I was talking to a friend and she was talking to me about CAD software. I looked into Cad, but I’m not too sure what they’re limit is on what they do. I know they’re programs to help make floor plans easier and the sort, but I haven’t played with programs to know their limits.
Okay, so what I’m curious is, is there a software that accurately creates buildings?
Like, say, you have a 16 foot wall, that program knows where to place the inner studs (they’re meant to be 16 inches apart)- this example would have 16 studs evenly placed.
You have a door, the program will place a king and jack stud, and the header?
Just some examples that I know off my head about building a home.
I don’t think CAD programs do that kind of thing automatically, they’re mostly a more accurate (higher precision in number values) 3D modeling software that also makes it much easier to make diagrams. Pretty much any 3D software has the tools to make things accurate sizes as long as you model them that way. Also, unless you’re actually showing the interior of a wall then there’s no value in having the geometry on the interior of the wall. For things made in CAD software usually aren’t designed to work well in UE4 though, often times you end up with too many objects/materials/polygons and no lightmap UV’s.
Reason I was looking into CAD was because that software seems better for modeling buildings, in general. While a general 3d software program (Blender, Maya, anything) can model a house, but not on an accurate scale.
To find the right solution for you best to talk to a rep. Very $$$$$$ though if you are thinking applied engineering.
3ds Max on the other hand does have AEC objects were you can extruded from a blueprint.
Something to consider though is buildings built to real world tolerances do not translate all that well into video game space.
On the other hand if your thinking vis you can get away with murder so since you are thinking CAD, as in computer aided design, are you thinking video games as the applied application or something different using Unreal 4 as the rendering enviroment?
I avoid all things AutoDesk. They have BS methods of how people “own” their software. I don’t do subscriptions, same reason why I went to find a paid alternative to PhotoShop.
Pretty much, I would build or hire someone to build a city/world and make use of it in Unreal for projects. Projects beings anything from a game, animations, comics, doesn’t matter.
AutoCAD won’t really help, in what you want to do, it would be better to learn a regular 3D program, if you want to avoid Autodesk products, then look at Blender or Modo (which has some new game features)
Expect, CAD allows for better accuracy of crafting a building, does it not?
General 3d programs do not have that, you just slap together 4 walls and a roof, and leave it at that. I have played with a free CAD program before, and it allowed for easy movement of objects with numbers; general 3d programs don’t give you that. If you want the window 36 inches off the floor, you put that number into the floor plan.
That’s incorrect, every 3D program as far as I know allows you to use real-world units, at the very least you can position objects and vertices using units and when you create a primitive you can set real-world values for its dimensions. And it’s very important to do that because things like rendering and physics will work off physical units so if your scale is wrong then many things will be wrong.
What is different is that things like UE4 and 3ds Max/Maya/Blender use 32-bit float values, which means that a position value can only have so many digits, so when something is extremely small or if something is extremely big then it loses accuracy. AutoCAD uses 64-Bit precision which means it can represent very small numbers along with very large numbers. Since UE4 doesn’t use 64-Bit values then it wouldn’t be of any benefit to make something that way. Plus for what you’re doing you will be well within the range to be able to model things comfortably.
