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BlendME: Blender Modeling Environment for Architecture

11

The upcoming BlendMe add-on promises to easily integrate external analysis tools into Blender.

Allan Brito writes:

For architectural visualization artists using Blender and trying to design green architecture wasn’t that easy until today. The use of third party tools like SketchUp and scripts to use softwares like EnergyPlus, added several steps to the visualization workflow. Last week I was told of a new Add-on for Blender 2.5 developed by an artist/developer called Mark Pitman that will change the way we use Blender for architecture. The BlendME Add-on allows you to use several options to run environmental analysis without leaving Blender.

BlendMe isn't available yet, but when it will, it will be commercial/donation based add-on.

Links

About the Author

Avatar image for Bart Veldhuizen
Bart Veldhuizen

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 Head of Community at Sketchfab.

11 Comments

  1. That looks great, I can't wait to get my hands on those tools and will be happy to donate, in particular if the plug-in will be using an open license.

  2. this is not only good for architecture but also for product design.

    I am not sure how far it can compete with systems like Solidworks and their physics engines
    but still very impressive - in particular the that the physics engine this plug-in uses is already
    open-source.

  3. It looks nice and all, but seriously - who's going to use and depend on results from a Blender plugin which might be important in design process?

    p.s.

    Oh, sorry - I misunderstood :] It looks more promising when you look what kind of team is working on it. But I don't know why they decided to make a plugin and be dependent on Blender instead of creating independent app? This thing looks like it's taking some time to do.

  4. @sandkind
    I don't know the accuracy that this will provide, but I have had the unpleasant experience of compare a previos simulation made with ecotect with the actual building performance. The only accurate thermal simulation system I know is TAS, but it is so difficult to set a simulation that it hardly could be used throug changes in architectural design.
    I think tools like ecotect, and maybe this, provides a coparison parameter between project alternatives. It never could replace the architects undestanding of sustainable design principles. Glenn Murcutt can make it without softwares.

  5. It was very strange to watch this video because My name is mark too and I also use Ubuntu with the same theme sometimes and my laptop also has a hostname of mark-laptop. So it felt like I was watching my own computer in full screen mode.

  6. @
    Sandking

    what is your problem here? The use Blender as a host application to set up the 3D scene
    but the calculation is not done in Blender but in an external application.

    Blender is only the data viewer.

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