BBIM: Make a simple construction sequence

edited February 2022 in General

Hi everyone, i would like to make a simple construction sequence representing different construction phases.
The result would be like this video but it's not necessary to make a video, it's enough to realise like "static scenes" or "frames".
I would like to do it in Blender, not necessarily IFC but IFC it would be a plus.
Does anybody know if there is a tutorial or can somebody help me with this?
Thanks,
Massimo

Comments

  • I would be very interested as well.

  • You can do it with Blenderbim!

    have a go! IFC for free

    CoenMassimo
  • @ roughly 20:23 in the video

  • edited November 2021

    Thanks @Ace for the suggestion. It's a very powerful tool, i tried it but i need something more simple.
    I just need to show the different situation at different time and every situation should be represented in a different frame.
    Is there a efficient method to do this in blender?

  • edited November 2021

    This is a very simple thing to do in blender, just see any animation tutorial. Basically you

    1. Select your object, go into the Outliner, deactivate the Show In Renders option (camera icon) and create a keyframe (i).

    2. Now in the Timeline move to the frame where you want your object to appear, go into the Outliner, reactivate the camera icon and create a new keyframe.
      See this for more details
      https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/115526/trying-to-hide-object-during-animation

    AceMassimo
  • Or if you're lazy like me and like to do everything with sverchok you can just chuck a frame info into list split and do it automatically.

    Coen
  • And a bit less primitive solution using object ID set:

    Files:

    https://github.com/JanFilipec/Sverchok-Tutorials/tree/main/Assembly animation

    MassimoNigel
  • This is very nice @JanF and exactly what i was searching for.
    Btw, i tried the first advise you wrote and it's useful to say that the 'i' button (insert keyframe) needs to be pressed when the mouse is over the camera icon; also, it's possible to do the same with the viewport instead of render (it's necessary to activate the viewport toggles in outliner, the screen icon).

    JanF
  • @Massimo I would use blender to show methodology and construction sequences for Tender Submissions. I've a pretty robust workflow that my team and I uses. I would be happy to go through it with you.

  • @CarpgianeDS hi! I would be happy to learn your workflow, btw it would be better to share it with everybody!

  • @Massimo that is my aim, but haven't gotten round to putting a tutorial together. I normally use IFC via BlenderBim as this is the format we would usually receive our models. I then animate the collection viewport and render visibility and usually have them at 50frames increments on the timeline. For texturing I convert the embedded IFC materials to nodes and then use the standard Blender texturing workflow. If you are using FBX or a Sketchup Import you will need to arrange all the building elements into collections similar to the IFC hierarchy. As an alternative to this you can also use different view layers to show each phase but I find this method quite cumbersome.

    This is all for tender submission's where only the visual representation is important for the quality score hence why it doesn't need to have any logic or be tied to a construction programme.
    Hope this helps.

    MassimoJesusbillkaiaurelienzh
  • Very nice @CarpgianeDS , this already helps!

  • I remember some some Navisworks workflow, wondering if this is possible in BlenderBIM

    • You could use planning software like Asta PowerProject to make a gannt diagram or something similar. Export a .csv.
    • This CSV could be imported in Navisworks and the coloured bars you could attached to the 3D elements.

    Was a very easy way of making a sequenced animation too. Is there any workflow or tutorial on how to do this with BlenderBIM and an open source planning project?

  • Hi @Coen , i know that with BBim it's possible to import file from P6, Microsoft Project and Power Project (see file -> import).
    In this video there is a tutorial about how to do a BIM 4d animation.
    Also, Moult did a very beautiful video animation demostration during last fosdem presentation here at 13:28.
    The workflow seems similar to what you have described, i hope it can help.

    Coen
  • @CarpgianeDS said:
    @Massimo that is my aim, but haven't gotten round to putting a tutorial together. I normally use IFC via BlenderBim as this is the format we would usually receive our models. I then animate the collection viewport and render visibility and usually have them at 50frames increments on the timeline. For texturing I convert the embedded IFC materials to nodes and then use the standard Blender texturing workflow. If you are using FBX or a Sketchup Import you will need to arrange all the building elements into collections similar to the IFC hierarchy. As an alternative to this you can also use different view layers to show each phase but I find this method quite cumbersome.

    This is all for tender submission's where only the visual representation is important for the quality score hence why it doesn't need to have any logic or be tied to a construction programme.
    Hope this helps.

    I would love to hear more about this workflow. Any updates?

  • @kaiaurelienzh the 4D features now allow doing full project planning and animation visualisation, so all the features you need should be baked in. @SigmaDimensions has some good YouTube tutorials on this.

    kaiaurelienzh
  • edited October 2022

    @Moult said:
    @kaiaurelienzh the 4D features now allow doing full project planning and animation visualisation, so all the features you need should be baked in. @SigmaDimensions has some good YouTube tutorials on this.

    Thanks, I reviewed @SigmaDimensions tutorial videos. I did have one query regarding managing the transformations of objects in the animations. The videos I've seen using blenderBIM show the elements appearing in place. Elements get progressively revealed per sequence. Ideally, I would also like to animate the movement of the elements as they would be constructed. E.g. columns shown in a laydown area -> picked up via crane -> placed in location. Is this achievable using blenderBIM?

  • Not yet, since it is also not described in IFC. In IFC, the movement before and after is described as two separate products, not the same product with two locations.

    However it's pretty easy to add this animation, would you be interested in adding it?

  • @Moult said:
    Not yet, since it is also not described in IFC. In IFC, the movement before and after is described as two separate products, not the same product with two locations.

    However it's pretty easy to add this animation, would you be interested in adding it?

    Yes, definitely if it's possible. I was thinking that an animation as I described would still be achievable by simply using Blender (keyframes, etc). I could use blenderBIM as an import of my model including the data I need to speed up the workflow a bit. But fundamentally, the animation would be driven using Blender native tools. Does this sound feasible to you?

  • edited October 2022

    @kaiaurelienzh here is the feature for the animation visualisation: https://github.com/IfcOpenShell/IfcOpenShell/blob/v0.7.0/src/blenderbim/blenderbim/bim/module/sequence/operator.py#L1096 - it's pretty basic right now and hardcoded to a default set of animation rules. (in the future naturally we will allow different animation styles).

    https://github.com/IfcOpenShell/IfcOpenShell/blob/v0.7.0/src/blenderbim/blenderbim/bim/module/sequence/operator.py#L1152-L1168 Here are the different types of tasks supported by IFC, so you might want to add some rules for animating movement_from and movement_to. You can see right now it simply inserts keyframes for colours, but all you have to do is add some keyframes for the LocRot and also refactor a little bit to feed in the output if it's an input, and the input if it's an output.

    Any questions go and join the chat @SigmaDimensions is pretty active online and he's pretty familiar with the 4D code.

    kaiaurelienzh
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