An Introduction to Modeling Rocks and Boulders in ArchiCAD
I got an e-mail this morning about putting rocks and boulders into a site model in ArchiCAD. There are a lot of solutions, including scripting or finding a good, flexible Object. But there are also two fundamental tricks we should all have at our disposal for creating landscaping entourage: importing Objects from SketchUp (or other programs) and modeling them from scratch using the Morph tool (or in days of old the Mesh tool).
In this quick (and crude) video I cover both of these basic solutions. To take the elements you create from good to great you need a little more time than I have in the video, and an endpoint in mind. If you are creating rocks, it’s good to have an image you are working from for inspiration, otherwise you’ll get something that’s close but a little off-like the rocks I eventually create in this video. Never the less, I hope the techniques I show you in this video will help you sprinkle rocks, boulders, logs, and other naturalistic forms as necessary throughout your site models.
Modeling Rocks and Boulders in ArchiCAD
It’s worth reiterating that when you are making many semi-repetitive elements, a quick rotate, mirror, or scale can make one shape seem like five or ten, if done properly. This is especially useful when you are aggregating rocks into a complete rock wall. This image (which is a screen shot from this video I did a number of years ago) offers one simplistic example of a few elements looking like many unique ones:
I think the rocks in the image above were even done with just the mesh tool. If you look closely there aren’t that many different shapes. I just scaled, rotated, mirrored, and lowered a few deeper into the ground.
Next Steps:
To further improve the elements we create, the next step would be to select/create/find good Surfaces for them and then work some magic in Cinerender. A good Surface would downplay the (potentially) simplistic geometry and really make these rocks something special in a rendering.
Don’t Forget:
Rocks are rocks are rocks. So if you do this for one project, remember to save the elements for future use. If each time you need to place these elements in a file, you spend 15 minutes improving them, in no time you’ll have some amazing entourage at your disposal. And if some of us share our work for others to use…well that’s even better.
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Ben Frost
Cadimage have a random rock generator object – every click generates a new random rock within a set number of parameters. No scaling, rotating, mirroring required and saves huge amounts of time.
Don’t forget to use ‘gravity’ for quick vertical alignment in meshes and slabs, etc…
Jared Banks
Yes gravity is something I should have mentioned! 🙂 The Cadimage random rock generator is nice (here’s a link), but it does only create a limited type of rocks. So if someone is looking for a lot of variety it’s not a perfect solution. But then again that object -> Morph for bonus tweaks would be the fastest way to endless options. Either way, thanks for mentioning it because yeah, having access to that Object is just as valueable as the other techniques I describe.
Dominicus Björkstam
And to add to the former comment and reply – Cigraph plugin Architerra 3 has a similar random boulder tool. And not to mention other usefull tools in their suite
Jared Banks
Thanks and thanks. Here’s a link for people not familiar with Architerra 3: looks like some amazing power: http://www.cigraph.it/en/node/269
Dominicus Björkstam
…..and to add. Good video on the subject 😉
Roberto Corona
As always, really interesting. Only at the end I reminded a very old object I made in the past. I’ve searched it and sow it has 10 years now. Just to add another one, as a starting point to create new ones, here is the link (you have to register on archiradar site do download):
http://www.archiradar.it/it/oggetti/oggetti-gratuiti-archicad-artlantis/viewcategory/17-street-garden-arredo-urbano.html