A Half Timber House
The half-timber house is a common site throughout the UK and Europe and can easily be re-created within 3D Architect. Whilst the example below deals with creating a half-timber appearance, the tips and tricks in the tutorial can be used to create multiple styles.
So by using the example basic house, the half-timber house we are going to create will look like this:
1) Firstly open the project with the building you wish to add a half-timber look to. For this you can either create a new building, use one of your existing buildings or download one of our example projects.
2) Make sure you are in Construction Mode (F12 toggles between Design mode and Construction mode)
3) Now we need to make sure that we are working on the floor on which we want to add the half-timber appearance. If you are using the example basic house, we're going to change the south facing wall on the upper floor. To select the upper floor either pick it from the drop down list of floors on the main horizontal toolbar or navigate on the menus to Floor>Current Floor>Upper Floor.
4) Once we have the right floor selected, we need to now highlight the wall we want to change. Click once on the outer edge of the wall (we're using the south facing wall in our example). The wall should now be highlighted in red. Double click the wall to open the wall properties dialogue.
5) In the box marked Surface Area untick the Use lower wall texture box. This does what it says and tells the wall that we don't want it to automatically copy the texture of the wall below it. Now we will choose a texture just for this wall. Click on the right facing arrow by the texture box. Choose a new texture for this wall. We're going to use white for this example. Once you have chosen the texture, hit OK
6) Your house should now have a single white wall on the upper floor. Hit F12 to toggle to Design Mode to check your progress.
7) Now moving back into Construction Mode we need to add our windows. Choose a window style that you wish to use. In our example I used the Advanced Window Construction tool and added 2 vertical and 2 horizontal bars. I also chose the texture for the window frame to make sure it would match the timbers I will place later. Once you have your window sizings set correctly, hit OK. Now place your windows in your desired position (remember you can of course use some guidelines to help with the positioning if necessary).
8) With our wall the right colour and our windows in place, the only thing left to do is to add the timbers. For this we need to head back to Design Mode.
9) Now we will need to use a number of 3d items to create the final look but the process for each will be the same. I will provide the details you need to create the first timber, then simply repeat as necessary until you have your wall timbered as you need.
10) To make the process simpler, it's a good idea to know the dimensions you're working with. So make sure you know the length of the outside wall and your floor-to-floor height.
11) To make the timber we're going to use an Rectangular Bar, Lying from the object catalogue. You will find this by opening the object catalogue and ensure that the Furniture button is selected on the left hand menu. Now navigate to File System>Elements>Bars. Select the Rectangular Bar, Lying and drag it into your design. Now I usually try to use the plan or colour plan views in Design Mode to place my objects, but use whichever mode you find suits you best.
12) With the bar sitting in your design (don't worry about it's position quite yet) double click on it to open the properties dialogue box. Here we want to change the size of the bar. Firstly tick the box headed Allow Distortion. This enables us to set all of the size details, if we do not check this box then altering one dimension will automatically alter the other dimensions of the object.
13) If you are using the example house then you can set the length to 14.25m, the width to 0.1m and the height to 0.3m. You can of course use your own settings here if you prefer. Hit OK
14) Now before we position the bar you may find it much easier to turn off the Allow Distortion setting again. If it is left on you may find that when you try to move the bar, it get resized instead. Double click to open the properties box and untick the Allow Distortion setting.
15) To position the bar it's simply a case of dragging it into place. You may find it easier to use the plan view to do this, as you can clearly see it's position in relation to the walls etc. Once you have it in place you can now copy the bar and resize, rotate and reposition it as many times as you wish to create the rest of the timbers.
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ARCON 3D Support Team
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