How to build a house?

Even though I actualy started using POV-Ray for that purpose I never 
actualy did it. Now I have to renovate my house and I'd like to simulate a 
few things, especialy light and shadow and of course the looks.

Now, what is the easiest method, a box per wall? A prism? "brick by 
brick"? Other methods?

Ingo

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ingo wrote:
> How to build a house?
> 

First you need to get some land; practically you either buy or rent it.
Then you'll ask prices etc from some constructing companies and propably
get a big loan from a bank. From this point the need for your own work
depends on your choice. Etc.

Sorry, I couldn't resist :p.

-- 
Eero "Aero" Ahonen
   http://www.zbxt.net
      aer### [at] removethiszbxtnetinvalid

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"ingo" <ing### [at] tagpovrayorg> schreef in bericht 
news:Xns9817D1F0C8D51seed7@news.povray.org...
> How to build a house?
>
> Even though I actualy started using POV-Ray for that purpose I never
> actualy did it. Now I have to renovate my house and I'd like to simulate a
> few things, especialy light and shadow and of course the looks.
>
> Now, what is the easiest method, a box per wall? A prism? "brick by
> brick"? Other methods?
>

I have built a couple of houses in POV (never finished them) and I believe 
that using separate boxes for each wall works better in the end. But that 
said, it very much depends on the intentions that you have, and the degree 
of details you want to put in. Also, being able to visualize the model 
during the building process helps ans speeds up the work. So, start building 
in Moray, or Wings3D, or Silo, or Blender, or whatever.

Thomas

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"ingo" <ing### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote in message 
news:Xns9817D1F0C8D51seed7@news.povray.org...
> How to build a house?
>
> Even though I actualy started using POV-Ray for that purpose I never
> actualy did it. Now I have to renovate my house and I'd like to simulate a
> few things, especialy light and shadow and of course the looks.
>
> Now, what is the easiest method, a box per wall? A prism? "brick by
> brick"? Other methods?
>
> Ingo

Hi Ingo,

My suggestion would be to use a prism for the shape of each room, plus a 
prism for the floor and one for the ceiling of each room.
That should give you enough separate shapes for each room to get a 
reasonable level of control over the textures.

If you do your floor plan as a 2D vector graphic in Inkscape you can export 
each room as a POVRay prism.
To do this in Inkscape you can use the Bezier shape to draw the outline of 
your room (Inkscape conveniently tells you the length of the line segment as 
you are drawing it as well as positioning information). Take a copy of the 
shape and name it 'Floor'. Take another copy of the shape and scale it up a 
little, then select this and the original shape at the same time and do a 
'Path', 'Difference'. Name this shape 'Lounge' (make sure this 'wall' is 
thinner than the real wall so that it doesn't intercept the next room 
along). When you've done the same for all your rooms, export as a POVRay 
file and include it in your scene. Scale the floors by -0.1 in Y and the 
rooms (e.g. 'Lounge') by 50 in Y. Take a copy of the Floors, scale by 0.1 
and translate by 50 in Y to get ceilings.

Hey presto. Ten minutes later you've got sophisticated room shapes that you 
can cut holes in for doors, windows, a fireplace etc.
So long as you keep it as a separate include file (and also keep a copy of 
the SVG source file) you can subsequently move the walls and floors around 
on your floor plan in Inkscape and they'll magically move when you export a 
new copy to POVRay (Though you'll need to move any corresponding stuff like 
skirting boards and doorways that you've defined in your scene file).

Hope this idea helps.

p.s. Don't forget to use POVStairs when you get to the hallway 
(http://www.geocities.com/povstairs/)

Regards,
Chris B.

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Wow! interesting method! Shall try it too.
Not yet tried your POV-Stairs. Waiting for the right project :-)

Thomas

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"Chris B" <c_b### [at] btconnectcomnospam> wrote:
> "ingo" <ing### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote in message
> news:Xns9817D1F0C8D51seed7@news.povray.org...
> > How to build a house?
> >
> > Even though I actualy started using POV-Ray for that purpose I never
> > actualy did it. Now I have to renovate my house and I'd like to simulate a
> > few things, especialy light and shadow and of course the looks.
> >
> > Now, what is the easiest method, a box per wall? A prism? "brick by
> > brick"? Other methods?
> >
> > Ingo
>
> Hi Ingo,
>
> My suggestion would be to use a prism for the shape of each room,
[Snip]


sharing.


Stephen

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Stephen nous apporta ses lumieres en ce 08/08/2006 07:08:
> "Chris B" <c_b### [at] btconnectcomnospam> wrote:
>> "ingo" <ing### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote in message
>> news:Xns9817D1F0C8D51seed7@news.povray.org...
>> Hi Ingo,
>>
>> My suggestion would be to use a prism for the shape of each room,
> [Snip]
> 

> sharing.
> 
> 
> Stephen
> 
> 
A notable advantage: the prism can easily include any door and window without 
having to use difference or union of several box.

-- 
Alain
-------------------------------------------------
Drive defensively.  Buy a tank.

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in news:44d71293$1@news.povray.org Chris B wrote:

> 
> "ingo" <ing### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote in message 
> news:Xns9817D1F0C8D51seed7@news.povray.org...
>>
>> How to build a house?
 
> If you do your floor plan as a 2D vector graphic in Inkscape you can
> export each room as a POVRay prism.
> [...]

Interesting method indeed. Hadn't thought of Inkscape either. Had 
already started with the one box one wall approach, but the amount of 
object sum up quite quickly.

> p.s. Don't forget to use POVStairs when you get to the hallway 
> (http://www.geocities.com/povstairs/)
> 

I won't as one of the things we're planning are stair from the 
roofgarden into the garden.

Thanks,

Ingo

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ingo wrote:
> How to build a house?
> 
> Even though I actualy started using POV-Ray for that purpose I never
>  actualy did it. Now I have to renovate my house and I'd like to
> simulate a few things, especialy light and shadow and of course the
> looks.
> 
> Now, what is the easiest method, a box per wall? A prism? "brick by 
> brick"? Other methods?

   I was facing the same question some weeks ago. I'm not planning a new
house, but I wanted to model from real blueprints just to get real rooms
with realistic proportions.

   Finally, I found the most easy/fast method for me was to use Wings3D.
I just used a box and an image plane with the blueprint for reference.
Then, in edge mode, I used mostly "connect" and "slide" to create edges
following the blueprint lines. When I had all the needed edges, I
"dissolved" the resulting faces to only have one face per wall and
window/door hole. Then, I extruded all the walls and window holes to the
height of the windows start. Then deselected the window holes and
continued extruding the rest up to the windows top height, and then
extruded again to the ceiling height. Finally, I "bridged" the upper,
interior side faces of the windows and door holes to close them. It
seems a complex sequence, but it's really fast and easy with Wings3D. I
can take some screenshots of the process if you want...

Regards,

--
Jaime

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"Alain" <ele### [at] netscapenet> wrote in message 
news:44d8856c$1@news.povray.org...
> Stephen nous apporta ses lumieres en ce 08/08/2006 07:08:
>> "Chris B" <c_b### [at] btconnectcomnospam> wrote:
>>> "ingo" <ing### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote in message
>>> news:Xns9817D1F0C8D51seed7@news.povray.org...
>>> Hi Ingo,
>>>
>>> My suggestion would be to use a prism for the shape of each room,
>> [Snip]
>>

>> sharing.
>>
>>
>> Stephen
>>
>>
> A notable advantage: the prism can easily include any door and window 
> without having to use difference or union of several box.
>
> -- 
> Alain
> -------------------------------------------------
> Drive defensively.  Buy a tank.

Actually, it sounds to me like you're talking about using prisms the other 
way up to what I was suggesting.

My technique is to define a spline that follows the base of a wall all 
around the room with a slightly larger section of spline running around 
outside it, so that when you extrude it upwards it gives you a thin walled 
hollow tube the shape of the room. You can then use CSG to punch door holes 
and window holes into the sides of the walls.

The main benefit of this is that you can apply textures up the height of the 
wall and they only affect the one room. The next room along is defined as a 
separate prism and therefore has it's own textures.

If you use Inkscape (a vector graphics editor) to export bezier curves as 
POV-Ray prisms it also means you get a very pretty floor plan in Inkscape as 
a by-product.

I'll post a couple of images in povray.binaries.images when I get a moment 
to illustrate what I mean.

Regards,
Chris B.

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