Can anyone point me in a direction for learning how to model houses or generally buildings from reference/floorplans?

Every tutorial I can find falls short in all of the same ways. Either it's an outdoor scene where the inside of the house is a hollow unusable shell, a purely interior scene with no attention paid to the exterior at all, or it doesn't show you how to make a roof on anything more complicated than a perfect rectangle or L shape.. or it's a "modern" house that is just a cube with a flat roof presumably to compensate for modelling roofs being too complicated.

And then I've tried this method of extruding planes over an image of a floor plan and that doesn't compute at all because I always end up with this twisting labyrinth of walls that looks completely out of whack in scale no matter how much I scale it up in comparison to my character. And then how do you properly make a roof for such a thing? Or make stairs to a second floor or basement and/or add these things real houses have like a 2nd story where its just a room or two and not a 1:1 extrusion up from the first story?

I've tried to just not think so hard about it and just make it up as I go, using whatever janky methods I need to block something out but I always create a total mess of duplicate edges and overlapping that I'm not even sure how I ended up with, and just seem to be wasting time trying to brute force a totally incorrect way of doing things

When I play games and open a door from outside and walk into a house it feels like I'm witnessing black magic. I would do shameful things in exchange for the knowledge of how to take reference of a complex house and recreate it as a scene where you can seamlessly walk in and out of it- and not see a bunch of fucked lighting artifacts and the like

>>1004123 (OP)
Blender is not CAD or architecture approved for such usage. You will have to learn how CAD works if you want the feeling of indoor space.

In Blender, the modifier you're looking for to subtract one mesh from another is called the "Boolean" modifier
-chatgpt

>>1004137

So pros model houses in CAD and import them into the game engine after?

>>1004182

Post your work

>>1004123 (OP)
Sketchup works so much better for this purpose than Blender it's not even close. You could try two approaches and see if it works out for you:

1. You can still find the last unpaid version of SketchUp 2017 on the internet. Google it, I did that recently and still works fine. Model your building there and import to Blender.

2. Apparently there's a paid add-on for Blender called "Construction Lines" that replicates a lot of the drafting functionality from SketchUp. I haven't tried it out yet.

>>1004190
If you are grayboxing for a game then that's different from archvis. When you are making something to be actual architecture that doesn't translate well to game levels for multiple reasons. Depending on the game many times the interiors aren't actually inside the exterior but are separate levels that you are transported to via loading screen. In the games that do use real interiors like gmod, use a complex method of culling portions of rooms or areas that you aren't looking at. Not to mention baked lighting and all that jazz. Many game studios have modular kits they use: Premade pieces of a building like the walls, floors and doors that are already uv'd and textured and can be connected in different ways like a lego set.

>>1004123 (OP)

Architectural modeling requires architectural knowledge just as character modelling requires anatomy. If you don't know that a hand is made out of bones, tendons, meat, skin and nails you wont make it believable just like a building is made out of walls, structural elements, claddings, railings, etc etc.

>Can anyone point me in a direction for learning how to model houses or generally buildings from reference/floorplans?
Dont just use floorplans but also sections, elevations and facades.
> I always end up with this twisting labyrinth of walls that looks completely out of whack in scale no matter how much I scale it up in comparison to my character
Learn about architectural proportions. The dimensions of stuff. Literally use dimensions.com

>And then how do you properly make a roof for such a thing? Or make stairs to a second floor or basement and/or add these things real houses have like a 2nd story where its just a room or two and not a 1:1 extrusion up from the first story?
Don t worry many architects don't even know how to model that properly. Again its about correct dimensions and proportions along with knowing what are you modelling: For example stairs have elements such as carriages, stringers, steps, railings, moulds etc etc.

>I would do shameful things in exchange for the knowledge of how to take reference of a complex house and recreate it as a scene
Give me the structure you want to model so I can make some pointers.

>>1004494
This is true. But knowing arch still applies.

>>1004866
This is why this is my favorite board, it's rare to see people this helpful on this site. NTA by the way.

>>1004866

Did you make this? It's really nice. I think this is basically what I'm talking about though I'd like to do houses with more complex roof shapes. Part of what's actually tripping me up here is stuff like this
>>1004494

It makes sense that workflows may differ depending on the type of project and what I really want to know is how things are approached in a studio environment- and these are the sort of nuances I don't see getting talked about anywhere. What tools/methods are used to do something like this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=krV4UMnLCrc

where you have this seamless experience in a game engine between interior and exterior

and how does that process differ from a feature film where you have separate shots stitched together? I'm primarily doing character animation so the latter is probably more important but I just like to know I'm learning the optimal ways of doing things and not picking up bad habits.

But suppose I wanted to model a property like this, and I'm going to be using it for a series of animation shots that take place both inside and outside, and in one of the shots I want the camera to seamlessly travel from inside of the bedrooms, out the window into the backyard. There are enough intricacies in the roof alone that I know if I attempted this using blender I'd end up with a a glitchy mess of duplicate vertices. And then the interior should feel very open and spacious but I know if tried doing the extruding the floorplan thing I'd end up with a claustrophobic labyrinth of walls. I'm just not sure where to begin and hence the frustration because it seems like every tutorial I see is limited by either the scene only functioning as interior or exterior, not showing how to make things proportional, having a very simple roof or some combination of these things

>>1005010
Oh I see the house from MW2. That is pretty easy to model. Dude just beware video game interiors are rarely architecturally sound. Proportions and interior dimensions of the model are exaggerated, spaces are deformed, the number of door or windows are modified in order to favor the gameplay experience so never expect to have realistic architecture in a videogame model.
You seem to be all over the place with many doubts so I'll try to enumerate them:

>I don't know the difference between different "industry" (god I hate that word) workflows, tools and methods for architectural/environment modelling.
Answer: Yes, obviously a house made for archviz can be lightyears away from a house made for video games or movies. Anon is right when he is telling you that most game environments are made like lego kits.

>I don't know how to model architecture with complex details like irregular roof shapes and/or the elements of the exterior and interior?
Answer: No one does from the start obviously. Well have you looked at examples? Part of what you seem to be missing are references, nothing is modeled in a vacuum. Take a look at this example: https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/505-River-Ridge-Rd-Blue-Ridge-GA-30513/228804439_zpid/ There you can see clearly how this type of house is made, how the roof structure works, how the facade is made etc.

>I don't know how video games achieve a seamless transition when changing environments.
Answer: Anon is right. Video games are not just 3d models, video games are a mix of cg trickery but most importantly hard cold computer code trickery that can create the illusion of what you see in the example. I could write pages about technical stuff like LOD, Mipmapping, preloading, atlasing, blocking but that may be out of your scope since I see that what you want is an animation and optimizing stuff may be out of the scope of what you need to do in order to achieve that.

>I don't know where to begin.
Answer:Ah! That's where I come in...

>>1005062

It's.. beautiful.

Yes I'd say we can forget about the game stuff for now. What's more important is being able to have different camera setups with characters moving about the house and outside of it with a believable scale. (Though I do wonder if there is a way to take models that weren't designed with game use in mind and modify them to work for that purpose, and if that would complicate things more than doing it from scratch).

So when you're analyzing reference are you actually looking at floor plans or is it enough to go through zillow listings and infer the layout from the shape of the building? Do you recommend 3dsmax over sketchup?

Thanks a lot for putting all that together

>>1005079
Not the anon but as someone who knows cinema and production in video games. What you’re describing isn’t exactly what we do. We can’t just allocate resources to 100% because rendering will be slow, something we need to finish in a certain amount of time given. Instead it’s more fair to focus on current characters in current events rather wasting unnecessary background stuff. The background is still there but you the audience will never care to look closer.

The characters also don’t look the same vs ingame because the two models are built different. Sure you could make it the same as ingame but you’ll lose that cinematic experience. The house is in the same position, it’s either a ingame model or a cinema model. So what you want is close to cinema experience. Indoors is kinda weird to be honest, you have to balance light but also not make characters look darker or lighter than necessary. Don’t forget the background too. Things get real messy when special effects are added and throw off the balance.

Outside the light projection problem, the tiniest things like open the door or character mirror makes the perception go haywire, you know how door open works and how mirror works but if you just let it be in 3D the world is shattered and your brain thinks it’s weird. Kinda why we don’t make the entire character walk into the room unless the director is being a bitch about it.

I could go on but you get the point, just doing the animation is not enough for a nice experience.

>>1005089
Ditto
>>1005079
You are still all over the place. It's like you are trying to build a car and and you think your first problem is not knowing how to style your interior. Let's take things one step at a time and the first step is to model stuff correctly. Picrel

So first step.>>1005010 Is this the actual house you want to model? If so I can show you how to model it for the purposes of your animation.

>So when you're analyzing reference are you actually looking at floor plans or is it enough to go through zillow listings and infer the layout from the shape of the building?
No. That's like saying an author only trains by reading magazines. It is obviously not enough to go tru pictures to model architecture but its a good start. Again nothing is made in a vacuum and If you haven't even looked at hundreds of references oh houses with similar architecture before actually starting to plan how to model is a bad start.

Again my offer to you is to take a step back and go one problem at a time starting by modelling a good envirnoment for your animation project and taking what >>1005089 says is true. You don't need to model the whole building .

>Do you recommend 3dsmax over sketchup?
No. I'll never recommend one software or another. The best software is the one you know best and the one you can afford/ pirate/use/leverage the best.

>>1005097

How about this one?

https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/1274-Weaver-Creek-Rd-Blue-Ridge-GA-30513/316801475_zpid/

>>1005111
Ok seems simple. I'll try to make something like this if I have the time.https://youtube.com/live/F2j-xdlSwWs?feature=share
If not I'll start with the roof.

>>1005111
Ok I have about 1 hour of time before I have to do house chores so lets do it. https://youtube.com/live/Papj1UhME58?feature=share

>>1005695
Ok here's part 1: https://www.youtube.com/live/Papj1UhME58?feature=shared
One of the biggest challenges people face when modeling is the fear of making mistakes and the pressure to get the geometry perfect on the first try. The modeling you see in the video is not the final product—it's primarily a blockout of the house. This stage is about getting a sense of the elements I need to model and their proportions.
If the house appears well-proportioned, it's because I rely on architectural measurements I've internalized over time. For example, I started with an 8-meter-wide house, the railings are 1 meter tall, and the floors are 2.4 meters high. However, at this stage, every measurement is subject to change and likely will evolve as the design progresses.
As for the complex structure of the roof, it can be tackled effectively by first blocking out the general planes of the roof. This approach allows you to establish the slopes and overall feel before reconciling how the planes intersect and come together.

>>1005697
Correct link https://youtube.com/live/Papj1UhME58

>>1005697
>>1005698

Holy shit thank you. Do you want some shekels?

Yeah I feel that about worrying too much about perfection. I tried the extruding a floor plan thing again and just tried to vaguely match the dimensions of the rooms where they bothered to write them and extrapolating the rest from there. I ended up with what I initially perceived to be a claustrophobic labyrinth again- but then I actually threw some floor textures down and brought in some furniture with a human scale model and I think I was just tripping myself out. It looks basically right maybe.

That being said glancing at your model of the roof on that cabin it still looks like black magic to me. Hopefully it won't anymore once I watch the whole thing. And hopefully it translates well enough to blunder because I've spent the last year learning everything I can about houdini and I'm really burnt out on starting from 0 with new softwares

>>1005733
Use the software you know. When I have more time I'll continue the house.

>>1005733
>Holy shit thank you. Do you want some shekels?
Write in a banana ">>1005697
thank you" and post the image.

>>1004866
>Architectural modeling requires architectural knowledge just as character modelling requires anatomy
Pretty much the most correct answer in the entire thread.

>>1004190
>So pros model houses in CAD and import them into the game engine after?
Pros use BIM, but if you're using the building model for a game and you're not worrying architectural integrity of the model, use whatever you like.

>>1004123 (OP)
this is almost what i do for work lol

>>1005743

I hope I've understood the assignment

>>1006422
Nice one. Okay now I'll make part 2 maybe on thursday. I'm traveling right now.

Yo im still here but with a mountain of work over my head. Haven't forgotten.