Architectural Design Tools In Blender

Drawing a floor plan with Krita

The use of open-source tools to create architectural designs and visualization was one of the reasons to start Blender 3D Architect back in 2008. After those long ten-plus years, we still find some pleasant surprises related to architectural design. An artist called Alfredo Angeles posted on his Youtube channel a detailed demonstration on how to […]

Materia: Open source alternative to Substance Designer

Whenever you see someone sharing or posting about PBR materials for architecture, you probably wonder how they manage to create all those great shaders. Most of those materials have a common origin, which is a software called Substance Designer. There you can craft all kinds of materials to use in tools like Blender. Is Substance […]

How to convert MAX files to FBX or OBJ without 3ds Max?

Using a workflow with open-source tools and file standards ensures that you always have access to your data regardless of the software or environment. If you create a project and save the file in universal formats, you can easily import and send that data to any software. However, it doesn't ensure that you won't receive […]

List with Free Open-Source Software for CAD and design

Once you start using Free Open-Source Software (FOSS) for your projects and have full control over the workflow, it is hard to get back to proprietary solutions. One aspect of those types of softwares that is relatively hard to solve is to become aware of all options available. I assume you are familiar with at […]

post-production architectural visualization

Free alternative for post-production architectural visualization

What is the best option to work with post-production architectural visualization? At some point, you will have to create a render and later, make small adjustments in either color or visual aspects of your image. We work in a field that has close ties to photography and much of the tools we use, will eventually […]

Free alternative to SketchUp

Free alternative to SketchUp with DWG support

When you visit an office that works with architectural development, you will find an extensive list of software and tools, from regular office tools to 3D graphics and CAD. Among those softwares, a significant amount of people still uses and likes to start a project in SketchUp. You can create quick 3D volumetrics with the […]

Tree it: Free tool to create 3D Trees as OBJ files

An external visualization project will need a significant amount of vegetation to create the proper context, and reproduce a believable environment. If you have performance issues with large 3D files, a good solution would be to invest in cutout images of trees to apply directly in planes. Since they are just textures, you won't add […]

Importing 3ds max files to Blender

Update: Here is an updated article that shows how to use only free resources to convert max files without 3ds Max. In the past few years, some of the changes imposed by Autodesk to the licensing and pricing model of software 3ds max caused an exodus of 3d artists to other platforms. A lot of […]