Sweet Home 3D is a great alternative for those expensive CAD programs you'll find over there. You'll be able to design indoors environments very accurately thanks to the measurement system integrated in Sweet Home 3D. Creating a room is as simple as dragging a pair of lines on a plain because the program will generate the 3D model automatically. Sweet Home 3D is an easy to use, simple home design software best used for creating simple sketches or rough plans. Although it might be missing some more advanced features other software in our top ten list have, this app is still a very good designing solution for beginner users who might feel overwhelmed by a more sophisticated software.

1. Sweet Home 3d
2. Sweet Home 3d Tutorial

In a previous postI showed off my 3D floorplan in home assistant. In this post I’m going to givesome tips for creating your own 3D floorplan for use in home assistant. I’mgoing to focus more on things that I wish I knew when I first got started.

Before you start using SweetHome3D, I highly recommendthat you check out this videofrom DrZzS that goesover the basics of creating your floorplan. I found it extremely useful and itcovers a lot of topics that took me quite a bit of time to figure out on my own.The User Guide on the Sweet Home 3Dwebsite is also very good resource to get started.

Importing Additional Furniture

You can import your own models when you can’t find furniture that quite matcheswhat you are looking for. Sweet Home 3Dprovides a decent list of websites that provide free models. However you cango beyond that list of websites and import nearly any model you find online thatis in OBJ, DAE, KMZ or 3DS formats.

You can easily import these models by navigating to the Furniture menu itemand clicking on Import furniture.... Follow the wizard and make sure to tickthe Add to Catalog checkbox and choose an appropriate category so that you caneasily find it when you want to add it to your floorplan. I’d also double check thedefault name and rename it as appropriate since sometimes it’s not exactly humanreadable.

Use Your Own Textures

Similar to importing furniture, you can also import additional textures.However the bar to entry for creating your own textures is much lower thancreating a new model.

For best results you will want to make sure your texture is seamless so that itcan be repeated without looking like there are abrupt edges. You can take apicture of something you would like to use as your texture then open it up inan image editor like Photoshop or Gimp to crop it. When taking the photo ensurethat the lighting is even otherwise if one edge of the image is brighter it willnot look good when it repeats the texture. It’s recommended to make it squareand for it’s size to not exceed 256x256 pixels.

After exporting your texture you can then import it by selecting theFurniture menu item and clicking on Import texture.... Then follow the wizardand ensure you update the Name and Category so you can find it later.

Most models also have multiple parts that construct them and each individualpart can have it’s material changed. Right click on any furniture in your floorplanand select Modify furniture.... Under the Color and texture fieldset selectthe Materials radio button and click the Modify... button. If the furniturehas multiple textures they will be listed in the pop up window.

When a material in the model is selected like Wood in the example above it willflash in the Preview so you know which material it’s referring to. With the materialyou want to modify selected you can make it invisible (for example maybe you wantto remove the comforter from the model), change it’s color, or select a new textureto apply to it. Repeat this process for each material you want to change.

Change the Sky and Ground

This one was not obvious. In order to add a sky color or image first makesure you have one of the 3D view panels open (e.g. Aerial or Virtual Visit). Thensimply right click in the 3D view panel and select Modify 3D view.... From hereyou can not only change the color/image for the sky but also for the ground. Alsovery useful is the light brightness setting. This value was way too high by defaultfor me and made things too shiny when you rendered with the Add ceiling lightscheckbox on.

Rendering

Rendering your model applies lighting effects and generates a more high qualityimage of your floorplan and the models within it. Before you start a render, enterthe Aerial View from the 3D View menu item. Then rotate and adjust the angleof the camera so that you can get the entire floorplan visible in an acceptableway to you. Once you have found your ideal camera placement, right click on the3D view panel and select Store point of view... then give it a useful name.This will allow you to continue to modify your floorplan and move the camera aroundwhile still being able to return to your zoomed out floorplan view. To get backto a saved point of view, right click in the the 3D view panel and selectGo to point of view > and select the point of view that you had saved.

Now that you have your ideal point of view you will need to decide how you wantto do the lighting. You have a few options. First you can not add any lightingfixtures to your floorplan and simply tick the Add ceiling lights checkboxin the Create Photo dialog. This will automatically add a light source to everyroom you created in your floorplan. Note that lights will only abe added to areasthat you specifically created rooms using the Create rooms tool. Simply having4 walls is not enough information to tell Sweet Home 3D that the area you createdis a room.

The 2nd option is to add lighting fixtures to each room and adjust the light powerfor each fixture manually. To do this right click on a lighting fixture and selectModify furniture.... At the bottom right of the pop-up you will see a field toadjust the Light power (%). This will take a bit of experimentation to determinewhat value you like for your model. I would render the image then adjust thepercentage based on if I thought it was too dark or too bright. For my particularcase I found 50% to be the ideal value. You can also update the light power forall lights at once by holding the Shift key and left clicking on each lightingfixture in your floorplan. Then right clicking and selecting Modify furniture...and changing the value for light power.

Now it’s time to select the render options for creating your photo.

I’d recommend sticking with one of the options in the dropdown for theApply proportions. Note that if you select 3D view it will only render whatis currently visible in your 3D viewport. This confused me at first and resultedin wasted time rendering photos.

Selecting Best for Quality is what you should do for your final photo. This willtake several minutes (or more) based on the specs of the computer you are using.The Time field will change the outside lighting source. Your resulting photowill obviously have different lighting if it’s rendered at noon compared to 7PMin the evening. This is more of a personal choice as to what looks best to you.

Check out the following links for more detailed tutorials on lighting and renderinga great photo:

Sweet Home 3d

Get Creative

There are a lot of options for furniture with the default installation. However,sometimes you just can’t find the right model and you don’t want to learn Maya 3Dor Blender to create your own. If you are creative you can combine existingfurniture to create something new. See the example below:

There was no model for a kegerator, but there was a chest freezer. After modifyingthe dimensions and textures I got a black chest freezer. I then added a cube shelfand rotated it so the back of the shelf was facing outwards. I adjusted the sizeto be slightly larger then the chest freezer and modified the texture. I thenput the shelf inside of the chest freezer model so that it looks like a woodencollar. Finally, I added four garden faucets and placed them in the woodencollar I just added. As you can see from the render it looks pretty close to thereal thing (especially when the floorplan is zoomed out).

Next Steps

Sweet Home 3d Tutorial

Now that you’ve created the perfect floorplan it’s time to add it in homeassistant. In my next post I”ll document exactly how you can have a realtime3D floorplan that reacts to your various lights and sensors.

Sweet Home 3D is a free architectural designsoftware application that helps users create a 2D plan of a house, with a 3D preview, and decorate exterior and interior view including ability to place furniture and home appliance.^[3] In Sweet Home 3D, furniture can be imported and arranged to create a virtual environment. It can also be used for designing blueprints of houses.^[5]

Features[edit]

• Import home blueprint from scanned image^[3][5]
• Export to PDF, SVG, and obj^[3]

Gallery[edit]

• Layout

• 3D view

• Render

References[edit]

1. ^'Sweet Home 3D - Version history'. Retrieved 2021-02-28.CS1 maint: discouraged parameter (link)
2. ^Kenlon, Seth (16 Oct 2019). 'Open source interior design with Sweet Home 3D'. Opensource.com. Retrieved 2019-12-29.
3. ^ ^abcdMacharyas, Jeff (15 Mar 2019). 'Sweet Home 3D: An open source tool to help you decide on your dream home'. Opensource.com. Retrieved 2019-09-06.
4. ^Biersdorfer, J. D. (2019-02-13). 'How to Make a 3-D Model of Your Home Renovation Vision'. The New York Times. ISSN0362-4331. Retrieved 2019-09-06.
5. ^ ^ab'Sweet Home 3D: Mendesain Rumah Idaman'. Jagat Review. 2011-06-07. Retrieved 2019-09-06.

External links[edit]