It's My Room!

Once I have drawn a floor plan my room in Live Interior 3D, I'm going to put wallpaper onto the walls and add some furniture and decoration to reproduce furnishing of the actual room.

Hopefully, the program comes with a library of 3D models: doors, windows, tables, chairs, kitchens, etc. The library of materials has a lot of color templates for walls, floors and ceilings, as well as patterns of stones, bricks, wood, etc.

But what if none of library chairs looks like mine? What if I want to apply some specific wallpaper pattern that is absent in the library? Sure, I don't want to have “just an armchair” or “just a green wallpaper” in my project. I wish to see “my armchair” and “my green wallpaper” there. The article describes how to create personalized designs.

My Armchair

For the beginning, it is worth to search through the built-in library of models. If you are lucky, the needed models will be found in a couple minutes. You could use the search tool, but I feel that it's better to look through the library by yourself. The Window > Library > Furnishing menu opens the library. Drag the separator bar of the library to the right to extend the thumbnail area. This will save you from repeated scrolling up and down — some categories in the library (like Tables or Kitchens) have a pretty large collection of 3D models.

While looking through the models, try to abstract yourself from colors. At this stage only the shape is important. The color (also called “material”) can be chosen later.

To get a better view of the model, click on its thumbnail — the model will be shown in the 3D Preview below the thumbnails. You can rotate the model in the preview box by dragging it with the mouse. If the preview is not shown, click the triangle next to “3D Preview” in the bottom left corner of the Library panel.

If you feel that some model could pass your project, but you cannot decide right now, drag the model from the library into the project. This will help you not to loose the found models. Then continue your search. When you have run through all the library items, go back to your project and revise what has been found. Probably you will have found even several variants to choose from. Models you cast away, can be simply removed from your project.

If this time nothing from the library passes your design, then it's time to check alternatives. If you are not a guru in 3D modeling, or if you don't have time or proper software for this, let's look for ready-made models on the Internet.

Live Interior 3D can import 3DS and Google SketchUp™ models. 3DS models are created in Autodesk® 3DS Max® software. This type of models is usually commercial and made by professionals. SketchUp (*.skp) models are created in Google SketchUp software (I guess, mostly by amateurs).

Live Interior 3D is integrated with Google 3D Warehouse™ — online collection of SketchUp™ models. Integration means that after you pick a model, it will be imported directly into your project. You can also download the model by using an ordinary web browser, and then import the model to your project.

Let's use the “integration” feature (direct import). To access the 3D model collection, click the Google 3D Warehouse&trdade; button, or select Window > Google 3D Warehouse™ in the main menu. The 3D Warehouse window, that will pop up, appears to be a simplified web browser that displays the Google 3D Warehouse web page. In the toolbar of the browser, you will find customary navigation buttons to go to the previous page, next page, home page (of the Warehouse, of course). The Import Settings button stays apart from others in the right upper corner. There you can adjust the import options:
   •  Make all surfaces double-sided... — select it to avoid problems with import. The consequences — your project will be of larger size with the option selected.
   •  Split object instances — when a model is made of several components, they turn to independent objects. Lets you import a model as a group of independent objects. If this check box is deselected, you will import one object (what you expect and need in most cases). We are deselecting this option to work with entire objects.

The home page of 3D Warehouse™ shows several categories of models, and it is only the top of the iceberg. You can browse through Google's collection for ages. Let's test their legendary search engine. Type the name of the model you want to find and click Search. Note that the Models/Collections option gives different results (leave the default). Don't pay too much attention to colors (materials). You will be able to change them after importing.

Once you have found a model you like, click its thumbnail to open the model's page. There is a bigger picture of the 3D object. Click the Download button (it can be named Download Model as well). During the download process, the object is shown in the project as a dummy object (cube).

A 3D model, that is imported directly, will be saved in the project. You can add it to the internal object library to use in other projects. To do this, open an appropriate object category in the library (use the drop-down menu). Switch the main window to the 2D view, press the Alt key and drag the model onto the Library panel. Using a separate category seems to be more useful as it's easier to distinguish custom and built-in objects.

Changing materials (colors) of an object is discussed below.

My Green Wallpaper

The built-in library of materials in Live Interior 3D lets you change the object's color or material. To access the library, choose Window > Inspector > Materials in the menu. The amount of glossy and matt paint colors must satisfy your needs. These materials don't have textures. If you want, you can add even more colors.

Another matter is textured materials. Any library can't cover the whole diversity of textures. Multiply this by variety of colors... Collection of textured materials in Live Interior 3D is good for most common tasks. Before you decide that none of supplied materials can be used for your project, browse the library of materials once more. The material editor in Live Interior 3D Pro lets you create a copy of the existing material and edit it. You can change colors (not radically), rotate and scale the texture. The change may look like below (texture size and color were changed).

Let's imagine that I'm designing a room in light-brown colors. I have found a nice green curtains.

Now I have to make them brown. The fabric "65 Gold leaves" must be perfect. To change the material, I'm dragging it from the library dropping onto the curtains.

Let's make the wallpaper's color a bit more intense. To do this, we'll edit the supplied material. Note that this is possible only in the Pro edition. The program doesn't allows us to edit the supplied materials. We have to create a copy of our material to adjust its colors. I right-click on the material in the Materials tab of Inspector, and choose “New From Selected”.

The modifications were the following. I've added more yellow to the Ambient Color. The Diffuse Color was turned from white to gray. Self Illumination and Specular colors are now about 80% of black instead of 100%.

The creation of a new material may consist of several iterations. You change the settings of the material, check how it looks in the project, and if necessary, go back to the material editor. This happens because the lighting in your project may differ from the one in the material editor.

Nick Shubin
Published: October 2007
Last reviewed: May 2010