Blender modelling with ASTRA
Blender AI that models buildings from elevation drawings
Upload the four elevations of a building. A few minutes later you download a measured .blend scene: every wall, window, door and roof plane as its own object, named materials, five cameras and studio lights, ready for Cycles.
For Premium members · 15 to 40 coins a model · the rest of the hold goes back to your balance
• Measured in metres
• .blend · .glb · .dae · .ifc
• Drawings read by OpenAI's GPT-6 Astra
• Usually a few minutes
From four elevations to a .blend in four steps
No modelling, no tracing: ASTRA reads the drawings you already have and hands you a scene you can open, edit and render.
Drop in the four elevations
One sheet with all four elevations, or four separate images in any order: ASTRA works out which side is which. Add a floor plan if you have one; it fixes the footprint and the depth.
1
Give the front width and notes
Both optional. Enter the front width in metres, outside face to outside face without roof overhangs, and the model is built at exactly that scale. Notes of up to 2,000 characters can name materials, floors or the roof type.
Generate the model
The model usually takes a few minutes. You can leave the page: it keeps building and waits for you in Recent models.
Open the .blend
Download the .blend, or the zip with every format and the five renders, and open it in Blender 4.5 LTS or newer.
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3
4
What is inside the .blend file
A complete scene, not a mesh to clean up: open it and press F12, or start editing the model straight away.
Geometry
One closed mesh per wall with its openings cut through; one object per window or door (frame, glass or leaf, glazing bars, sill); one per roof plane, gable and slab
Materials
Neutral plaster, Neutral roof, Window frames, Glazing, Doors, Sills
Cameras
Front, rear, left and right (orthographic, like the drawings) and one perspective view
Lighting
A sun, a soft area light and a studio ground plane
Render settings
Cycles with denoising, AgX colour, 1200 × 900 px
Units
Metric, 1 unit = 1 m
Version
Saved with Blender 4.5 LTS; opens in 4.5 or newer
The same zip also holds a .glb (glTF 2.0) for the web, game engines and AR viewers, a .dae for SketchUp, an IFC4 file for Revit and five PNG renders.
Separate objects you can edit, not a frozen mesh
ASTRA builds the building the way you would block it out yourself, element by element, so the file stays easy to work with.
Add a Title
One object per element
Every wall, window, door and roof plane is its own object, named after the drawing's elements. Select a window and you have the window, with its frame, glass and sill.
Roofs with eaves and verges
Flat and pitched roof planes come with their overhangs, eaves and verges, plus gables and slabs, as the elevations draw them.
Real thickness on the drawn lines
Walls have real thickness, with their outside faces on the lines of the drawing, so outside sizes match the elevations and you can measure the model in metres.
Materials named to be replaced
Neutral materials with plain names: swap Neutral plaster for brick or Glazing for your own glass shader and every wall or window updates at once.
Cameras and light already set
Four orthographic cameras framed on the building, one perspective view, a sun, a soft area light and a studio floor. Press render, or move the camera and keep going.
GPT-6 Astra reads the drawings, tested code builds the model
ASTRA is ArchiVinci's drawing-to-model engine. It splits the job in two: the AI reads, and fixed, tested code builds. That is why the geometry is measured and editable instead of guessed.
1
Read
OpenAI's GPT-6 Astra reads your elevations, and the plan if you add one, and writes the building down as data: each wall with its length, height and thickness, each opening with its kind, position, sill, size and panes, the roof planes with their overhangs, the gables, slabs and floor levels. It returns data in a strict form (OpenAI's Structured Outputs), never code.
2
Check
Our checks make the data consistent: openings stay inside their walls, nothing overlaps, roof planes are flat. Then they set the scale from your front width or the drawings' dimensions.
3
Build
A fixed, tested Blender 4.5 LTS script builds the model from that data and Cycles renders the five views. The same model is written as .blend, .glb and .dae, and IfcOpenShell writes the IFC file.
4
Review
A second AI pass compares the renders with your drawings, side by side. Anything it cannot confirm becomes a note on the result: "Ready · check" instead of "Ready", with the list of what to look at.
Because the AI only fills in a fixed description and the same script builds every model, each .blend comes out with the same structure: the same object types, material names, cameras and lights.
Measured from your drawings' own dimensions
ASTRA takes the scale from the most reliable source it finds, in this order:
1.
The front width you enter: the model is built at exactly that width.
2.
The dimension lines drawn on the elevations.
3.
The level marks, which also give the floor heights.
4.
A scale bar. A written ratio such as 1:100 on its own is not used: an image has no paper size.
Only when a drawing has none of these does ASTRA fall back on typical door and storey heights, and the result then says that the scale is approximate. Every result shows the model's width, depth and height in metres and where its scale came from.
Image-to-3D generators, blocking out by hand, or ASTRA
Three ways to get a building into Blender. They suit different jobs; this is what each one starts from and gives back.
Starts from
Image-to-3D generator
A photo, a render or a text prompt
Blocking out by hand
Your drawings, traced and extruded in Blender
Gives you
Usually one mesh, shaped to look right
Whatever you model, as detailed as you make it
ASTRA
The four elevation drawings, plus a floor plan if you have one
One object per wall, window, door and roof plane
Size
Time to a first model
Minutes
Openings
Hours of blocking out
Usually scaled by eye afterwards
As you measure it
Usually a few minutes
Part of the surface
Cut one by one
Cut through the walls, with frames, glazing bars and sills
In metres, from the drawings' dimensions or your front width
What Blender users make with it
Add a Title
Quick visuals of a house
Show an existing or proposed house in Cycles the same day you get its drawings, with the cameras already framed.
Real buildings for games, VR and AR
Take the .glb into a game engine or an AR viewer: real buildings at real size, with clean, separate parts.
Turntables and fly-throughs
Animate the perspective camera around a measured model instead of a box with a picture on it.
A starting block for detail
Begin detailed modelling from walls, openings and roofs that are already placed, then add cladding, gutters and interiors yourself.
Context buildings
Place the neighbouring houses around a new design at their real size, from their planning drawings.
One house, four elevations, one Blender scene
A test house from our own drawings: the elevation sheet that went in and three of the five renders that came out of the .blend.
The four-elevation sheet that was uploaded
Perspective render from the .blend
Front view from the orthographic front camera
From the .blend to a photoreal image
The scene is ready for Cycles: denoising, AgX colour and the five cameras are already set. For a photoreal picture without touching a shader, press "Render this view" under any of the five renders: it opens that view as the input image of ArchiVinci's Exterior module where you set the light and the materials in words.
What a model costs
Who can use it
Premium members, with a Premium plan or pass.
Coins per model
Starting a model holds 40 coins. When it is done you pay what it actually cost, at least 15 and at most 40 coins, and the rest goes straight back to your balance. A typical house costs 15.
Fair use today
One model at a time, up to 10 a day. Files are kept for 7 days, then deleted: download them to keep them.
If it cannot be finished
A model that cannot be finished gives all 40 coins back.
Blender modelling with ASTRA: questions and answers
Which Blender version opens the .blend file?
Blender 4.5 LTS or newer. The file is saved with Blender 4.5 LTS. If you work in an older version, use the .glb from the same zip: it opens in older Blender versions and in most 3D apps.
Can I edit the model after I open it in Blender?
Yes. Every wall, window, door and roof plane is its own object, named after the drawing's elements, and the materials have plain names you can replace.
Does the Blender model come with textures?
No. It comes with neutral materials (plaster, roof, window frames, glazing, doors, sills) so you can apply your own.
Is ASTRA the same as asking ChatGPT to write a Blender script?
No. In ASTRA the AI never writes code. OpenAI's GPT-6 Astra reads the drawings and fills in a fixed description of the building (walls, openings, roof planes, levels), our checks make it consistent, and a fixed, tested Blender script builds the model from it. Every model therefore has the same clean structure.
Which AI model does ASTRA use?
OpenAI's GPT-6 Astra reads the drawings. ASTRA asks it for a strict description of the building, not for a 3D model, and builds the geometry with open-source tools: Blender 4.5 LTS for the model and the renders, IfcOpenShell for the IFC file.
Can I use the model in a game engine or an AR viewer?
Yes. Every model comes with a .glb file (glTF 2.0 binary), the format most game engines, web viewers and AR viewers read. It is in metres, so the building arrives at its real size.
Can I upload photos of a building instead of drawings?
No. ASTRA reads elevation drawings, not photos. To turn a photo of a building into a new visual, use ArchiVinci's Exterior module.
How long does a model take, and can I close the page?
Usually a few minutes. You can leave the page: the model keeps building and waits in Recent models, which lists your last 10 models with their status.
What if my drawings have no dimensions?
Enter the front width and the model is built at exactly that width. Without a width, dimension lines, level marks or a scale bar, ASTRA uses typical door and storey heights and the result says that the scale is approximate.
Which kinds of buildings can ASTRA model?
Low-rise buildings with straight walls and flat or pitched roofs; bay windows and conservatories work. A model holds up to 60 walls and 150 openings. Curved walls and very complex roofs are approximated and named in the notes of the result.
The same model, two more ways
Your next Blender scene starts with four elevations
Upload the drawings, press Generate and open a measured, ready-to-light .blend in a few minutes.
Blender is a trademark of the Blender Foundation, SketchUp of Trimble Inc. and Revit of Autodesk, Inc. GPT-6 Astra is a model made by OpenAI. ArchiVinci is not affiliated with or endorsed by any of them.