Four hour length tutorial on how to model a building for 3d interactive visualization

Among all the techniques used to create 3d models for visualization, the most used for architectural visualization is edge modeling followed by subdivision modeling. The edge modeling technique is the one that provides the highest level of control over precision and allows the artist to set measurements and divisions based on planes. It’s quite easy to work only with the parts of the project that will be actually showed up on the rendering. With subdivision and the work with 3d primitives, we have to erase lots of faces and vertices to clean up the model.
To master those techniques we have to practice a lot and watch a few examples of 3d architectural created with both methods. If you want to learn a bit more about edge modeling and subdivision for architecture, I just found a great and detailed tutorial about that and with more than four hours in length!
The tutorial was created with 3ds Max 2009, but most of the tools and techniques can be applied to almost any 3d package, including Blender 3D poly modeling tools. This project was created to show an example of how a model can be exported from 3ds Max to CryEngine 2 for interactive visualization. Here is a view of the final model:

The video is divided in three parts that can be watched directly in Vimeo or downloaded in MP4. Depending on the method, you should be prepared for a long download, since the full tutorial has more than 2GB in size.
Here are the links to watch the tutorial in Vimeo:

• Modeling a building – part 1
• Modeling a building – part 2
• Modeling a building – part 3

At the description page on Vimeo, you can find other options to download the videos.
In the first video we can check out how the author creates the walls, windows and details of the ornaments of the model like plate rails. The modeling process uses a mix of subdivision with edges. When we get to the second part of the tutorial, the author starts to work on the UV mapping of the model in 3ds Max to export and work on the unwrapped map on Photoshop.
At the last video the 3d model is finally exported to CryEngine to create an interactive 3d visualization. The 3d model doesn’t have much detail to save polygons and increase the performance at the 3d engine. Even not being directly aimed to architectural visualization artists; it’s a good and detailed tutorial about modeling and should be watched by anyone involved with 3d modeling.
I will recommend the material to all my students!

AUTOCAD - VRAY - 3Ds MAX - PHOTOSHOP - REVIT

Villa-building perspective TMAX ARCHITECTS
(If you do not see the video on the icon you can
  bottom right corner youtube video frame slightly.)

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Making Of 'Fruity Flash: The Creation of Mrs Pear'

By José María Andrés Martín

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Date Added: 9th December 2009

Software used:

3ds Max, Photoshop, Mudbox

In this mini tutorial I'd like to show briefly how I modelled and textured Mrs Pear, as well as talk a bit about the texturing process in Mudbox. This character, as with the strawberry, was originally scheduled for two days max. The first day was going to be for geometry and UVs, and the second day for refining the geometry with Mudbox and creating the textures in Mudbox and Photoshop.

At the beginning I was a bit scared of the time limit I had set myself. Not only did I have to do all the modelling and texturing, but I had to make the shaders, handbag, eyes, tongue, teeth, etc. I wasn't sure if all of that was possible within two days!

I started the base mesh with a "lathe", controlling the amount of polys (Fig.01).

Fig. 01

After several minutes of working - bearing in mind that I was mainly focusing on the loops of the mouth (the eyes weren't important in this case and I was in a rush) - I got something like the image shown in Fig.02. It looks much more fat and static than the final model, but I wanted the geometry to be okay before making any modifications, or using a "Blend” modifier, so at this stage the more orthogonal it was, the better!

The arms and legs were inherited from the strawberry, with some modifications. For the hands of the strawberry and the pear I modelled and rigged a basic hand to get quick poses. You can see in the image how the hands are still not welded to the arms (Fig.02).

Fig. 02

Once the base model was done, including "Bend" and welding, the geometry looked like this (Fig.03).

Fig. 03

You can see that at this point it's been subdivided. This subdivision was done to make it easier to attach the arms and legs to the body.

With the mesh being simply correct, it was now time to do the UVs. For this there is nothing better than UVLayout. UVLayout is a bit weird to use, and its interface is a bit "medieval", but it relaxes you better than a foam bath. After a session of "cut-relax" the UVs were like this. It wasn't perfect, but it was good enough and I knew that I could always use Photoshop to help fix any little imperfections and remove seams (Fig.04 – Fig.06).

Fig. 04

Fig. 05

Fig. 06

Making Of 'Fruity Flash: The Creation of Mrs Pear

So... this brought me to the end of the first day.

The second day started by importing the object with right UVs into Mudbox and refining the mesh. Mudbox 2009 has the skills to manage massive numbers of polys quite easily, so the pear was subdivided at around five million polys to get enough definition to generate a good 4K normal map.

Basically, apart from general deformations, the main details were the little bumps of the skin and the detail of the lips. Here you can see a "before" and an "after" of the process (Fig.07 & Fig.08).

Making Of 'Fruity Flash: The Creation of Mrs Pear

Software used:

3ds Max, Photoshop, Mudbox

Fig. 13

To apply each of the textures, I selected the tab "Paint Tools", and then clicked on "Projection" (Fig.14).

Fig. 14

In the bottom right of the interface, I selected the "Stencil” tab and then "Add Stencil” (Fig.15 & Fig.16).

Fig. 15

Fig. 16

Once chosen, the texture appears in the centre of the screen (Fig.17).

Fig. 17

I used the shortcuts shown in Fig.18 to move, rotate and scale the textures.

Fig. 18

Once I had the geometry and the stencil where I liked, I just clicked to start painting. This caused a pop up window to appear, asking for the resolution of the texture (I chose 4K again). After defining this and clicking on the "OK" button, it was time to start painting (Fig.19).

Fig. 19

And … paint (Fig.20)!

Fig. 20

To keep a good level of control while I paint, and avoid being destructive, I find that it's always good to work with layers. So I created a new layer by clicking on the "New Layer" button (top-right of the interface). After the already known pop up about the resolution appeared, I started working on the new layer (Fig.21).

Fig. 21

For this new layer I chose a new stencil (Fig.22 & Fig.23).

Fig. 22

Fig. 23

And... that's all! I only had to export the textures into Photoshop to finish the work. For that, I right-clicked on the layers to get the exporting options.

After Photoshop the final texture looked like this (Fig.24).

Fig. 24

The shoes area was left like that (with no texture) because for this I only used a procedural shader with the normal map. The lips were painted with a different shader and a mask was applied to control them.   

And here's the final image (Fig.25)!

Fig. 25

I hope this small tutorial has shown you a bit of the creation process behind this image. Thanks for reading!

 

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