Tutorials

Parametric Objects in Blender

Bart ·

window.jpgYorik 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 ;^)

Author Bart
I have a LONG history with Blender - I wrote some of the earliest Blender tutorials, worked for Not a Number and helped run the crowdfunding campaign that open sourced Blender (the first one on the internet!). I founded BlenderNation in 2006 and have been editing it every single day since then ;-) I also run the Blender Artists forum and I'm Community Lead at n8n.
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