Top Features & Functions of 3D Modeling Software
Today, 3D modeling is not just for design fields. Find out how your business can benefit from detailed animation, collaborative designs, and more—no matter your field.
Contents
3D modeling software has been in use since the late 1970s, and became more prevalent in the 1980s—despite limited usefulness in its time. The 1990s saw an explosion of practical applications for 3D design with the expansion of 3D rendering to common computers.
However, the difficulty in using 3D modeling programs without significant training has remained an issue. Recent innovations for this particular software subgenre have begun to challenge that and numerous practical applications for 3D can now be readily explored by the average user.
Today, we’re going to look at the four most important features (beyond 3D modeling and 2D drawing) that one should look for when choosing their 3D modeling software. Some of these may come as a mild surprise, but you’ll quickly see how crucial these tools can be.
In traditional 3D, most designs start with a “primitive,” which is a very basic geometric shape such as a cube, rectangle, sphere, torus, cone, cylinder, or the like. From here, you have to subdivide faces, extrude vertices, and weld new geometry together like a mad sculptor. The cumulative result will be a complex and unique 3D structure.
This is all well and good, but aiming for increasingly complex components with strict parameters can become difficult and time-consuming with this bare-bones approach. With an open-ended component library, you can bring in prefabricated components that match these strict specifications and begin building complex structures with the parameters already in place. This makes things faster and easier and ensures the quality and accuracy that would otherwise be hard to provide.
In addition, component libraries can do much more than just provide shape libraries. With a lot of 3D applications, these components can also be scripts that provide additional interfaces for rapid actions. This allows for automation of lengthy processes that need to be applied over and over again to any new or updated design.
Finally, component libraries can also provide additional help with data types. Compared to mostly standardized 2D formats, 3D model formats are numerous, vastly different, and not remotely standardized. Even within manufacturing—where a similar set of 3D printing or injection molding devices are in use—formats can vary greatly from one device to another. Having an open-ended import/export platform within your program can vastly reduce this issue. In many cases, you can even develop additional ones to meet edge case formats.
This doesn’t just make things easier for manufacturing environments, but also for architecture, engineering, and for any environment where speed and precision are important.
For home design in particular, animation allows for testing of clearances, space optimization, and tour creation (which we will touch on momentarily). That said, it’s not just the presence of animation functionality that matters, but how it’s implemented.
A proper timeline concept allows for the creation of keyframes, interpolation, tweening, and other transitional effects to span between them. Not only does this make animation very accurate and smooth, but it makes it faster to do and much easier to work with.
Rigging, the application of armatures that govern joints, rigid bodies, and motion, is often hard to work with. If it’s handled easily and intuitively, this will make animation and component design so much more pleasant to work with.
While virtual tour creation is not exclusive to the field of home design and other architectural concerns, it is where it is needed most. Creating a pleasant, accessible automated tour of a design, complete with high-end rendering, shading, and lighting requires a potent backend. Fortunately, most modern 3D apps have that covered. The real trick is in providing a good camera control system.
A 3D camera is the viewport through which the scene is shown, and cameras have a full six degrees of motion. Creating good panning, motion, and zooming for a 3D camera is generally a difficult prospect. A program featuring an intuitive approach with represented motion paths (complete with panning, facing and zooming timelines) makes this much easier to do.
Without good control over this, bad camera motion can fail to show off the design elements that matter most, and can even result in motion sickness with some audiences. Solid 3D cameras are an ongoing problem in 3D gaming, and tour creators can learn some lessons from the pitfalls experienced by game developers.
Modern 3D modeling applications offer actual collaboration features to express changes made by multiple users across all instances, in real-time. This can remove a lot of bottlenecks and eliminate a lot of “do overs” that would otherwise happen.
This also allows different specialties to work together with common ground, so engineers or architects are able to step in and mitigate errors made by the artists operating the programs and vice versa. The ability to break down the specialism barrier in this way is a huge innovation—this is not just a good idea, it’s a must.
Check out TEC’s detailed buyer’s guide for 3D modeling software for more information, as well as at our list of top 3D modeling solutions and customer reviews to help you make the right choice.
However, the difficulty in using 3D modeling programs without significant training has remained an issue. Recent innovations for this particular software subgenre have begun to challenge that and numerous practical applications for 3D can now be readily explored by the average user.
Today, we’re going to look at the four most important features (beyond 3D modeling and 2D drawing) that one should look for when choosing their 3D modeling software. Some of these may come as a mild surprise, but you’ll quickly see how crucial these tools can be.
Component Library
A strong component library can be crucial to your project’s success. Particularly in industries like manufacturing, this can be a make or break variable for 3D modeling software.In traditional 3D, most designs start with a “primitive,” which is a very basic geometric shape such as a cube, rectangle, sphere, torus, cone, cylinder, or the like. From here, you have to subdivide faces, extrude vertices, and weld new geometry together like a mad sculptor. The cumulative result will be a complex and unique 3D structure.
This is all well and good, but aiming for increasingly complex components with strict parameters can become difficult and time-consuming with this bare-bones approach. With an open-ended component library, you can bring in prefabricated components that match these strict specifications and begin building complex structures with the parameters already in place. This makes things faster and easier and ensures the quality and accuracy that would otherwise be hard to provide.
In addition, component libraries can do much more than just provide shape libraries. With a lot of 3D applications, these components can also be scripts that provide additional interfaces for rapid actions. This allows for automation of lengthy processes that need to be applied over and over again to any new or updated design.
Finally, component libraries can also provide additional help with data types. Compared to mostly standardized 2D formats, 3D model formats are numerous, vastly different, and not remotely standardized. Even within manufacturing—where a similar set of 3D printing or injection molding devices are in use—formats can vary greatly from one device to another. Having an open-ended import/export platform within your program can vastly reduce this issue. In many cases, you can even develop additional ones to meet edge case formats.
This doesn’t just make things easier for manufacturing environments, but also for architecture, engineering, and for any environment where speed and precision are important.
Animation
Animation may seem limited to video production or game development, but a solid animation function set can be invaluable to other fields as well. Designing something with moving parts is much easier to do correctly when you can test actual physics and motion within the 3D prototype before you begin to manufacture it.For home design in particular, animation allows for testing of clearances, space optimization, and tour creation (which we will touch on momentarily). That said, it’s not just the presence of animation functionality that matters, but how it’s implemented.
A proper timeline concept allows for the creation of keyframes, interpolation, tweening, and other transitional effects to span between them. Not only does this make animation very accurate and smooth, but it makes it faster to do and much easier to work with.
Rigging, the application of armatures that govern joints, rigid bodies, and motion, is often hard to work with. If it’s handled easily and intuitively, this will make animation and component design so much more pleasant to work with.
Virtual Tour Creation
We alluded to virtual tours with animation, but simple animation itself doesn’t necessarily make this easy to do. Virtual tour features are far more important than people may initially think.While virtual tour creation is not exclusive to the field of home design and other architectural concerns, it is where it is needed most. Creating a pleasant, accessible automated tour of a design, complete with high-end rendering, shading, and lighting requires a potent backend. Fortunately, most modern 3D apps have that covered. The real trick is in providing a good camera control system.
A 3D camera is the viewport through which the scene is shown, and cameras have a full six degrees of motion. Creating good panning, motion, and zooming for a 3D camera is generally a difficult prospect. A program featuring an intuitive approach with represented motion paths (complete with panning, facing and zooming timelines) makes this much easier to do.
Without good control over this, bad camera motion can fail to show off the design elements that matter most, and can even result in motion sickness with some audiences. Solid 3D cameras are an ongoing problem in 3D gaming, and tour creators can learn some lessons from the pitfalls experienced by game developers.
Collaboration
Collaboration is important in any commercial software and is always crucial for any project to go smoothly. In the past, this meant continuous meetings and “catch-up” gatherings between professionals or teams to make sure everyone was on the same page.Modern 3D modeling applications offer actual collaboration features to express changes made by multiple users across all instances, in real-time. This can remove a lot of bottlenecks and eliminate a lot of “do overs” that would otherwise happen.
This also allows different specialties to work together with common ground, so engineers or architects are able to step in and mitigate errors made by the artists operating the programs and vice versa. The ability to break down the specialism barrier in this way is a huge innovation—this is not just a good idea, it’s a must.
The Big Picture
You’ll be on the right track if you insist on 3D modeling software equipped with these core features and take the time to field test any given 3D modeling app to ensure the interface is intuitive. This will enable you to find a solution that lets you take full, powerful advantage of these features.Check out TEC’s detailed buyer’s guide for 3D modeling software for more information, as well as at our list of top 3D modeling solutions and customer reviews to help you make the right choice.
