube and see what I can learn and take from that and work my way up. I do this I may benefit from learning how to model in Blender rather than importing from Revit.

It's great to know I could get somewhere with the Revit model, I will try the IFC route as I watched some tutorials and it was saying to do it as an FBX but then it wouldn't let me edit it etc! 

Thank you so much for the links as well, I will definitely check these out.

It's great and helpful to know where to start as it is quite overwhelming! A lot of people speak of learning it in SL and then getting onto Blender so it's trying to understand that as well  

In Revit standard materials there are no maps, just repeating images. However, when I model I import all the maps and bumps etc with better-quality images offline, so it can be done  

Would you be open to me sending you a message if I have any more questions when I get to a later stage in learning?

Thank you!

[GraceLovell]

7 hours ago, Chic Aeon said:

Along with Aquila's excellent advice that I am guessing a few of us were smiling about ----  taking some inworld building classes (both prim and ?Blender (I thihk Builders Brewery still has beginning Blender classes) would be a good start. You are trying to make a very complex object when you don't know the basics. That just doesn't work.

When I was teaching classes and indeed in the Blender videos I made I started just importing a cube with a texture . Honestly that's tricky enough when you have no idea what your are doing. Then a picture frame, a table and EVENTUALLY a very simple building with physics.  

 

Baby steps. For most of us Blender has been a long journey.   Enjoy the process. 

Thank you for this! I definitely need to take a step back, it is a lot more complex than i originally thought it might be!

the inworld building classes sounds interesting I will definitely check those out as I would love to learn more of the basics and grow from there.

Yes! Baby steps all the way, thank you... i can get quite ambitious  

[Chic Aeon]

2 hours ago, GraceLovell said:

Hey, Sorry for the late reply! I seem to be in a completely different time zone to everyone who has replied to my post  

thank you for your response this was a huge start and the images/video are great! I will start with the cube and see what I can learn and take from that and work my way up. I do this I may benefit from learning how to model in Blender rather than importing from Revit.

It's great to know I could get somewhere with the Revit model, I will try the IFC route as I watched some tutorials and it was saying to do it as an FBX but then it wouldn't let me edit it etc! 

Thank you so much for the links as well, I will definitely check these out.

It's great and helpful to know where to start as it is quite overwhelming! A lot of people speak of learning it in SL and then getting onto Blender so it's trying to understand that as well  

In Revit standard materials there are no maps, just repeating images. However, when I model I import all the maps and bumps etc with better-quality images offline, so it can be done  

Would you be open to me sending you a message if I have any more questions when I get to a later stage in learning?

Thank you!

Since you likely don't know this ---  Aquila is the Queen of mesh in SL and has helped MANY of us learn for well over a decade

@Aquila Kytori