Make it happen, 400 houses in ~1 week..

skydoll

Hi guys, i need some help !

I only need to unwrap and texture 400 houses, i already have the models and locations of the real houses
lets say i unwrap and texture a ~50 poly house in 1 hour
400 houses x 1 hour = 400 hours = 10 working weeks..

What did i say 10 weeks, i have like a week to do this..

Has anybody done this kind of thing, with case sensitive houses ?
case sensitive: they must resemble the real life houses, roof, brick, door colors need to match.

My best guess to finish this is by making repetitive textures for all the different roofs walls etc..
than face map everything and done..

Any suggestions would be appreciated, cheers..

glottis8

you play it smart, you can have same textures color tinted to give variety to the same setup of houses. Dunno how complex your geometry is, or what your textures look like. But packed textures are very versatile and useful.

praetus

I would say in normal circumstances you would do as Glottis8 says and make a color overlay on your texture so you can get a bunch of variations from one texture sheet/model however it sounds like you needs these to match up specifically. Your idea is pretty good as well for making base repeating textures and setting up a multi material for all the texture classes. I would go through and see what house repeat as well to see what you can get away with repeating.

whats_true

Don't cut your sleep out of the equation.

How close are you going to be to the houses? Whats the purpose of this?

WarrenM

My suggestion would be to find somewhere else to work. Man...

monster

If you don't need to get to close to the houses in the final product you could use procedural materials and then render to texture with an auto unwrap.

Another way would be to just unwrap like 20 houses, and then duplicate / replace all the others.

PhattyEwok

You could also procedurally generate the houses if you know how to code. (Sounds WAYYYYY easier said then done of course) But something along the lines of modular pieces that fit together to form a complete house than some kind of program to assemble them into every possible combination.

That's probly the hardest way to approach this problem though:poly142:

cptSwing

Instances, instances, instances.

ZombieWells

http://www.scriptspot.com/3ds-max/scripts/ghosttown-lite use this... and replace their textures with yours... the video sux, (just get past that) but it builds whole cities in like 5 sec. Not too familuar with it, or if you have to buy it etc. I just remembered seeing it some where, and thought it might solve your problem. Also, I second WarrenM on this.

aesir

Get some freelance help...

leleuxart

In what game will there be 400 unique houses? I'd really like to see/play it!

I'd go with what some others have suggested. Model a few different variations(or hell, model one basic house and unwrap it with some space for attachments, then duplicate it a few times and do a few different attachments on them: window frames, antennas, porches, chimneys, etc). Then just set up a shader for more variation in the house colors.

Your best bet would probably be a tiling house textures of bricks and different siding types, then another sheet for all of the attachments.

glynnsmith

Do you have concept art or photos you need to match?
If not, how distinct do they need to be?

Why would anyone agree to this if they don't already have a method (or several) figured out and tested?

cupsster

Model, unwrap, texture repetitive stuff like doors and windows and make them floating geometry then just box out and do house walls and roof, slap floating shit on it and that's it. Make it into atlas with enough free space for unique features you need to add latter and go go go. Do not forget to sleep as well otherwise it will be nightmare.

skydoll

Hi Guys,

It seems i am going to stick with the original plan, with some color variation
ghost town is too random, can't instance the objects because they need to look different.