We need cross section tool in blender.
Creating section for archviz is really annoying in blender. Mostly, two methods are there today
- There is camera clipping but it doesn't allow lights to pass through in interior scene.
- And there is boolean, which is again annoying while using interior scene. We have to join every objects, apply all modifiers.
7 Comments
I understand it as an architect. the way sketchup has a cross section which you can smoothly move it to have a look at your 3D section. right now I use camera clipping for 2D sections, but for 3D sections you should either use boolean in a procedural manner or apply a shader based section TO ALL of your cutting materials! (btw I have created similar geometry nodes before and it works, but the drawback is that you should HIDE all of your main models because the instances will be a COPY in your scene, which is not wise for complex architectural scenes with tons of polygons from your objects.)
I guess with geo nodes it should be possible?
Edit: yes it is!
Download demo file:
Collection_Boolean.zip - Google Drive
You just need to put in a collection all the things you want to boolean onto, disable it (as it will be displayed again by the geonodes), have an object to boolean from, and another to wear the geonodes.
I made the nodes easy to use with inputs to select the collection and boolean objects, as well as override materials if needed.
You are still using boolean. Very fragile and potentially computation intensive.
I don't see how this is "fragile", could you explain?
I don't understand either why "still" using a boolean is an issue. The issue with boolean reported by the post is how you can't just put it on multiple objects at once easily. But this method I posted shows that you can do so without the drawbacks mentioned.
If performance is a concern in some scenes, I guess you can probably also use geo nodes to assign a transparent shader to the mesh parts inside the boolean cube instead of using a boolean on the geometry. But without the new mesh to close the holes.
The boolean itself is fragile, it doesn't always work correctly. Unless of course you set it to accurate mode instead of fast, in which case it can be seriously slow.
And for your geo nodes transparent shader I assume you have to subdivide the mesh a lot to get good samples for the shader? Also not ideal.
It is super slow, while cutting a building with just windows. I can't imagine while cutting whole interior scene. Can't there be any better option ?
This isn't the modifier, it's the geo node, it doesn't have that option and AFAIK doesn't have the same issues as the modifier. But don't quote me on that, I'm no expert x)
I don't know for that. But with the upcoming changes on layer texture systems and the global "everything nodes" project, I guess and hope that the future will give us easy ways to do such things at low cost. For example, have node-based material overrides.
In the meantime you can make yourself a nodegroup that does the cross-section, and mix that nodegroup into every shader you need to cross. It's tedious if you have a lot of shaders to deal with (a script can probably make that easier though), but it works.