Creating Custom Surfaces

This section covers tips and tricks to creating custom surfaces in ArchiCAD. 

INV Template Work Space:

When you are in your template file, go to Options > Surfaces. This will open a prompt box showing all the preloaded textures in ArchiCAD.

Template location

A quick template item to cover before we go into creating new surfaces. Once you have opened the surfaces window, in the section labelled (1) below, we have both preloaded custom textures as well as blank surfaces for you to modify. The blank surfaces have naming conventions that aligns to our finish plan designations. It is important to use these blank surfaces to create your custom surfaces so that it is easy to find any surfaces you need to modify in the future.

Open Blank Surfaces

Creating Custom Surfaces

With the surface window now open, we will break down each component of the window below:

Surfaces Window

(1) This section shows all of the preloaded surfaces within archiCAD. Before you go to create a specific custom texture, see if there is one already created within our surface library. 

(Note: You can do a quick search of all the surfaces within the template by utilizing the search bar at the top of the section.)

(1a) New. The "+ New..." button is if you need to create a brand new texture or if you would like to duplicate a surface.

New surface pop-up window

(Note: There are a few options within this window. You can duplicate, or if you uploaded a surface texture in your embedded library, you can use the "New from Catalog" option. We mainly use the "Duplicate" option when creating textures.)

(1b) Duplicate. This button can be used as a quick way to duplicate a surface

(1c) Create a folder. This button can be utilized to organize all your surfaces within folders if you would like.

(1d) Rename. This button is used to rename a surface.

(1e) Delete. This button is used to delete surfaces.

(2) This section is where you name your surface and choose which engine setting of the surface you are modifying.

(2a) Name. Name your new texture or rename the existing texture as required.

(2b) Engine Settings. 

ArchiCAD uses 3 different rendering engines for different levels of visualization: Basic Engine, Hardware Acceleration, Cineware and Redshift by Maxon.

Basic Engine: We don't use this visualization engine. It doesn't provide the detail we want to see in our 3D window.

Hardware acceleration: We mainly use "hardware acceleration" for our 3D models. This is the rendering engine used when we view our models in the 3D window and can see the textures. Make sure you have this selected when you are creating/modifying your surface. If you don't have "hardware acceleration" selected under "Engine settings," you will be manipulating the surface settings for one of the other engine types and it won't be reflected in your 3D window.

Cineware and Redshift by Maxon: The last option shows the surface settings if you were going to produce a true high-res rendering through ArchiCAD or export to Maxon. We don't use this setting.

 Rendering Engine Types

(3) Exposure to Light

In this section you can modify the surface color, transparency, emission, reflection, and specular settings. 

Surface Color:

Define the surface’s color by double-clicking the box. This opens the Edit Color dialog box where you can select your color graphically or numerically by mixing the HSL (Hue-Saturation-Luminosity) or RGB (Red-Green-Blue) components.

The rest of the attributes in this panel are set as a percentage of their theoretical limits. You can edit the values either numerically or with a sliding switch.

Transparency: This attribute controls how light penetrates the selected surface. Use the following two controls to adjust transparency:

        •Transmittance: The higher the value, the greater percentage of light is transmitted through the surface. Glass is at the top of the scale and opaque surfaces are at the bottom.

        •Attenuation controls how sharply transmittance diminishes as the object’s surface becomes less perpendicular to the viewing direction. Any number in a continuous range from zero to 100 can be set.

Emission: This is a measure of a surface’s fluorescence (i.e., the light emitted by its surface).

        •Use the Attenuation control to adjust the emission intensity of the selected surface. Emission intensity decreases as attenuation increases (i.e., the viewpoint is moved farther from the object).

        •Click the Emission color control to bring up the Edit Color dialog box. Select your color graphically or numerically by mixing the HSL (Hue-Saturation-Lightness) or RGB (Red-Green-Blue) components.

(Note: If shadows don’t appear on a surface where they should, check the Emission color. If a surface’s Emission color is white, then shadows will not appear. Changing the Emission color also affects the color and intensity of shadows.)

Reflection: 

•The Ambient control sets the percentage of ambient light the surface is able to reflect. This determines how much a surface is subject to brightening effects (as opposed to shades or highlights caused by directional light).

•The Diffuse control describes the surface quality of the surface. Uneven or rough surfaces tend to reflect incident, directional light in a non-directional, diffuse way. Diffuse reflection carries the color of the surface rather than the color of light.

•Shininess is the ability of a curved surface to reflect directional light from a point-like source (sun, flashlight, spots, etc.), in a more or less focused fashion. The more focused the reflection, the shinier the surface appears. Highlights are confined to a small area if this control is set close to 100, while a wider highlight area will result if the control is set to a low value.

Specular: The Surface’s Glowing is determined by its Specular setting.

      •The Specular setting is the opposite of Diffuse. It is a directional reflection carrying the color of the incident light rather than that of the surface. An extremely smooth and saturated hard surface will produce strong specular reflections (set at close to 100%), while a soft and light surface will produce hardly any (set at close to 0%).

      •Specular Color is theoretically identical to the color of directional light, but the program lets you define it independently. Double-click the sample color here to display the system-level Edit Color subdialog box, in which you can establish your definitions. This color, mixed with the Surface color and the color of the light, will determine the color of the surface where directional light is reflected.

(4) Cover Fill Foreground

In this section, you can define the vector hatch / fill you would like associated to your surface in elevations. 

(Note: These would just be for visual purposes, we are working on linking the 3D surface material with the 2D vectorial fill.)

(5) Texture

In this section, you upload and apply your custom texture image to your surface settings. 

(5a) Browse for your texture. The "X" is to delete an associated texture if you are duplicating a texture just for the settings. The "?" is to browse for a file. When you click on the "?" the following dialog box pops up:

Now you click on "Add..." and our normal finder window will pop up, and you can select your texture image file. Once you have uploaded your texture image file, your dialog box will change to something like the below:

Hit "OK" and you will be back to your main surface dialog box. Now you can begin to manipulate your texture with the other functions of this section. 

(5b) Resizing your image. In this section you can either resize your image by the length or width, or rotate it. If you want to keep the same proportions of your upload image and then manipulate it, click on the "?" button on the right hand side. This will lock the size of the image you uploaded, and when you can one of the sizing fields, it will resize the image proportionately. 

(5c) Tiling options. In this section, you are able to decide how your texture image is repeated / tiled. You can choose a "Random Origin" or you can select one of the four tiling options. Toy with each option and see what works best for your surface image. 

(5c) Alpha Channel Effects. In this section, you are able to add transparency and other options to the texture. 

(Note: If you want your image to have transparency, it needs to be a .png file type)

(5d) Sample. This drop down menu gives you options on your sample window. 1x1 means it's just 1 tile width, if you select 4x4, it will give you a sample tiling preview window 4 tiles wide by 4 tiles high. See example below:

Quick tip: When figuring out your tiling options, make sure you switch your sample option to 4x4 before you start manipulating your settings. That way you can see your preview window update in real-time. 

Quick resources and Tips

When looking for textures to use, make sure you search for "seamless textures". This should provide you will plenty of options to use. 

A website some people like to use is : https://architextures.org/