About Edifice

Edifice is designed to create and edit buildings as a mesh for 3D programs and games.  It is part of a suite of tools that help design 3D environments.  The suite comprises:

	Texture Manager - Manages and manipulates textures [Beta test]
	World - Creates and edits landscapes and splats [Beta test]
	Edifice - Constructs buildings [Beta test]
	WalkAbout - Allows you to walk full scale across your landscape and buildings [Beta test]
	Scene - Edits complete scenes with textures, landscapes, buildings, things and actors [under development]

See our downloads page to test our apps for free.

Purpose

The purpose of Edifice is to provide a simple means of creating and editing buildings in 3D applications.  This is done by an editor that creates basic shapes such as walls, floors, ceilings roofs etc.  These shapes are the interpreted and rendered in 3D.

Features

• Edits buildings with multiple shapes and floors
• Editor features zoom, select, resize, move, copy, grid, undo etc
• Generates basic shapes like:
  • Walls, floors, ceilings and roofs Stairs, spiral stairs and ramps
  • Circles, pies, arches, doors and domes
  • Allows you to specify parameters for shapes such as number of steps for stairs
• Live 3D walkabout in the building and terrain using an avatar
• Links to textures in Texture Manager

 

Concepts

In the 3D world shapes are made of meshes.  A mesh is a mostly sets of triangles that are put together to form shapes.  What the edifice editor does for you is convert a 2D plan into a 3D mesh.  Sometimes the translation is simple; a wall is represented by 2 2D points translates to 4 3D points.  Sometimes it is more complex; a spiral staircase converts from 3 2D points to over 80.

Toolbox

The tool box on the left is made up of a list of available shapes to draw.  Each shape is drawn in the design window by clicking with your left mouse and dragging a rubber band to the finish position. 

Shapes have between 2 and 4 points.  If the shape requires more points it will continue with more elastic bands until complete.  For circular shapes you specify the number of sides.  This will increase the polygon count but make the shape smoother.  

Current shapes available are:

• Ceiling – 4 point polygon ceiling.
• Ceiling arch – the arch only rises to a certain height unlike dome.  Needs 4 points.
• Ceiling disc – a circular flat disc.  Needs 2 points, centre and edge.
• Ceiling dome – the arch rises in a arc to meet the other side so the height is determined by the width of the shape.  Needs 4 points.
• Ceiling pie – a pie shaped ceiling area.  Needs three points, centre and end of two arcs.
• Ceiling triangle – need not be regular.  Needs 3 points.
• Door – consists of a door portion with a wall above it.
• Floor – need not be regular.  Needs 4 points.
• Floor disc – circular floor area.  Needs 2 points, centre and edge.
• Floor pie – pie shaped floor area.  Needs three points, centre and end of two arcs.
• Floor triangle – need not be regular.  Needs 3 points.
• Ramp – the arrow shows the up direction.  Needs 4 points.
• Roof – the arrow shows the slope up.  Needs 4 points.
• Roof arch – the arch only rises to a certain height (specified by Height1 at one end and Height2 at the other relative to the base height), unlike dome.  Needs 4 points.
• Roof disc – circular roof rising to the centre.  Needs 2 points, centre and edge.
• Roof dome – the dome rises in an arc to meet the other side so the height is determined by the width of the shape at each end.  Needs 4 points.
• Roof pie – pie roof rising to the centre.  Needs three points, centre and end of two arcs.
• Roof triangle – need not be regular.  Needs 3 points.
• Stairs – arrow shows the slope up.  Needs 4 points.  You specify the number of steps.
• Stairs anticlockwise – spiral staircase that goes anticlockwise upwards.  Needs 3 points, centre and two arcs.  You specify the number of steps.  Width is the width of the steps.
• Stairs clockwise – spiral staircase that goes clockwise upwards.  Needs 3 points, centre and two arcs.  You specify the number of steps.  Width is the width of the steps.
• Wall – needs 2 points.
• Wall circle – needs 2 points, centre and edge.
• Wall pie – needs 3 points, centre and end of two arcs.
• Wall sloping – you can specify different heights for the start and end points.  Height1 will set the height of the start of the wall.  Height2 will specify the low point of the end of the wall.
• Window – has two heights for the low and high point of the window.  Res rest is wall.  Needs 2 points.