Building from 2D photos | Blender

hello guys and welcome to another tutorial today i'm going to show you how to take a 2d image in blender for example this one here which i'm going to put in the description below and we're going to just do some really basic modeling once we've imported it just to make a simple kind of building from that image now this is not going to be like something that you're going to be seeing up close this would be ideal if you were making like a scene and you needed some little houses in the background so from a distance this would look real really believable and you wouldn't notice all of the little flaws once you start to start getting in close you can kind of see it breaking down a little bit and it doesn't make a lot of sense so this has its limitations but this is something that you could definitely learn and implement into your workflow so this is literally this building here just from one image i'm going to take you for the whole process in blender and i hope you guys enjoy so let's get started so the first thing you're going to want to do is come and download this image here i'll put a link in the description below now you could use any kind of building image you want that's just kind of one of the more interesting ones i found it has a lot of character to it it's on pixels and it's 100 free so just come here i'd recommend downloading the largest one possible once you've done that i've just put mine on my desktop here you can see i've got that image here on my desktop and i've also gone ahead to my edit preferences i've gone to my add-ons and i just typed in up here image you just type an image you're gonna see image export images images as planes make sure to tick that box so you can import images as planes once you've done that you can now go shift a go down to image and go images as planes and then i'm going to go to wherever it is in my case that's the desktop it might be different for you so on the desktop i'm going to get this one pexels and tatiana 889 you get the point so i'm going to grab that one i'm going to import images plane and you're going to see here it's imported and if we actually hit z and we go to material preview we're going to see it's also got the aspect ratio and everything correct it's also added the image on there for us so if we go to our shading workspace you can see here it has these nodes here so all i'm going to do here is i'm just going to come in here and also just um unplug the alpha here we don't need that and then go back to the layout so now we are ready to get started so if you hit one to go to the front of graphic view we can see we have this but we also need with this guy selected we're gonna hit r x nine zero and hit enter just to rotate it at 90 degrees on the x and then we're going to hit um tab into edit mode and in edit mode here we're going to add in some loop cut so at the moment i'm in my vertex select option here that's fine and what we're going to do is we're going to hover with our cursor over one of these edges here and if you hit ctrl r or command r you're gonna see a yellow line appearing so once that happens double click and that'll add that line in in fact if i hit z and i go into wireframe you can see we have this line here so i'm gonna hit z again and just go into material preview and if this line it's we want to kind of match it up with some of this um these items here like the doors and the frames but if we were to go g and z just like we can eventually with moving so by hitting g to move it we're going to see the problem is it moves the texture along so what we're going to actually do is we're going to slide the edge a simple way to do that with that edge still active is to hit g twice a double tap g and now we can actually slide the edge regardless of where the image is so i'm going to slide it up till it's on the top of these door frames here and don't don't worry about if it's not perfect right at the beginning because we can always adjust the individual points as we continue so i've added in that edge and rolled it up i'm going to come here to this edge over here control r so if the cursor here ctrl r double click double g i'm going to slide up another edge loop put it roughly at the bottom of these these top parts here so you can see we have this line at top and then this one the bottom so we're making the top parts of the door frames here and let's go ctrl r over in this edge again add another loop double click double g we're going to slide this down to where the bottom of the floor is so you just kind of find the average point so it's about there for me so you can see i've added in this yellow line right here and now i'm going to go ctrl r but i'm going to hover over one of these middle edges so control r double click double g and i'm going to slide an edge to the end of the building here like that you can see right here on the edge of the building and i'm going to do it again ctrl r over here double click double g i'm going to slide in another one to the end of this door over here so you can see i've just slided it right up against that door and i'm going to keep repeating ctrl r double click double g and a slide one to the end the inside part of that outer door here so you can see right there it's not perfect we'll adjust it in a second and we're going to discontinue so i'm going to go ctrl r over here double click double g slide it to the edge of this middle door ctrl r double click double g just repeating bring this one in to this point here and keep doing it so ctrl r double click double g bring one here and just keep repeating so it's pretty easy drag one here ctrl r double click double g slide one to the end of this door ctrl r double click double g and slide one in to the inside part and just do it for these last two here double ctrl r double click double g hover over here ctrl r double click double g to the end of the door like that so at the moment that's looking pretty okay you can see even here at the top it's almost lined up with the windows so what we're going to do is we're going to just select this vertex here and we're going to go double g just to slide it until it lines up with this window a bit more and then grab this one double g and just slide it so you can always grab vertices if you go to vertex select and actually slide the vertices around themselves just so it matches up a little bit better okay so now we also need to create the parts up here so we're going to hover over one of these edges with the cursor ctrl r double click double g and slide down to the bottom of these windows so roughly like that you can see over here it's a bit too high so we're just going to hold and shift and select these vertices here double g and just slide them down like that also grab these two double g and just slide them down so just try and adjust them until it's all roughly looking good then i'm going to come over here over this edge ctrl r double click double g i'm going to slide up another edge to the top like that and then over here over one of these edges control r double click double g and i'm sliding up one more edge we can see over here a little bit too high so i'm just going to select these ones double g just to slide them down so you can spend as much time as you want refining this even down here you can see some of these around the doors like over here you can see it's quite extreme select this vertex double g and just slide it to the side just to kind of fix that issue in fact select both of these vertices under the door here at the left both of these underneath here and double g and just slide them up like that until it matches that door frame a little bit better so you can spend as much time as you want doing this i'm just going to keep it simple for this tutorial but what we're trying to do is just create the basic outlines for these structures here before we extrude them and you can see we have a little window up here simply just select this vertex and this one here double g and just slide them to the side and i'm going to come here ctrl r double click double g slide up an edge and then over here over this edge ctrl r double click double g and slide in an edge here just like that okay so now we're going to start extruding something so what i'm going to do is i'm going to go to my face select i'm going to hold and shift i'm going to select this face over here and while i'm holding and shift i'm going around and selecting these faces here that make up the door in fact what we might actually have to do is just add in one more edge here so just go back to your edge select here or whatever your vertex like and i'm sorry about this but we might just have to actually add it and i just noticed so we're going to hover over one of these edges here of our cursor ctrl r double click double g and just slide in one edge like that i guess because we need to have this bottom lip here as well and just come in here and adjust some of these vertices accordingly so i'm going to select these guys here double g just to slide them down so you can see what i'm doing here it's not too hard to understand just trying to kind of line that up with the bottom there so now that i have that out of the way i can go back to my face select and i'm going to select these faces here so i'm just holding in shift as i'm doing this and i'm also using control so just go around select all of these and then do the same here so i'm going to do it relatively quickly because i'm doing a tutorial and don't worry about this cabinet over here you probably won't even notice that unless you're really close up to this building if it really bothers you you can just go to photoshop or something and just kind of simply clone this out of the clone tool we can even do it in if you want so i'm going to select these faces here okay so i forgot to add in a cut over here but just leave that one for now so we've just these two doors here um yeah also just maybe select these faces down here we're going to go e to extrude them forward just a little bit like that and now what we're going to do is we're going to come in here ctrl r double click double g just slide in one edge for the side here and get your face select and then just select these faces around here like i said this one you can see here isn't quite lined up so i'm just going to select this edge here so holding and shift just selecting these edges here double g just to slide them to the side and i'm going to just grab this here double g and just slide that over so now once i have that i'm just going to select this face here holding and shift select the rest of the faces so just these ones here like that and i'm also going to select this one here and that one there and this one right here so all of these ones along here you can see where those kind of bricks are and we're just going to go e and just extrude them out just a little bit okay and we can see over here we might have to select this vertex here double g just slide it over and select this one double g just slide it over so just mess around with that as much as you want um it doesn't have to be perfect and yeah so let's start with these ones up here so i'm going to come in here ctrl r double click double g just slide in another edge so we can make the top ridge of the window here and now we're going to face select we're going to select all of these faces around the window and don't worry about objects like this antenna that are underway we'll get to that in a second so i'm just holding in shift and i'm going around and selecting all of these faces that make up the outside of the windows i'm going to go e just extrude them out just a little bit and i'm going to come in here ctrl r double click double g just slide in an edge for this window here and the same thing here just sliding in an edge there and edging inside here so i can select the outside here and just bring these out a little bit so i'm just selecting these guys holding shift hitting e to shoot it out just a little bit so now we got some free dimensionality there and i'm also going to come over here to the side i'm going to go ctrl r over here double click double g and just slide in an edge like that so what we're going to do now is with our edge select enabled we're actually going to go shift alt and click on this edge here and we're going to hit x and delete vertices to get rid of that i'm going to do the same thing with this edge select this edge over here x and delete vertices so we only want the house here and we're going to go shift alt and click on this bottom edge here and that'll loop select this whole edge over here or you can just go to vertex select if you want and just sort of circle it like um select it with the select tool just like that and then we're going to go into our right orthographic view by hitting free and then we're going to go g and we're going to move this forward like that like that so now if we go back into our material preview we can see we have the floor at the bottom here as well and it's not perfect you can see we have some extrusion issues here in certain places but it's at that point later where we can refine that and i'll show you how to do that but for now as well i'm just going to select i'm going to go shift alt and click on this outer edge here or vertices so we've selected these vertices here on the edge and also just select these ones here on the edge as well and what we're going to do is we're going to go e and we're going to go y i'm going to extrude this whole thing back like this about that much so now we have the side of the building as well if i hit z and i go into render view you can see that's what it looks like now we're having some weird shading issues going on here so what we're going to do is just hit a to select everything and then go alt n and just recalculate outside and if you're still kind of having this weird shading issues what you need to do is go to your materials settings here go down to your just your settings under the material and just come here to blend mode and just make that opaque so we want opaque for both of the shadow mode and blend mode so now that should fix that issue so now we're gonna go back into edit mode here and you can see um this building you know if you go really close you can see there's a lot of issues but just kind of looking from the distance you can kind of make a believable building in the background could be kind of like a quick little acid you could add to a scene but i'm going to show you now how we can use the rest of the image to kind of fill in some of these dead spaces here and kind of get rid of some of these stretch marks so what we're going to do go back into edit mode but we also need to go into our edit our uv editing workspace here so over here on the side make sure it hits the go material view and over here we have our workspace so we're going to come over here and click on a face select and we're going to just select all these faces on the side here we're going to hit u and unwrap and now we can come over here select all of these and we can move them around by hitting g s to scale and just kind of line that up somewhere where you feel it it'll work i guess i'm going to go with something like that now once again like i was saying the idea with this whole technique here is not to make something um that you're gonna look up really close it could be like just an acid in the background you can make like a city block so from the distance we just kind of want it to be kind of believable to the brain it doesn't have to be perfect so even something like that on the side um reusing this image should be fine and let's just do the exact same thing here on the other side so i'm going to make sure to select all of these faces on the side and you're going to go u to unwrap hit a over here to select everything and then you can just rotate accordingly you can hit s to scale over here and just kind of find something that you feel works okay so i'm just gonna move mine over here maybe just try different things out and see what works for you okay so i'm gonna go something like that so you can see just using one image now we kind of have this block forming here and another thing you can do to kind of get rid of these stretch marks here so let's actually set up a camera quickly so i'm going to do that i'm going to go shift a i'm just going to add in the camera i'm going to hit 0 to go into camera view and i'm just going to move the camera into a position that looks good and let's also select our building here and just go to modifiers and give this a bevel modifier so if you go into wireframe you can see everything has a nice bevel so just mess around with the amount here and just increase the segment count and that's just going to smooth things out go to object mode and enable shades to move as well so now we can hit z go into material view and now we can just work on individual elements now we kind of have a nice framework here and it's at this point where you can easily come in you can always add in more loop cuts so i can come over here for example ctrl r double click double g slide in another edge i can do the same thing down here and i can essentially just add them in wherever i need to add in a loop cut so i can grab this little segment here now for example and i might want to just extrude that out a little bit just to add a little bit of an embellishment and i might be able to come over here to the side grab these edges here and double tap g just to slide them and kind of adjust them and then i'm going to select this edge here i'm going to hit e to extrude them out you can spend as much time as you want doing it properly but you can kind of see what i'm getting at here this is a very simple method of making something from an image and when it comes to this antenna here what you could do is you could simply go into your object mode just add in a circle here rx90 hit enter s to scale it down and just roughly place it where that antenna is like this and then tap into edit mode and we're just going to get and extrude in these vertices g y move it back a bit and then e to extrude s to scale g y move back a little bit and then hit f to fill it so now we're going to just go into object mode bring this guy forward a bit object shades move and let's get our materials and let's just go to the drop down and give it that same material as a building now if we go z and we go rendered or so we go z and we go to our material preview all we have to do now is go to edit mode of this new dish selected hit a to select it and then we're going to go u to unwrap you can come over here in this workspace select this and then scale it down hit g and move it over to where this dish is like that and if you want to you could even model that little metal bit that comes out a little antenna on there and also project that but now we have this dish here and you can now go into your camera view and now you can select this dish and you can double tap r and you can kind of rotate you can hit g y move it forward a bit and just place it so it's covering up that spot over there and it kind of now looks a little bit better see so now it actually looks like a three-dimensional object you can always add in some wires a little antenna and you can take all of these little things like the wires you can do the exact same thing you can add in different objects so i can add in for example a cube here scale it down but also give it that same building material and i can come to this electrical piece here this box i can place it right here i can go to edit mode just bring it up a bit and now all i have to do is i have i can go to my camera view i'm going to hit a to select all of this geometry and i'm going to go u and go project from view then i'm going to come over in this window here selected and move it on top of that power box here so now if we go into our material preview we can see we have that thing standing out a little bit a little bit more three-dimensionally so that is a really easy way of turning um images into actual 3d buildings in blender so i'm going to go back to my layout and like these stretches here on the side you can also just select them whenever you want so you can select these stretches like that and you can go into your uv editing workspace you can go u and just unwrap and then over here you can select them rotate them around and move them and place them somewhere to kind of fill in that space and even though it's not the exact same material as it originally was to your brain that's almost still a little bit believable so that's a really quick way of getting rid of these stretch marks you can just unwrap them move them around over here in a uv editor find somewhere just to place them like that so that's how you can reuse the same image so just from one image you can spend as much time as you want in it but you can make something that looks really cool and a nice kind of background acid and i've actually made whole city scenes just making little taking little shacks like this little old houses just pretty much making them from boxes like this and extruding some basic parts and it can it can give you a relatively believable background effect or kind of like a scene so this has its limitations like i said really depends on what you're using it for but if we were to actually um you know just go to eevee here enable our render settings if i want z uh sorry if i went shift a added in a light add in an area light hit z go render it we can you know add some lighting on here and kind of come to the light settings mess around with that so you can kind of now see the shadows that are being cast here so that is how you make a house i'm just keeping this tutorial really basic um just kind of introducing this concept to some of you if you haven't already seen this kind of thing so this is how you can kind of just take it to the image and keep working at it and you can get different images so for example you can get an image of a roof and then kind of model a roof on this and project from that image so you can even combine different images so i'll see you guys next time for another tutorial i hope you found this little tutorial useful you've learned something and i'll see you next time

Channel: PIXXO 3D

Views: 58,760

Keywords: Blender, Blender 2.83, Blender 2.9

Id: FVdoo0xaV0k

Length: 21min 18sec (1278 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 02 2021