Architectural floor plans, elevations & section cuts

[Phantom107]

Hello all,

I'm an architecture student and as of late I'm using Octane to render my floor plans, elevations and section cuts for presentation purposes. The orthographic camera mode works wonders for this, and the results are truely great.
Unfortunately, I have to manually type in the right camera coordinates to orient the camera in an exact direction so I get the right image.

My suggestion is that there need to be some buttons to instantly orient the camera to look towards the exact left, right, front, back, top and bottom of the scene. That'd speed workflow up a lot!

Thanks,

Phantom107

[johlanga]

U could just make and import nodes like this one when needed

[johlanga]

ops... ocm is not allowed
here's the zip

[kavorka]

you could also set your camera in your modeling program for this

[Phantom107]

Multiple nodes is a great idea, thanks!

Setting up the camera in the modeling program is an option but I need to switch quickly between elevations etc so I need something fast.

[johlanga]

, and it's easy to copy and paste for sections details etc...(using nearClipDepth).

[Phantom107]

Very good idea, I tried and it works great... saves me from having to cut the model up manually!

----------

Seems like it's all good, but I'd like to bring up a new suggestion.
When rendering these plans I need them to scale; right now I render them and scale them in GIMP... which is tiresome and not perfectly accurate.

Is there any chance we will be able to render an orthographic view to scale? Pretty much like in Revit, you set a preferred scale (say 1:100), choose DPI (say 150) and then the program adjusts the render resolution to the correct one.

[vanhage]

I haven't played with the orthographic camera yet, but your thread has me interested now . . .

Out of curiosity, could you describe your workflow for your architecture work? What software(s) you start off in and whether you use the standalone or integrated plugin?

[Phantom107]

I design primarily with 2D CAD tools (and hand sketches) and work on the 3D model in Google SketchUp alongside that. Professional artists often ridicule SketchUp, but it is an actually an amazing tool when you want to accurately setup architectural models, and is absolutely killer in conjunction with Octane. Not to mention it's free, and can be patched up with the countless plugins out there. However, when BIM (Building Information Modeling) tools take a leap I might switch to that (basically it's CAD except you workout a design directly in 3D). That'd save a lot of work in SketchUp.

From SketchUp, I export the model into Octane. (I will also export a 2D image from SketchUp where only the model's lines (edges) are visible. This is purely experimental, I'm trying out stuff with overlaying the lines on top of the render image)

Then I make renders in Octane. Standalone version, as there is no integrated one available.

Then, using GIMP, I combine the Octane render and the 2D line image to make something appealing. I then have to scale it properly to get it to the correct scale (this is awful).

---------

I'd be really useful if "math nodes" got into Octane, so I can just take the camera position in the scene and the FOV, so I can set it up to automatically compute the right resolution for me.

[johlanga]

Very good idea, I tried and it works great... saves me from having to cut the model up manually!

----------



Is there any chance we will be able to render an orthographic view to scale?

You only need a reference (in background far out:) object and zoom/pan to overlay it with your view, then size it to any scale u want