Show HN: MakePlace – An Interior Design Simulator

[jawslouis]

MakePlace is a PC app that lets you drag-and-drop furniture and edit floorplans. The goal is to make interior design easy and fun, like playing with Lego.

It started off as an app to simulate housing in an MMORPG, since the furniture system there was atrocious. I'm now trying to adapt it as a simulator for general interior design.

Like many 3D design software, there are a bunch of tools and controls, and first-time users may feel somewhat lost. So I've made a starting tutorial to help ease users into the controls. Do you think the tutorial works well?

Let me know what else can be improved!

[rl3]

I thought the UE4 reference scene looked familiar.[0][1] Now that room can get some proper interior decorating!

The origin fascinate me:

>It started off as an app to simulate housing in an MMORPG, since the furniture system there was atrocious.

I'm going to quote part of a comment I made five and a half years ago that I dredged up:

"Neural nets can probably be used for level design today. One use case might be creating an entire urban environment complete with residential interiors, where the artists don't have to slave over each individual apartment for it to be believable. Imagine playing a war game where the levels look like there's actually people living there."[2]

AI's advanced a bit since then, to put it mildly. Seems some apps are already there.[3]

Interior design tools, archviz and gamedev are all different things, of course. In any case, cool project!

[0] https://cdn.akamai.steamstatic.com/steam/apps/2082490/ss_e45...

[1] https://external-preview.redd.it/n-7TOneH8RbHjK0Ag62bXX4WxkE...

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14253073

[3] https://analyticsindiamag.com/5-ai-powered-home-and-interior...

[jawslouis]

Looks like that UE4 scene is pretty recognizable! It's credited, of course [1]

Using AI in interior design is very interesting, and something I should look more into. I'll be interested to see how well the AI performs - will probably give some of the apps on the list you linked a try.

[1] https://makeplace.app/places/633/Red-Accent

[senkora]

I’ve used and liked the open source http://www.sweethome3d.com/ for this purpose.

[jawslouis]

Sweet Home 3D is great if you don't want to download anything, since they have a browser version.

My app improves on Sweet Home 3D in 2 main ways:

- Rearrange furniture directly in 3D (In Sweet Home 3D, you have to add/move furniture in the 2D view, which then updates the 3D view)

- Better graphics (Sweet Home 3D doesn't have textures on most furniture)

[senkora]

Both good points. The split between 2D and 3D in Sweet Home 3D is quite awkward. It is possible to retexture furniture but I never bothered. I think between the better interface and better default furniture you may have something here.

[manzu]

are you considering a macos or linux version?

[jawslouis]

Not at this time. I'm focusing on first making the Windows version work well.

A Mac version is something that is commonly requested, so I can look at that if the app becomes popular enough.