How would I add these doors and windows as a texture to my building models?

Easton

Hi,

I am trying to figure out how to add doors and windows to my buildings for the purpose of keeping it low poly. How would I do this and make it look seamless and realistic? The majority of the time I am going to use this method is for buildings that a player wont pay much attention to, so I don't want to waste performance.

I saw this used in the game "The Vanishing of Ethan Carter" on some of the secondary buildings that the player wouldn't really get too close to. They looked great and the only way I could tell if they were not polys and actual modeled windows and doors was by inspecting them extremely closely. That's pretty much what I want to accomplish.




Thanks!

StormyBA

Your only real options are chop the door in into the mesh and apply the door texture to that new door geo you dropped in wile using your repeating wall texture around it or create a poly that floats just in front of the wall that you apply your door texture to.

Texture wise its worth looking into a wall texture that only repeats in one direction, left to right will work well with your wall. You can then free up some space on part of your texture for other things such as your door, windows and general building details. You may need to put a slice in the vertical of your building to stop uv stretching if it is rather tool and can cover the seam with some other details.

Mark Dygert

It depends on the spec of the game and the importance of the objects. 

Personally I would go with the bottom option because it allows you to position a door anywhere you want. I wouldn't use a plane, it might z-fight or not have enough depth to be convincing, again that depends on how close the camera is going to get. I would use a box, put two different door textures on the front and back for variety. 

Easton

Ok. Why left to right? When I add a tileable texture isn't going to go all directions?

I see, that makes sense to cut out the door, which should be only 4 vertices, then cut the door out in Photoshop and insert it there. I think I read somewhere that I would have to take the photos when it is overcast or use some sort of special filter, is that right?

Thanks!

Easton

Mark Dygert said:

It depends on the spec of the game and the importance of the objects. 

Personally I would go with the bottom option because it allows you to position a door anywhere you want. I wouldn't use a plane, it might z-fight or not have enough depth to be convincing, again that depends on how close the camera is going to get. I would use a box, put two different door textures on the front and back for variety. 

So would the door be detached from the main building? I am kind of confused as to how this would work, if it would be detached then wouldn't it stick out and be noticeable. I should probably add that this is going to be used for a lot of buildings for an airport in a flight simulator, It would not make sense for me to model every door because most people are not going to be that close, probably 10 feet away minimum.

I am going to model the doors and close details on primary buildings, but not secondary ones because I don't want to waste a lot of performance and I know adding doors and windows aren't going to be needed.

Another thing I was thinking about is possibly adding normal details to make the doors and windows look like it is extruded inwards. So I guess I may need to just cut out the door in PS and then go into Quixel NDO and create the normals around the door, I think I would have to finish texturing the entire building first, but still not sure about this either...