
Design a small single-story house in Blender, from floor plan to walls, roof, and facade, then add UV maps, materials, furniture, lighting, vegetation, and camera views morning and afternoon lighting.
Explore how to access exercise files and follow the course conventions while navigating Blender fundamentals, material creation, texturing, UV mapping, lighting, cameras, and rendering with Cycles.
Install six blender add-ons, including three official extensions (noting 123 select and right‑mouse navigation) and three external options such as Blender Kit, Use Scatter, and Botanic, via drag‑and‑drop or preferences.
Learn to customize Blender shortcuts to speed modeling, including f5 for wireframes, f6 for normals, w for walk navigation, period for origin only mode, and shift e for extrude manifold.
Set up realistic world lighting in Blender with HDR and procedural sun and sky, then import, relink, and organize materials into your asset library for a 3D house project.
Sketch the floorplan inside blender using precise measurements from the start, applying vertex extrusion with auto merge to define main 6 by 10 meter building and living and dining spaces.
Thicken walls and add door and window lines in blender using extrusion, with 15 cm wall thickness and 90 cm doors, including sliding doors and two-leaf windows.
Create the floors by adding faces, extruding to thickness, and keeping rectangular shapes. Merge like faces, separate by material and height, set z coordinates (-50 cm), and fix normals.
Extrude wall faces in Blender to create interior walls, then use bridge and extrude to form door and window openings, using local view to stay focused and clean up faces.
Learn to build a roof base in Blender by fixing the floor, extruding and joining faces, and creating a 40-degree tilted roof with gutters.
Create a Scandinavian ornament on the house front and side facades in Blender, using precise extrusion, rotation, and mirror and solidify modifiers to form a 40 cm thick, non-penetrating facade.
Create the roof slab and supporting wall by extruding and snapping edges, patching holes, and set 40 cm thickness with 15 cm inner area, extrude along normals and insert.
Fix the upper wall to fit the new roof and concrete slab by aligning faces, extruding, patching holes, and bridging faces to ensure clean normals.
Create a skylight on a concrete slab roof using Blender, adding back lighting, cutting holes with intersect knife, and assembling a hollow metal frame with a glass panel.
Learn to create flat drop ceilings in the living and dining areas. Align and join bathroom and main ceilings, then add recessed features in the master bedroom.
Learn to model the front master bedroom window in Blender by extruding faces along normals to form a four-centimeter frame, and use instances with rubber border and glass materials.
Master creating front and side windows in Blender by duplicating frames, extruding faces along normals with four centimeter offset, applying aluminum material, and fitting glass with precise duplication and alignment.
Create and refine skylight and window assemblies in blender by assigning glass and aluminium dark materials, adjusting areas and joins, extruding openings, duplicating windows, and aligning frames for multiple rooms.
Create the kitchen and bathroom windows in blender, resize the kitchen window to 1 metre. Align glass and frame, duplicate the bathroom window, rotate, and patch holes to finish.
Model and texture kitchen sliding doors in Blender by creating the frame and glass, applying aluminum and stainless steel materials, and using instance duplication and proper origins.
Create an entrance door in Blender by widening to one meter, aligning wall and floor, adding a door frame, smart lock panel, and handle, and applying materials and modifiers.
Create and refine bedroom doors in Blender by modeling the door frame, extruding and insetting, adding a handle and keyhole, applying metals and textures, and duplicating for a second door.
Model a bathroom door in Blender by extruding the door leaf, shaping the frame, and crafting a handle. Apply aluminium white material, fix normals, and join components for a door.
Add facade details and window canopies by duplicating and extruding faces, creating edge loops, and using shrink pattern to widen side faces, with careful normal adjustments.
Create a base wall panel for the facade, extrude and align it, then use the array modifier to generate vertical slats and apply a boolean difference with the Scandinavian Ornament.
Create a partition with front facade style wooden bars and a hidden gate that blends with them, using an array modifier and proper door origin for animation.
Learn to model metal roofing sheets in Blender, using array, solidify, and boolean modifiers to fit a roof base with accurate rotation, origin placement, and mirroring.
Create the roof ridge in blender by converting top edge to a curve, adjusting bevel depth for the diameter, then convert to a mesh and apply dark gray metal material.
Discover how the magic UV add-on creates a new UV map channel, projects textures with box projection and the best panel command, and adjusts size and rotation for wooden textures.
Apply front and top materials to the house, adjust the front wall height, and use a UV mapping workflow to assign textures like wall white, marble, floor paving, and grass.
Name and assign materials to the house project, using word generic semi-gloss, then adjust UV mapping and grain orientation for slats, doors, and façade details.
Apply wall cover pastel black to the front and stone tiles to the side. Adjust UVs to reduce repetition, then add thickness with a solidify modifier.
Import two rattan chairs and a table from blender kit and place them on the front porch. Adjust materials in the shader editor to create a cohesive look.
Visualize and place realistic grass on your blender house scene using the geo scatter addon, applying a biome-based lawn preset and material masking to prevent grass from intersecting walls.
Add vegetation around the house in Blender using the Botanic library, placing shrubs, ferns, and a large palm tree with transform randomizer and wind animation for natural landscaping.
Learn to model the front road and surrounding grounds in Blender, using a 500 cm by 1000 cm road with a PBR wet road texture, UVs, and organized environment collections.
Learn to set up two Blender cameras, align them to the viewport, use walk navigation, duplicate cameras, and place them in a dedicated cameras collection for rendering.
add surrounding vegetation to the house in blender using geo scatter biome presets. apply forest weeds and coniferous trees with botanic assets, then render with f12 from multiple camera views.
Add interior lighting with an emission material using a blackbody node at 3500 kelvin and adjust bounce for warmth. Place beds, sofas, and paintings with Polyconic assets, then render.
Set up exterior lighting with a centered area light under the skylight and three front porch downlights, using a blackbody color at 8000 kelvin to simulate sky blue.
Continue exterior lighting by adding a two-centimeter-wide led strip along the front facade and two ground spotlights, then render to preview the updated lighting.
Add a subtle two-millimeter bevel to front windows and doors for realism, then create multiple world lighting scenarios: afternoon yellowish and morning blueish for distinct camera moods.
Blender is currently the most popular and widely used 3D software. However, few people know that Blender is also fully capable of doing architectural design and visualization. I know this for a fact because I have been using Blender for almost a decade to tackle all kinds of architecture and interior design projects with great success. After years of perfecting the workflow, in this course, I want to share with you how I handle architectural projects using Blender.
About the instructor
My name is Widhi Muttaqien, founder of Expose Studio. For more than 20 years, I have been involved with hundreds of projects, including architecture, interior design, master plans, and so on. I have worked with many clients all over the world. Besides doing projects, I have also been teaching 3D and computer graphics academically since 2000. In short, I have both professional expertise and teaching experience.
Like many others in the architecture industry, I started with the common tools such as AutoCAD, SketchUp, 3ds Max, V-Ray, Corona, and the like. But, after trying out Blender and seeing how rapidly it is being developed, I was a firm believer that one day Blender would take over the 3D industry. I decided to jump ship and fully commit to Blender ahead of other people. It was not smooth sailing at first. Because back then, almost no one used Blender for architectural projects. There were hardly any videos or blogs discussing the topic, not to mention online courses. I had to develop my own workflow by putting all the puzzle pieces together myself.
All these struggles finally paid off. Now, Blender can replace almost all of my previous software. I can design directly in 3D and provide my clients with visualizations so much faster compared to my old conventional workflow.
What you will learn
In this course, we will design, model, and render a small single-story house from start to finish using Blender. We will create the floor plan from scratch. Then, we will use the floor plan to model the walls, the roof, the facade, the windows, the doors, and the rest of the house details. After that, we will add the UV mapping and then assign the materials and textures.
Once the architecture is complete, we then move on to adding more details to the project so that the house does not appear empty and lifeless in the rendering. We will add furniture to the front porch. We will also add furniture to the interior, which includes the front bedroom and the living room. Next, we will create the lighting on the interior ceilings. And then create the lighting outside the house.
After that, we will add vegetation around the house area and its surroundings. We will add grasses, small plants, and then large trees. Please note that I’ll be using two paid add-ons for this process, "Geo-Scatter" and "Botaniq". As the final step, we will create two different camera views with two different lighting scenarios. One view will have afternoon lighting. While the other view will have morning lighting.
So join now and make Blender your unfair advantage in the architecture field!