First Modular Building

DanConroy

Hello all,

Just thought I'd post this up, I took a picture at a local park and thought what the hell I could really use the practice doing building models etc.

Heres the pic :




And I'll start with the wire and modular parts shot




Heres some shots of the objects etc in the UE3 Editor, I'm still learning the engine but its nice to see something within a game engine.












Heres the building in Max and then under it in UE.







Sorry for the amount of images, I just wanted to get everything across to get the best help/feedback really.

Thanks for reading and your time.

Toast

It's a great model but the building itself is not so interesting (in my opinion).

There seems to be Christmas lights on the reference photo, maybe that could make the building a bit more dynamic? I don't know, I just think the area between the roof and top of the wall, where the gutter is, could have more interesting details.

Other than that it's a good model, and great textures.

praetus

One of the major things that i notice is your texture has some heavy repeating on it. I couldn't look at the roof without seeing the same image over and over again. same with the siding as well. Try and either clean up your photos or roll with some better ones.

Construction itself is not too bad. I like it.

DanConroy

praetus wrote: »

One of the major things that i notice is your texture has some heavy repeating on it. I couldn't look at the roof without seeing the same image over and over again. same with the siding as well. Try and either clean up your photos or roll with some better ones.

Construction itself is not too bad. I like it.

Thanks for the feedback mate, the roof was a temp that just stuck there and I can't remember why lol.

I'll go back and do something about the repeating, thanks for the feedback.

Toast = Sorry about the pic/building being boring I just wanted to try out this modular stuff lark for myself. I've never took the time to do it and thought I'd go with a picture I took.

I'll try and get the Christmas lights on there, see how they look.

Thanks again.

Toast

Sorry, I didn't mean to sound harsh. I don't mean boring as in the whole building, I just think there could be more detail around where the gutter is.
At the moment it's a bit flat (in my opinion). Especially that last shot.

In your reference picture there is a nice shadow and strong overhang of the roof which has a nice shadow breaking up the wall which makes it more dynamic.

DanConroy

No its fine Toast I see what you mean, I'll try and tweak it tonight when I get some solid time on the PC.

Thanks for the feedback.

Mark Dygert

1) The bottom floor ref has doors, it would probably be a good idea to do a set of doors that can be placed in there. Even if you want to let people inside it might be too expensive to let them in every doorway. If you wanted to be cleaver and modify the concept a tiny bit, you could reuse the doors on the 2nd floor for the first or vice versa.

2) Might want the windows seperate props, so you can do variations. Like an AC unit in one, a rock hole that's been patched. Or just one version with it closed. The center one being open all the way down is repetitive.

3) Your stairs are kind of weakly attached to the platforms, move the vert support into that joint to help fill it out.

4) You might want to do some variations of the roof, as well as break to match the width of the lower modules. Right now you must have 2.5 modules? for every roof piece, which wouldn't be as flexible for the level artists, but it really depends on what they need. It looks like the roof was tailor made to arrange the pieces in this way, instead of being modular and letting the artists arrange them anyway they need them.

Good stuff, keep it rolling.

SHEPEIRO

you need to think a bit about th frequency of detail in your maps this is really important in getting something that tiles. removing variation from the base map can often lead to better results, and you can add it back in with a second layer, vertex colours, lighting or decals.

again would be interesting to see where the tiles in your mapping is as i suspect you have repeating patterns within 0-1

DanConroy

Thanks Vig and Shepeiro, I'll get back to work and see where it all goes.

I'll do my best with the decals too, its something I've never done before so now would be a good time to learn lol.

Matroskin

i think it is not a bad model as 4 the first modular stuff.

I agree with all previous comments.
On my side i can tell that your textures need more definition. E.g. stair steps could benefit from edges being lighter and "anti sliding" relief could be more defined and sharp. Basically, where people walk on and scratch surface it needs to be wore damaged/aged.

Same concerns other props. Gray trash bin looks like a plain color. It could also have some wearing and tearing on it, darker on the bottom, lighter on edges etc.
Textures look too blurry. They need some "graininess", some sharp overlaying texture.

I totally agree with Shepiero regarding putting some variation through vertex color or texture mask.
Unreal engine is just awesome for such tricks. U could just use 2 different brick textures and connect them into LinearInterpolate material expression (as A and B components) and use vertex color (as alpha component).

Anyways, great job, keep it up!

DanConroy

Thanks Matroskin, I should explain about the blured bits. Because I'm an idiot I was saving my files out as bmp for UE. Seems they wasn't as strong, I done them as tga and everything popped out abit more.

I'll update with pics once I do my to-do polycount feedback list.

Will add this info to the doc I've got open, thanks mate.

DanConroy

Sorry for taking so long to update, been looking around on decals and such.

Heres a UE render, but I couldn't get the decals to work how they should in there. I tried to add Moss to the roof, but it seems abit weak in max and abit of extra dirt around the brick.




I might play around with lights in the editor around the Christmas lights for something abit different.

And Max renders :











I still need to edit the stairs and tweak the asset textures too.

Thanks for any more help/feedback.

SHEPEIRO

thats much better, but there are still some tiling issues with the dirt on the bricks and the trim brick colours, also roof edge trim (sides) is bare and needs some loving

DanConroy

SHEPEIRO wrote: »

thats much better, but there are still some tiling issues with the dirt on the bricks and the trim brick colours, also roof edge trim (sides) is bare and needs some loving

Right'o mate, will add to my to-do list and sort that out tonight.

Thanks for the help.

Toast

That looks great now. I love the shadow placement on that first in-game shot!

Also, now with the Christmas lights it makes the building look very unique and original. Great touch. But the best thing is they're not obvious on the first time you look at the building, you have to do a second take!

Mark Dygert

That's coming along nicely good stuff

DanConroy

Thanks Toast, I did the lighting due to your post about the shadow under the roof in the ref image.

Cheers too Vig.