The VI-Suite is an addon for the Blender 3D content creation application that functions as a pre/post processor for the Radiance and EnergyPlus building simulation tools as well as offering various building context analyses. The VI-Suite, like Blender, Radiance, EnergyPlus and OpenFOAM, is free, open-source and multi-platform. The VI-Suite is deeply integrated with Blender and this offers a number of integrated capabilities:

  • Blender’s node system is used to offer a flexible and user-friendly interface,
  • Blender’s advanced material and geometry specification tools are used to define building geometry
  • Blender’s animation system is used to offer parametric as well as static analyses.
  • Blender’s text editor is used to manually edit simulation input files and write custom functions.
  • Blender’s video sequence editor is used to create animations of parametric analyses.
  • Blender’s material system is used to create scene based visualisation of results.
  • Blender’s OpenGL interface is used to create heads-up-displays of information.

In addition the VI-Suite uses matplotlib for 2D result plotting and Kivy for simulation monitoring.

As of version 0.6 the VI-Suite offers:

  • 2D plotting of weather data from EnergyPlus weather files.
  • Dynamic sun path creation with real-time shading and physically based lighting based on date and time.
  • Wind rose creation and 2D plotting of wind data.
  • Shadow study analysis on any geometry within the scene with scene based visualisation and 2D plotting of results.
  • Static and parametric Radiance analyses for the simulation and visualisation of:
    • Daylight factor, illuminance and irradiance.
    • Compliance testing against BREEAM, RIBA 2030 and LEEDv4 standards.
    • Climate Based Daylight Modelling metrics such as daylight availability, useful daylight illuminance and annual sunlight exposure.
    • Luxhour and kiloWatthour exposure.
    • Glare using evalglare.
    • Artificial lighting based on IES files.
    • Creation and visualisation of Radiance BSDFs.
    • Photon maps using Radiance’s photon mapping capability.
  • Static and parametric EnergyPlus analyses for the simulation and visualisation of:
    • Building temperatures and heating/cooling consumption.
    • Node-based complex natural ventilation networks.
    • Internal air quality
  • An experimental node interface to EnergyPlus’ EMS program infrastructure.
  • Static mesh generation (with Netgen) and an interface to OpenFOAM for detailed airflow analysis (Linux only).
  • Most types of result data can be visualised within the Blender scene, plotted or exported to CSV file for subsequent visualisation.

Future blog posts on this site will contain tutorial videos covering various aspects and capabilities of the VI-Suite. All the tutorial videos for the v0.6 release of the VI-Suite will be placed in a YouTube playlist as time goes on.

The Download page of this blog contains download links for the latest version and user-manual. Links to the github code repository can also be found there where bug reports should be posted. The VI-Suite is released under a GPL version 2 license.

Support requests should be posted to the VI-Suite Google Group. Comments can also be left here or on the relevant blog post.

An article describing the VI-Suite has been published in ‘Open Geospatial Data, Software and Standards’. As the article is open-access a link to the full text can be downloaded here. The article reference can be used to cite the VI-Suite in research work.

Southall, R., Biljecki, F.
The VI-Suite: a set of environmental analysis tools with geospatial data applications
Open Geospatial Data, Software and Standards 2(1), Sep 2017, 23
Abstract: The VI-Suite is a free and open-source addon for the 3D content creation application Blender, developed primarily as a tool for the contextual and performative analysis of buildings. Its functionality has grown from simple, static lighting analysis to fully parametric lighting, shadowing, and building energy analyses. It adopts a flexible, mesh geometry based approach to the specification of calculation points and this has made it suitable for certain types of 3D geospatial analyses and data visualisation.

 

The bibtex formatted reference can be downloaded here

Although every attempt is made to make the VI-Suite as stable as possible the current version (0.6) should be considered beta software and bugs do still exist. Bug reports are however most welcome.  As such the VI-Suite comes with no warranty and the accuracy of the results generated are the responsibility of the user.

Having said that the VI-Suite does strive to create a flexible, powerful, comprehensive and user-friendly set of tools for the performance analysis of buildings, and I hope you find it useful.

The creation of the VI-Suite would not be possible without the work of the Blender Foundation, and many thanks go to them for creating and distributing Blender. 

Thanks also go to:

  • The University of Brighton for part funding this work with a sabbatical award.
  • The Lawrence Berkley National Laboratory for creating Radiance. 
  • The US Department of Energy for creating EnergyPlus 
  • OpenCFD Ltd for releasing OpenFOAM as open-source software.
  • The National Renewable Energy Laboratory for providing Radiance and EnergyPlus binaries 
  • The Matplotlib team, and John Hunter in particular, for creating and releasing matplotlib. 
  • The Kivy Organization for releasing the UI framework Kivy.

 

 

12 thoughts on “

  1. Hello!
    I had a look on the documentation and it seems that the application is not able to perform Daylight Autonomy analysis.

    I suggest the implementation of this feature 🙂 As far as I know this analysis is no more than a bunch of regular iluminance analysis within a period of a year that, with little processing, provides the percentage of time that the iluminance value fit the max and min criteria of iluminance in each point.

    I am an Architecture student and just learnt about these analysis. We used Sketch+Daysim for this, but I think that blender’s workflow may be much more powerfull.

  2. Hello,
    Excuse me for my bad english,
    I would like to ask about WindRose that I can’t change to config to other local. I wish change config to use for other city, in other country (in Brasil) but, is limited in cities of England. Is it correct ? thank !
    Sérgio Dias Maciel

    • Hi Sergio.
      Your English is very good.
      If you are using v0.3 you can put your Brazilian weather file in the EPfiles/Weather folder in the VI-Suite addon folder. If you are using v0.4 you can select the directory where you have your Brazilian weather files in the VI-Suite addon settings.
      Regards
      Ryan

  3. Dear Prof. Ryan Southall,
    I have been following your VI Suite tool for a long time, always motivating my students and fellow teachers from Brazil to use it, in the teaching of architecture and urbanism. I would like to know if Blender 2.8 is expected to update due to real time rendering. I wish you success and prosperity, thank you for your attention.
    Sergio Dias Maciel
    (UNEMAT, MT, Brazil)

    • Hi Sérgio.
      I am working on the VI-Suite update for Blender 2.8, but as the OpenGL specification in Blender has changed it is taking a long time.
      The EEVEE realtime rendering capabilities of Blender 2.8 are great, but as the technique is not physically accurate it does not have much impact on the VI-Suite. I would still recommend using Cycles for any visualisation of lighting/shadows for example.
      Regards
      Ryan

  4. Dear Dr. Southall, thank for such a superb tool. I am learning to use it primarily for solar passive architecture.
    Jiten Prajapati
    Architect

  5. Pingback: VI-Suite user manual released for environmental analysis with Blender - OSArch

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