Connect Revit to Blender - Work Seamlessly Between Revit and Blender

in this video I'm going to show you how to send your models from Revit into blender using speckle let's get started let's start with the requirements to follow this tutorial you need to have four things first you need to have a speckle account if you don't have one already go to speckle doxyz and create an account next you need to download the manager for speckle manager allows you to set your accounts and also install and update the connectors speaking of connectors we are going to use two connectors from speckle the Revit connector and blender connector they are installed via speckle manager and there will be cards in the top right corner of this video that shows how to install those connectors as well as how to install the manager go there follow the instructions and come back if you want to learn more about that okay let's continue with sending our models from Revit here we are inside Revit and I'll be using this basic sample project from Revit sample models because I want you to follow me so if you have installed the speckle connector you should see a new tab in your ribbon called speckle let's click on that and then click on Revit connector to initialize it I'll start by creating a new project let's name this basic sample project and click on Create and then I will create a new model let's name this as blender because that's where we're going to go from Revit and then I will click on send which will convert everything from Revit including the views the materials families and types and all the 3D elements okay data is sent let's view it online and here it is the same model from Revit inside the speckle Wars inside the web so next we need to receive this data inside blender so let's switch over to blender now okay here we we are inside blender and this is the famous default Cube and as always I'll select everything and remove them so if you have installed the blender connector correctly and activated it when you press n from your keyboard you should see a new tab for speckle let's click on that and then click on this button to initialize the connector after initialization I will select the project I created as well as the model and then click on receive you can also see more information about the data you have sent by who when uh from where Etc and after you click receive you will see a couple options here the first one shows clean meshes by default when you send your data from Revit it is sent as triangulated mesh geometry which is totally acceptable but inside blender when it comes to UV mapping you would want to see more clean meshes this option merges co-planner faces so you have more clean meshes inside blender for flat surfaces next we have how to receive instances and by default it is sent to collection instance that is totally okay and click on okay and after a couple seconds here is our Revit model inside blender let's go over some of its feature now I will switch over to the Shaded View and as you can see the first feature is the speckle connector supports conversion of rabbit materials into blender materials so if I were to select this topography and go to its material information you can see its material is set as grass and its color is green and this information is actually coming from Revit so if I were to switch to Revit now and selected same topography go to it material information you can see it is grass so the speckle connector handles the conversion of material from Revit into blender and this actually opens up a great workflow what you can do is you can override these Revit materials with PBR materials inside blender for your visualization workflow we're going to do that in the next section let's continue with the feature number two and feature number two is the outline organization inside Revit so if I were to zoom into this and select the collection and collapse it you can see we create a collection for each Revit category and put relevant elements inside it so now if I were to select for instance the walls category right click and select objects you can see the wall elements are selected let's isolate them and here they are let's un isolate them now so the another feature of this uh collection organization is we automatically hide certain categories such as rooms assuming you don't really need them in this workflow but if you really need the room geometry to you can still access them it's just a matter of unhiding it okay so this was the feature number two and the feature number three is that we create a camera object inside blender for 3D views from Revit what do I mean by that let's select one of these camera elements like this one and zoom into it and as you can see this corresponds to this view from Revit from yard right let's switch over to Revit now go to Project browser and open the 3D view from yart and as you can see it is the same view so we are preserving the camera location and rotation information in the future we are planning to expand this camera support to include other properties of views from Revit 2 so these are the features of this workflow let's try to demon demonstrate some real life scenarios now so we are assuming that you're going to be using blender for visualization workflows and I'm going to quickly show you how to override the default Revit materials with some blender materials so for that I will quickly switch over to the shading Tab and select one of the topographies like this one and use control shift T from my keyboard because I have no dangler enabled and then I will overwrite this boring grass material with some PBR materials I downloaded from web so I'll select these and click on principal texture setup and here it is it looks a bit ugly that is because the UV mapping of elements from Revit are not set so we will do that manually in The Next Step but first let's set up more materials for some other stuff too so I'll quickly switch over to this one and select one of these faces to override the roof cladding material with some PBR materials I downloaded okay that is also set let's switch over to do wood planks now and again do the same thing control shift T and click on principles texture setup currently looks like nothing has changed but it actually changed and I will demonstrate you in this section Now by setting the UV mappings of elements so so let's quickly switch over to the UV editing tab now and inside here I will also switch to the shading view just to better see the effect we are giving into the objects so I'll start by setting UV mapping for the topography so let's select this one and select all the faces here and the UV mapping and smart UV project and click on okay and here it is you can see the texture being applied right and also here I will switch this map to the albo so we can actually see the effect that is taking place here so let's make this a bit bigger so those grasses they don't look so ugly right I think this is more reasonably sized and here it is now the same material looks much better let's do the same for the roof cladding too so I'll select the roof element go to edit mode select one of the faces and then select all the materials and do UV and Cube projection and here it is let's quickly switch over to the albo map and then I'll scale this up to have a better effect and here it is let's do the same for these guys to so I'll select all the elements that has the same material and then get into edit mode select one of two faces and select all the faces with the same material go to UV and Cube projection and these W planks are horizontal and I want to have them vertical so I'll simply rotate them in the UV mapping editor and then scale it up and here they are so the beautiful thing about this workflow is the UV mapping is preserved for unchanged objects right so what I will do is I will U modify one of the elements in this wall maybe add another window here right and then send that from Revit again let's do that so I'll quickly switch to Revit now go to 3D view zoom into this window and do create similar and let's move this this a bit sideways and here we have another window let's quickly go to speckle Tab and click on send again okay data is sent let's quickly switch back to Revit now go to layout and refresh by clicking on this button to get the latest information from speckle again I will select the model and click on receive and as you can see I can see more information about the data I sent so I'll again select the clean meshes and click on okay and as you can see right the textures are still here and there are no duplicates right and the te the UV editing and the UV mapping I did for the roof is still there for the other walls they are also still there but for this wall element which is actually modified I need to reset the UV mapping and that's acceptable and let's do that so I'll quickly switch over to the UV editing again select one of the walls do shift G and select all the materials and from here I'll again do Cube projection and inside this dialogue I will simply select the albo map for the wood planks rotate it 90° and then scale it up again and that's it so this is one workflows we enable you can create your models inside Revit send them to speckle receive it in blender and set your materials you know for your scene and add any assets you think are necessary and speaking of assets another workflow we enable is replacing Revit assets with blender assets so what I'm going to do to demonstrate that is I will select one of the trees in this model like this one right and replace it with a blender tree so these are instances coming from Revit right there are multiple families in this model with the same family type and we are creating collection instances for that inside blender so to access the original geometry we need to switch over to the blender file and then select the relevant original elements but first we need to know the collection name so let's select the tree and then inside outliner I'll press comma from my keyboard to reveal it in the outliner from here I can see its instance ID as well as it is type ID right this is the type ID rpc3 DS and then 39 d8 71 Etc so let's quickly switch over to the blender file and then here I will open collections go RPC tree and then 39 d8 Etc so this this is the collection that is being used for that instance so what I will do is I will right click on this and then say link to scene and once I do that there will be a new tree element in the origin of this model right here oops let's get into the model quickly and select it and then I will isolate this and also I'll quickly switch over to the view layer again and press comma in my keyboard to reveal it in the outliner and here is the RPC tree collection so what I want to do now is I want to replace this boring tree with some blender assets so let's quickly do that let's do contrl c and contrl V and here is the new tree I'll quickly scale this down to match the size of that tree and then inside the outliner let's quickly zoom into there and inside the outliner I will delete delet the alt geometry and now this tree looks much better now right so let's quickly un isolate everything to see the effects taking place right all the instances of the same tree are now replaced with a tree we defined inside blender another cool thing about this workflow is this also updates when you have a new version coming from Revit so let's quickly showcase that I'll switch over to Rabbit now and then I know this was I let's actually disable the section box to see all the trees and here they are and then I'll select the tree family I modified inside blender and add more instances of that into my model like so and this is actually Honey Locust 25 so let's select one of the trees and then I will isolate all the trees in my model select all of them like so and then replace it with honey locust 25 in so now they are all the same tree that we have modified inside blender so let's quickly send this version to speckle and here it is let's click on data sent to view the latest version and here it is if you're not aware I've been talking about versions models project Etc that is because how speckle organizes its model structure so you have the project that is the biggest container and then inside the project you have a model if I were to get into this model I can see the different states different versions of my model as you can see the first time I had 628 objects now I have 636 because I've added more elements into my model so let's quickly switch over to blender now and receive the latest version and here they are now all the trees in my model they look exactly the same as the other trees and the beautiful thing is I have replaced the rabbit's trees the boring trees with some good-look blender assets so we think with this workflow you can create your designs inside rabits and then when it comes to visualizations easily replace the rabbit family components with more realistic looking material set high quality blender assets so this was it we have highlighted different features of the connection we create between rabbit and blender using spankle we highlighted how speckle supports materials from Revit as well as how it organizes collections inside blender to match categories from Revit and also how we convert 3D views from Revit into blender cameras while still updating the new versions coming from Revit give this workflow a try if you encounter any issues let us know in the comment section below or better option is letting us know at speckle Community our Forum thanks for watching and I'll see you in the next one

Channel: Speckle

Views: 6,846

Keywords: speckle, openbim, speckle3d, data exchange, revit to blender, revit to blender with materials, revit to blender interior, revit to blender rendering, revit to blender workflow, speckle revit, speckle blender

Id: dPgqR_8BtZ4

Length: 17min 18sec (1038 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 19 2023