How to make a simple building
- Thread starter dansvid
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Architects and Cheetah
I teach drawing and modeling technique to architecture students. I have to use a slew of different programs to teach everything I need to show the students. These add up to a lot of license expenses for the university and students. Cheetah would be a great design tool for architecture students and professionals alike, but it has two flaws that make it sadly useless for architects:
1) There is no simple, effective object snapping.
2) There are no customizable units.
Animators can get away with sketching things out and make them look like they are real. That doesn't work for architects. Architects have to work with specific measurements in different units, metric and imperial - so units are 100% essential. Architects also have to work with a degree of precision, unlike animators - two touching points have to be actually touching, not just look like they are touching.
Sketchup does these things (and a couple of other neat features like a section plane tool and good multi-format import export). That is why I teach Sketchup over Cheetah, even though Cheetah is a better tool in almost every way. Cheetah just can't be used by architects without these features as anything other than an auxiliary tool.
If these points were addressed I can bet that, at $125 a seat (less for bulk orders and academic?) Cheetah would sell many units to architects. I would recommend it to my university, no doubt.
The advantages it has is that it does what a whole load of other programs do, without the bloated features of tools like Maya. The learning curve is relatively short but the program is very powerful as a creative tool.
It's a shame it is so easy to create sweeping undulating roofs and facades in Cheetah, but so hard to draw two bricks touching each other. Looking forward to the architect friendly version - then expect a landslide of adopters.
I teach drawing and modeling technique to architecture students. I have to use a slew of different programs to teach everything I need to show the students. These add up to a lot of license expenses for the university and students. Cheetah would be a great design tool for architecture students and professionals alike, but it has two flaws that make it sadly useless for architects:
1) There is no simple, effective object snapping.
2) There are no customizable units.
Animators can get away with sketching things out and make them look like they are real. That doesn't work for architects. Architects have to work with specific measurements in different units, metric and imperial - so units are 100% essential. Architects also have to work with a degree of precision, unlike animators - two touching points have to be actually touching, not just look like they are touching.
Sketchup does these things (and a couple of other neat features like a section plane tool and good multi-format import export). That is why I teach Sketchup over Cheetah, even though Cheetah is a better tool in almost every way. Cheetah just can't be used by architects without these features as anything other than an auxiliary tool.
If these points were addressed I can bet that, at $125 a seat (less for bulk orders and academic?) Cheetah would sell many units to architects. I would recommend it to my university, no doubt.
The advantages it has is that it does what a whole load of other programs do, without the bloated features of tools like Maya. The learning curve is relatively short but the program is very powerful as a creative tool.
It's a shame it is so easy to create sweeping undulating roofs and facades in Cheetah, but so hard to draw two bricks touching each other. Looking forward to the architect friendly version - then expect a landslide of adopters.
+1
I draw in SU and render in Cheetah. The thing I like about 3D Studio Max is the Architectural tool set. Come on Martin! :tongue:
I draw in SU and render in Cheetah. The thing I like about 3D Studio Max is the Architectural tool set. Come on Martin! :tongue:
I think asking Martin to incorporate an "architectural" toolset, is a fairly ambitious task in light that SU has to be one of the fastest Architects modelling tools around, and pretty hard to beat at what it does.
There are hardly any tools out there that can build and render in one ideal package, you only have to delve into other architectural forums to see an endless argument about which tool is best.
The current vogue is to export from "A"cad program and hope that "B" render program is a one touch button for photorealism.
I might be better at the end of the day for Martin to produce a dedicated Sketchup import plugin ( although I have never had any problem with the 3ds option myself).
Regards
Luke
I have to agree with Luke. Sketchup is (a) free / inexpensive, and (b) totally dedicated to providing this functionality. C3D can't go head to head, so it is best off complementing SU.
A comparable request would be Willem and I barracking for C3D to provide realtime game engine previews with programmable shaders.
A comparable request would be Willem and I barracking for C3D to provide realtime game engine previews with programmable shaders.
Martin
0
Hi,
there are nice things in SketchUP but also some really bad. For example SketchUPs possibility to natively support N-Gons with holes or how it deals with measures. By the way supporting N-Gons with holes is my private number one feature wish. :wink:
The downside of SketchUP is that it produces the lowest quality mesh topology of any 3D app out there today. SketchUp neither cares about polygon winding nor mesh connectivity. It exports double sided polygons etc.
SketchUp also totally fails on modeling organic shapes.
Bye,
Martin
there are nice things in SketchUP but also some really bad. For example SketchUPs possibility to natively support N-Gons with holes or how it deals with measures. By the way supporting N-Gons with holes is my private number one feature wish. :wink:
The downside of SketchUP is that it produces the lowest quality mesh topology of any 3D app out there today. SketchUp neither cares about polygon winding nor mesh connectivity. It exports double sided polygons etc.
SketchUp also totally fails on modeling organic shapes.
Bye,
Martin
That's a fairly spectacular downside :-(
Frankly, I love Cheetah 3D as a modeler. If it had quantized rotation (and maybe scale), snap to geometry, and bevels, I might never use anything else. Oh and the option to display control meshes rendered on subdived surfaces a la Silo. Yeah I know -- wishlist ;-)