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All kidding aside, It seems that you have spent allot of time on this one house chosing different textures and shading. mutiple views around the home, and all of them have a very warm feel. What would you say your time frame on somthing like this took you after making a 3d model in Datacad. I have done some 3d models of homes and would like to take it to the next step. I have found that O2C is a good basic 3d program for looking at the design, and funtion of the residence. O2C is not a great rendering program at all, Its nice to show a client how you can rotate around the site and show different textures on the exterior walls of the model. Am I going to have to spend a year messing around with some program trying to figure the most time cutting ways of producing a rendering. I belive nothing is better than Pen and Ink, add a little color and you are off, I just don't have the time. Last I really like the last rendering, Very simple but to the point. Altho My company has grown over the years I still do it all by myself. Check out my gallery at
https://www.datacad.com/gallery/shows/cdsi/CDSI.htm
or my site at www.chdsi.com
I would be happy to awnser any questions you all might have, and let me know what you think of my website. I have some 3d models I will post sometime for you all to mess around with, they are allot of fun for me, and in the right hands might be able to create somthing that looks better.


Chris McKillip

Like I said before, I do all the modeling of the homes in DataCAD, so that time depends on your speed there and how much detail you put into the house. You can skip a lot of the tings I have on that house like the shingles on the ridge, gutters, etc and save some time. After the model is complete I DXF it into trueSpace (I keep mentioning trueSpace because it was the first 3D program i tried and it's cheap and does what I want). You can buy an older version of truespace and save a lot of money if you're not going to do advance character animation or what ever. I have v.5, you can get it for $395 on their site now that 6 came out. Anyway, then I apply the textures, this is where a lot of layers in datacad helps because every layer when exported becomes an object (some of which can be exploded to other objects), so when you model a window for example, you want the glass on a different layer from the frame. You can have all your trim on one layer if you want it all the same color, etc. Then you apply the textures. I have a ton, from siding to shingles to stone, most of which I got from the manufacturers sites, so they are accurate. Aligning the shingles on the angle takes some time to get 100%, but that's just because I’m picky. But, once you have all your textures on, you can "repaint" them easily to produce different looks. That house I have in my gallery, i created 6 different looks and rendered them in about an hour. You can save camera views and add an animation path to the camera to create a flyby and let your computer run over night to create a movie.

Typically, to model a house I spend a day or two and another day to put on the materials and set up lighting (which you can save presets), add objects (landscaping) and render. Most of my renderings I only model the sides you'll see (notice I don't show the left side and rear elevation) unless more views are desired. This saves rendering time as well since the computer doesn't have to think about all those polygons.
That last rendering you like is done the same way as above, but for the materials I use JPG's of datacad hatch patterns.

Your models themselves look good, but you are limited by O2C i think.
In tureSpace you can rotate the model similar to O2C but not rendered, well, there is suppose to be a way to do it but I haven't got it to work. However, to render to screen should only take 20-30 seconds if you don't have a lot or trees or cars.

If you would like, you can send me one of your models and I'll rendering to it for you so you can see the difference.

If there is anything else you would like to know, let me know.


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Just for reference, My computer is a Dell, 3GHz Pentuim w/ 1GB RAM. You'll definately want 1GB RAM minimum for rendering. It's not required, but speeds up the times, and RAM is cheap now a days.

thanks Mark for the input, I would love to send you something but for now I will pass. I just know when I would look at what you had done it would put me in a state of "I can do that, and I am swamped already" I really like what you have done and all the layers make sence. I think that I have tried out truespace around 4 years ago when it first came on the market. I am sure thay have made some big improvments over the years just like Datacad has. I am still using ver 10 right now and have a copy of 11lt messing around with it. I have always gone for the upgrades, but this time it has been a little different. It's kinda like when they went to a dc3 to dc5, now that I look back I really had no problem with the move up, I guess now I have allot more files now. I will keep you in mind for a lesson on the 3d stuff, I know time is very important to all of us. I wish this program could just read my mind, its always doing the same things over and over, theres my wish list