Parametric Objects in Blender

Published by Bart on November 19th, 2006 in Tutorials

Yorik van Havre is a freelance architect from São Paulo, Brazil, who does more than 80% of his work with Blender. He uses it for both perspectives/presentations and for concepts and project design. We wrote about Yorik's 'Urban Design with Blender' tutorial last April, and today he shows us how to achieve parametric modeling in Blender.

Yorik writes:

If you happen to paste this title in google, your first result will probably say "Blender is not and will never be a parametric modeller.

[...]it came to my mind that Blender has two very useful tools that can be used to give graphically parameters to objects: shapekeys and armature. And with python scripting there is also all that is needed to make them communicate.

For example I would create a door object, give it "width", "frame thickness", "door type" and "opening angle" parameters, and I would have a kind of door block I could use everywhere in my model, but each one with different values for the parameters.

To resume a bit, in Blender, a parametric object would be an object you can modify without entering editmode."

The result is a demonstration of five techniques which can be used to 'parametrise' objects such as windows, doors, staircases and curtain walls. Really nice stuff! Check out the full article on his site.

To see more of Yorik's work, visit his gallery.

Oh, and I also dig his Blender theme ;^)

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19 Responses to “Parametric Objects in Blender”

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1 S. Clay Nov 19th, 2006 at 5:33 pm

Fabulous stuff! As somebody else engaged in using Blender in architecture, it was pretty inspiring to see the amount of time and thought Yorik has put into it. Its also interesting to see somebody using the aesthetics of architectural presentation rather animation in Blender - slightly different approach.

I think Blender has a lot of potential for parametric design just by virtue of its object-oriented scripting approach. With a few small tweaks (most of which Yorik mentions in his tutorial), Blender could become a very strong parametric modelling tool. I would love to be able to model in Python, the node editor and the 3D window simultaneously, with everything updating on demand.
2 Koba Nov 19th, 2006 at 5:49 pm

Interesting.

As I am no architect, is it possible for me to get hold of that wonderful theme his using? ;-)

Koba
3 Jendrzych Nov 19th, 2006 at 7:02 pm

I used to use array modifier and hooks to get stairs
Check this *.blend:

http://rapidshare.com/files/4020836/stairs.blend.html
4 Piet Nov 19th, 2006 at 7:06 pm

Woh, he's got 3d screensavers on his site!!!1!!

I guess his free site is blendernationed :)
5 Yorik Nov 19th, 2006 at 7:40 pm

Damn… the blendernation effect, again… My daily limit exploded. I'm negociating extra bandwidth right now, sorry for that :) in the meantime, i've put the article page on a mirror site:

http://users.skynet.be/fb365152/tutorials/parametricobjects-blender.html

for the gallery, I'm afraid you will have to wait until tomorrow, sorry for that…
6 Sparkus Nov 19th, 2006 at 8:42 pm

Y0u g0t bl3nd3rdotted… xD
7 Owen Egan Nov 19th, 2006 at 10:26 pm

OMG, we crashed his web site! It comes up "The page you requested is temporary unavailable.

Reasons:

- allocated traffic exceeded-"

Eh Oh!
8 Yorik Nov 19th, 2006 at 10:52 pm

To work with a white background is quite cool to impress your friends, when they pass in front of your screen they don't recognize blender, and they say "Is this the famous new autodesk program they all talk about? Looks great!"… If someone wants my theme, here it is:

http://users.skynet.be/fb365152/scripts/yorikstheme.py
9 Alexander Nov 20th, 2006 at 10:56 am

WOW!
Thanks, Yorik.
Really helpfull stuff here. It will help me damn much, as I am an architectural student.
Also visited your gallery. It makes me admire we have such a blenderhead here ))
10 CJD2 Nov 20th, 2006 at 1:10 pm

the Yorik´s page don´t work.(sorry , my english is very bad ;) )
11 rebellis Nov 20th, 2006 at 4:38 pm

@CJD2
Try this link: http://users.skynet.be/fb365152/tutorials/parametricobjects-blender.html

It's awesome to know that we have such a great blenderhead in Brazil :-) Yorik, I'm looking forward to see your art gallery (I couldn't see it yet because your website is still down).

Best regards,
Eduardo Rebellis
12 Yorik Nov 20th, 2006 at 4:59 pm

Thanks for the kind comments… Sorry about my website's poor performance… I have 1Gb daily access quota, and it got swallowed today in about 2 hours… So many blenderaddicts…
13 mattie Nov 20th, 2006 at 5:03 pm

some blender power from Belgium, nice! :)
14 TroutMask Nov 20th, 2006 at 6:04 pm

Hi Yorik,

I am quite interested in the live dimensioning tool you have developed. I have downloaded the .blend, but unfortunately when i move the armature bone the text object does not update itself.

do i have to set up/enable some kind of scriptlink?
15 TroutMask Nov 20th, 2006 at 6:08 pm

edit: sorry for pestering you, Yorik, I got it to work. i was looking in the wrong part of the blender interface to enable scriptlinks. many thanks.
16 C60 Nov 20th, 2006 at 7:05 pm

Bandwidth exceeded :(
17 Bmud Nov 20th, 2006 at 8:26 pm

The second link provided enough information that I was thoroughly impressed.
18 blendercross Nov 21st, 2006 at 11:08 am

Impressive work!!!!!!
19 MercuryCrest Nov 29th, 2006 at 2:27 am

Wonderful work. This is exactly what I've been looking for as I tend to over-complicate things when referring to thickness of frames and sills and such. These are wonderful examples! Have you considered doing any video tutorials to explain your thought process? I really do enjoy how simple you make it seem. Keep it up.