Open Source Architecture Rendering

A Pipeline to create an Architecture Rendering easily with free and open source softwares

4 min readMar 1, 2022

Architecture Rendering are a very interesting topic and it is also a well payd work. To make it with open source software is possible? I will show a group o software to create an Architecture Rendering with an House easily.

The example that I made can be founded in this repo , it includes the files for each tool.

Sweet Home 3D

make the architecture house -> export .OBJ

Sweet Home 3D is a interior design application which helps you draw the plan of your house, arrange furniture on it and visit the results in 3D. With some ready 3D object Libraries we can improve the object to add in the projects and we can also add .obj objects.

With this software I create an house wih some forniture on the balcony, after by going into 3D View>Export in OBJ format.

FSpy

find image and Prospective -> export camera options

fSpy is a camera matching software that create the paramiters of a virtual camera to fit an image perspective.

So with this software we can select the image in witch we want to put our Architecture, and with the line we can extract the prospective paramiters and save it into a file, so it produce the paramiters that the camera shuld have to obtain the same perspective.

Blender

Open .obj and .prospective -> render with transparent

We use Blender with fspy plugin to import the camera options and the architecture, place it correctly and make a render.

So download the fspy plugin, open Blender and go to Edit>Preferences>Add-ons and click on Install button, select the fspy file and click ok.

Now in the same menu (Edit>Preferences>Add-ons) search for fSpy and enable it.

Now we can go to file>import>fspy(.fspy) and import the saved file with fspy, it will import a camera that have the image as background.

Import also the export of SweetHome3D with file>import>Wavefron(.obj) and scale and place it in the scene as you want.

Now you can render it with transparent background: go to Render Properties and select Cycles, after in the same menu search for Film and enable Transparent checkbox. Go to Render>Render Image and save it at the end of the render. It will be a PNG render with your architecture without background.

GIMP

Mout all togheder

GIMP is a raster image manipulation software that allow we to create the photomontage, I also use G'MIC plugin that have many interesting filters.

We can for exaple change the Sky and the Door with some image and a think that get reality is the rock on the front that sometimes go over the house (obviously noone make a dor into the rock but It is only a random example).

What Else?

If you need something like lightroom you can use Darktable or RawTherapee.

But you can also made more about material with Blender rather than with GIMP, for example if the white of the wall is not enouht real you can do a photomontage with a real wall image or made a real material with Blender.

Also the render of the internal can be done with same technique, we can make a photo into a real space and after you can add your Art inside it.

Conclusions

Beyond my meager skill we can create Architecture rendering easily with Free and open source software. Also when some feature that you need are missed you can pay the amount that you pay for a licence software to make that feature builded or you can develop it by yourself.

So enjoy open source software and contribute in any way!