MacDirectory Magazine

Ergo Josh

MacDirectory magazine is the premiere creative lifestyle magazine for Apple enthusiasts featuring interviews, in-depth tech reviews, Apple news, insights, latest Apple patents, apps, market analysis, entertainment and more.

Issue link: https://digital.macdirectory.com/i/1384448

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Well-Furnished The easily-drawn 2D floor plans transform into three-dimensional rooms that you can interactively walk through or record video tours or stills from multiple camera angles. But it’s the furniture and decorations that help make a house a home and a room a living-space. Live Home 3D comes with a respectable collection, but its true value comes in the variety of standard 3D model formats it can import from other sources. A direct link to the huge Trimble 3D Warehouse is built into the object library, you can go shopping on your own, or use a program like AutoCAD SketchUp (a free, Mac version is available) to go the DIY route. The program will be able to import models in the FBX, OBJ, Collada, and 3DS formats. One feature we greatly appreciated was that the program has a sense of where floors and surfaces are, kind of a virtual gravity. Furniture will sit on the floor and other furnishings will recognize table and counter surfaces. This can be really tricky in other 3D programs, with tables floating mid-air and lamps partially embedded in walls. Location, Location, Location Version 4 adds a roomful of new features and enhancements. One of the most noticeable appears in the Live View. Renderings are now based on physical materials, so surfaces now have a more natural and realistic texture. This comes into play with both interior and exterior features. On the Mac, this uses Metal 2 technology. In fact, the new version can also take advantage of the performance of Apple’s snappy new M1 chip and the MacBook Pro T ouch Bar. It can also tap into a Radeon Pro or Intel CPU for hardware-accelerated rendering. With home design, the yard, large or small, can be a key element of the living experience. Live Home 3D 4 Pro now includes an advanced terrain editor. In fact, it’s the first program in the Mac and Microsoft stores to do so. These let you reproduce a landscape surface identical to where the house is being built and also can let you do landscape design for an existing property with a model of the actual home. When you’re doing a walk-through, you’ll be able to look out the windows at the actual yard and gardens you have surrounding your virtual home.

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