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Send the model to a rendering program

Save what the 3D view shows as a glTF model (.glb) with its materials, textures and lamps, for rendering and visualization programs that read glTF.

Written for BimCraft 0.6.1. The same help is inside the app: press F1.

For rendering on the toolbar saves what the 3D view shows as one .glb file (glTF 2.0, the open format from the Khronos Group). Rendering programs that read glTF open it with the model's materials and lamps; Twinmotion, for example, opens .glb files and keeps their lights. Nothing is uploaded: the file is made on this computer.

Save it

  1. Open the IFC model and set up the 3D view: hide the storeys, elements or linked models you don't want, and paint the materials you want to see.
  2. Click For rendering (or type GLB).
  3. The file downloads as "<model name>.glb". The status bar says how many triangles, materials and lamps it holds.

What the file carries

  • Geometry of every element the 3D view shows, in meters, with Y up (glTF's own axes). One object per storey and material, named "Level 1 — Brick, red", so you can pick a material in the rendering program and swap it for its own.
  • Materials: each color with the look you chose for it in Render (matte, satin, glossy, metal, glass…), and each painted library material with its color, roughness and texture (its picture is in the file, scaled to its real size: a brick is a brick's size). Glass is see-through.
  • Lamps: every light fixture that is switched on in Render › Lamps, as a point or spot light with its brightness (lumens turned into candela), color and beam angle.
  • Where the site is: the site's latitude and longitude are written in the file for reference. Rendering programs have their own sun: type the place in there.

What it leaves out

  • The section cut (whole elements go in) and elements shown see-through (they are left out).
  • Element by element objects (one object per storey and material instead), IFC properties, bump maps, saved views and recorded walks.
  • Edges and the background.

Enscape and other plug-in renderers

Enscape runs inside another design program and has no file to open a whole project. Two ways:

  • Open the model's IFC (File › Save) in the program Enscape runs in; most of them read IFC. Colors come along; the library materials come as their colors.
  • Bring a small part (furniture, a fixture) in as a custom asset from a .glb: isolate it first, then save. Enscape advises small assets (a few tens of thousands of triangles).