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3D Home Planning Software?
thorar asks: "I'm willing to move to another flat in town (or to restructure the one I'm currently living in). I'd like to create a detailed map of the apartment to study alternatives without much pencil and paper, possibly with appropriate furniture and 3D rendering. I'm not an expert in Studio Max nor similar softwares. I'd like something as simple as IKEA Kitchen Planner, but all Google serches lead to some software suite that looks unprofessional or Windows95-stylish. What would you use?" There are numerous commercial alternatives for such an application, but is there anything like this available via Open Source?
It's not smooth around the edges, but I'd try Moray. It's a modeling program that can use POV-Ray to render the images. Just create rough shapes in the size of your furniture and drag them around the room. The more time you spend, the better looking and detailed you can make the furniture.
I went for cheap and just downloaded Moray. I plugged in accurate measurements, added a few simple textures, and could imagine the space easily. Traced out in POVRay, the pictures are pretty and cost zippo.
You'll have to find good models for your smaller items, if you want to use models. I didn't use them. There are plenty of models for Pov-Ray, but not a lot for dedicated to Moray. I haven't looked into that side of it much. However, building your basic nighttable/bed/lamp is easy in CSG, just for verifying that your space will fill as you imagine.
Space planning and room "look" was very nice with this, and very quick, since Moray has some crude group tools. Sadly, it doesn't seem to do low-level renderings (non-reflective,etc) and the CSG Evals are still only wireframe (and messy on big pics). Your quickest bet for POV speed is smaller pictures, which are useless.
Export the scene text, plug the camera math into a "clock" POVRay variable and you can spit out a directory of frames, with pretty good quality, overnight on most machines/scenes. There's a cl MPG builder to link them up, allowing for frame pauses and other simple tricks. This gives nice walkthroughs.
It is more labor intensive than the pro tools available, but it costs nothing. You learn a simple modeller, and with POV-Ray you can raytrace shiny things to your heart's content.
Jordan's Furniture has an online room layout program. In theory it's designed so you lay out a room and then get advice about it from Jordan's, but that didn't prevent me from creating a 2D representation of my entire apartment, sizing furniture to match my own, and dragging things around for hours. Even though it's Web-based, you can save multiple layouts and come back to them months later.
POV-Ray is great for rendering images if you want a nice picture (and have the time to play with textures and lighting). However, POV-Ray is not great for modelling because it only supports its own scripting language natively. I doubt anyone would want to script their house-plans in POV-Ray SDL.
Others have suggested Moray, which is a CAD-like modelling program meant to be used with POV-Ray. It isn't free like POV-Ray is, but it is inexpensive, and well worth the price. Still, even Moray isn't the greatest CAD software, and it only runs in Windows right now (I tried Wine, but I couldn't get it to work).
Not sure if it's still made and it's not free, but I've used 3D Home Architect in the past. It does exactly what you want. DON'T use level editors.
But there are better options:
Microspot Interiors, etc
Sketchup
VectorWorks 11.5
Form*Z
PowerCADD
VersaCAD
Cadintosh
But there is no current Mac version of AutoCAD, Pro/E, or Microstation. Bad news if you're planning on designing a new aircraft carrier on your new Mac Mini...
Punch! Pro and BH&G Home Designer are each $100 or less, and even those are probably overkill for what you need for redesigning an apartment, but either would get the job done. I settled on BH&G Home Designer (the Pro version, about $500, because it had features I needed for the design approval and permit process). Both have some annoying aspects, but are pretty easy to use to lay out a house or other building. Punch! Pro is probably the easier to use of the two, but BH&G Designer is more powerful, and produces nicer-looking overall results and particularly nicer-looking 3D renderings. The 3D renderings part was important for me not for the design and permit process, but because my wife has a harder time visualizing things in 3D, and the renderings I could create with BH&G Home Designer let me easily show her what different design changes would mean.
One definite advantage that Punch! Pro has is that it lets you design your own 3D objects, which is nice for rendering a particular fixture or piece of furniture that's not included in the library. Making your own objects is definitely harder than just drawing a house, though. And that's where a fair number of the quirks in Punch! Pro reside -- the 3D custom workshop where you create your own objects.
All that said, I'd be interested in hearing about any open source alternatives as the follow-on question by Cliff asks. I've learned enough in the process of designing my own addition (and rendering the current house) that I'd be interested in contributing to an open source program of this nature, too.
I've used an earlier version of this to do office and house layouts. There is a 30 day demo version available.