I've got emails from few people asking questions about "my house" project. Originally, I wrote an article based on one of my email answers. I have then used this article as a script to make video tutorial.

My intention was to walk you through the whole process. I attempted to use quite a few interesting tricks and techniques that I have found useful on this particular type of project. I have started slowly (explaining the basics) so even beginners can catch-up, and I have been increasing the pace along the way trying to keep it reasonably long.

Update: time to time I am getting upset messages asking where did I get the blueprints. So for record, you can get plenty of blueprints by searching the net for "house blueprint". Pick the one you like. If you are for whatever reason looking exactly for the one that I have used then I have to disappoint you - this specific one is not available for download. It comes from the complete construction plan for my house that was made for by architects based on contract and I can not just publish it on the web. If I did the model only for the tutorial, it would make more sense to use a generic one, but I built the 3d model to visualize the house-to-be and help us to validate the decisions when there were multiple options to choose from. And I was obviously looking forward for the house so I actually liked working on that. The house is now finished so as a bonus, we will be soon able to compare the "vision" with the "reality". I'll post this on this web a bit later.
If you are still disparately looking for my blueprints, feel free to check the architect on http://www.archiko.cz/.

Before I start, check out the final render that I made earlier

 
Video: House 3D model - virtual tour

TUTORIALS

Building the house shell

This starts with a blank scene. We will trace a blueprint to build the walls and finish with a complete house skeleton, including the roof.

Watch tutorial: Building a house in Blender - part 1 on Vimeo for full screen version and high definition video download.

Doors, windows, materials...

We'll add doors and windows (using linked duplicates so we can easily change them at a later stage), add materials, set-up lights and render the scene.

Watch tutorial: Building a house in Blender - part 2 on Vimeo for full screen version and high definition video download.

Interior, UV mapping, composite nodes, staircase, Camera fly through

Now we can focus on the interior. We'll make quick&dirty wardrobe by adding UV texture photograph of an actual furniture. Let's see how quick and easy it is to make a staircase. Let's set-up a camera fly through.

Watch tutorial: Building a house in Blender - part 3 on Vimeo for full screen version and high definition video download.

Ambient Occlusion - short tutorial

The lights take 2. As an alternative to the Sky Dome that we have done in part 2. I dump the lamps and make it from scratch. That one is short. I got rid of all the lamps from the tutorial and did them from scratch - using Ambient Occlusion, one lamp for the Sun and a hemi in the interior to fake radiosity. It is quick, it looks good - IMHO the best way set-up the lights for architecture.

Watch tutorial: Ambient Occlusion on Vimeo for full screen version and high definition video download.

Bake render, compositing nodes

This has an ambition to reduce the render time for the animation. We go into bake render, we use different render passes or scenes and bring the scene together in Composite nodes. I had some fun with workarounds - such as fixing specular that is missing in the bake render image. Finally we tweak OSA and Octree resolution. And the result? We got down from 2 minutes to 17 seconds per frame!

Watch tutorial: Bake render, compositing nodes on Vimeo for full screen version and high definition video download.

Download

DOWNLOAD THE SCRIPT

Features

• Search for a material in all objects and replaces it with another material.
• Reduce the effect to all/visible/selected objects.
• Rename materials in a list of all materials - no need to go the the object.
• Show who is using the material.
• Calculate the sum of surface areas using material.
• Assign material to selected faces or objects.

Current version: 1.1

Background

Once I've build a rather bigger project in Blender. It was a model of my house, and it was helping me in discussions with architects and builders and helped to make choices during the house construction.

As the project evolved and I've been linking or importing meshes from another files, the project was becoming quite messy, with multiple copies of same material with different names. Changes sometimes did not apply to all intended objects. Then I started to create multiple scenes, made some meshes single-user, and I've got even more copies of material.

I've spent some time going to each object, scanning through the material index and changing it manually - the Oops spaghetti did not help much. I though there must be a better way - Python, but I could not find a script that would do that - so I wrote one...

Before substituting - changing the material, you might also want to check the users for both source and destination - after the change they will be merged.

It was only natural to add posibbility to rename materials without going to the object actually using it

Another added feature was calculation of the surface area using this material on the current scene. This feature helps in assessing the amount and cost of material for paint, tiles or any works where cost is based on the surface area (so when I go to the shop I know exactly how many cans of paint I shall buy...and when I run short, I can blame it to the Blender ;).

After posting this script to BlenderArtists.org, I've got lots of additional suggestions and comments. Thanks!