Packaging programs Now the idea was born, my troubles began. I showed the idea to my wife. She could not see the picture what I was meaning. `Does it has character?´, Has it natural walls from clay and has it wooden roof beams?´ The beginning of a wish list next to mine was born. But also that the piece of paper was not enough to convince her to support my idea. It means that I had to work through this first hurdle before I could continue. But it would also mean that upcoming ‘stakeholders’ would cross my path and ask relevant questions. On this page you find the different programs I use to visualize my ideas. I had to think how to design and what kind of software do I need. It has to be a design software and I discover that it had to be 3D. Because I am not a professional and I don’t want to spend a lot of money. Finally I find SketchUp. Via YouTube there are a lot of clips and very friendly to design with. As you can see, it is not bad at all. It works with several layers and it is indeed very friendly. Enthusiastic, I showed my design to my wife again. Still she was not satisfied, because she couldn’t taste the material. It was not like what she see all the time in the home magazines. Disappointed, but realistic I had to do research if my design could be ‘photo-shopped’. Now a big world is opening but also the prizes, $ 2.500 and that yearly is not unusual. Branches like Adobe, Lumion or Vray. It was too slow ‘rendering’ (name for creating a photo from a design), expensive or the results were unsatisfactory. Then I found a program for free. A gaming program named Unreal Engine 4 (UE4). It is very hard to learn and although you can transport your SketchUp design into UE4. After that you have to click on the surface of your design and give them a ‘material’. You can walk around your house, even it is possible to open and close doors. Creating a real burning fire place let it snow, let it storm or rain. But it costs a lot of very hard work when you are a beginner like me. Perhaps in the future. But then the development in game and design industry of UE4 came with Twinmotion. A fast rendering software with auto presented parts. In the link you see what is possible with Twinmotion. The last hurdle before I start my journey was to create a website for stakeholders on distance. What you have to know is that you must have 3 things: -1 A program to write your website, called a Website builder; -2 A domain, called a Website adress; -3 A server that will publish your site, called a Host There are a lot of ‘free’ website building programs like Wordpress, Doomla and so fort, but free is not really free or a beautiful program like Doomla is very complex and is more for big companies or governments. You can use it for private if you like to but sometimes you have to know a little about programming. I tested several of these programs and I like ‘WYSIWYG Web-builder’. I can create what I want with no obligations, or annual payments. I( 2021: I have changed to Xara Designer Pro X, it is more friendly with the same bases. )