Lighthouse project - help out a relative beginner with modeling best practices?

Carabiner

A little background: I started learning Maya around 3 months ago, while also having a full-time day job. It's been difficult to get enough time in, but I've been watching a ton of Digitaltutors videos and am really excited about pushing myself to new levels.

I've done lots of bits and pieces, but not a full scene. I decided to recreate this lighthouse (1,2 but not copying that door,3), ideally in a Bioshock Infinite-esque style. I'm not going for an exact re-creation, since it'll be a little stylized, but I'm aiming to use most of the architecture/shapes as inspiration.

Currently I have some of the modeling done, and I wanted to start a thread to check in about how I'm doing before I get too far. I'm pretty intimidated by the level of talent here, so initially I didn't want to post anything until I got to a certain level -- but I realized that I might be able to get there faster with the help of people here. There are a few specific things I'd like feedback on, outlined below. Thanks!

Note: I'll probably modify the door/ add a stair or something, or find ref photos that better depict that area. Right now it looks like it would be hard to step up.

Edit: These are all Maya renders, haven't put it in Unreal yet.

Rendered:




Wires:

Question: Would I want to delete the separate faces on the bottom edge part, and then just "fill hole" with one solid face?


This is to demonstrate how I constructed the windows -- I made holes in the base building mesh, and then constructed the windows as separate objects.


Here's the railing. I feel like I might want to cut down polys here, perhaps by doing this...


Question: Should I redo the railing with the technique I've done on the left hole? I got rid of the triangle and edge. I think that would make one shape with a bunch of edges though, so I'm not sure if that's a good idea?

Carabiner

Just wondering if anyone had input here! I'm not sure whether I should just keep at it, or if I need to re-assess some geometry.

Cay

Keep modularity in mind I'd say.. instead of making 6 or even 8 windows unique.. I'd make one that works und use that multiple times..
use horizontally tileable trim textures for your "rails" and the "bottom edge part"
tileable textures for plaster, roof and so on.. tint the plaster in a blueish tone in the shader for the bottom part of the house and so on..

afterwards you can do quite a lot of shader "magic" to cover repetition

just throwing it in in case you wanted to do it unique

..about the n-gons.. (faces with more than 4 vertices/edges).. if you export it into an engine it will get triangulated(split into triangles).. but it's easier to work with inside the 3d package if it's mostly quads.. thats what I think about it.. I try to avoid them, urban legend probably

Carabiner

Okay, here's some progress. This is my first time unwrapping something of this size, and also my first time putting something in-engine. Also my first time fully texturing something. WHEeeeeee

Here's a WIP. The textures are off a bit, specifically in the bottom of the roof and the railing at the top (which you can't really see from what I'm uploading, but oh well), and also I forgot to texture the door.



Diffuse texture (wip, with UVs overlaid):



I think I could have done it more efficiently. I see people talking about modular textures and I'd like to do something modular for the stucco walls, but I don't know how?

Also, does anyone know why there's that huge gray shadow under the roofs? Looks like something to do with ambient occlusion maybe - I can't figure it out.

Carabiner

Here's an update. I've been working on this whenever I can in the last few months!



What's changed from last time?
- I decided to go with a more handpainted texture style, because I found that was keeping my interest more.
- I realized that I needed to break up the texture and export things separately. The wall texture is now a tiling material, as is the transparent/window texture andt eh wood texture.
- I learned how to make and implement opacity maps, which I've used for the grass blades and tree needles.
- Learned out to set up base ground material in Unreal so that it overlays itself at an angle, etc (Per this tutorial: http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/TerrainAdvancedTextures.html)

Things I need to do now:
- Re-evaluate whether very top tower should maybe be transparent because that’s where the light would come from. (Hard to see in these screenshots, though.)
- Put a step to get up to the door.
- Figure out transparent material!! It's currently showing the "hollow" inside of the model, so I'm not sure how to get around that. I have this post bookmarked as a reference point for getting some actual textures/interest into the glass.
- I just baked in lightmaps and I had several errors there with overlapping UVs, gotta figure that out (wall texture is looking much noisier than I'd thought it would after baking lighting.)
- Re-UV several sections of the roof that you can't see, in order to make the texture tile cleanly.
- Fix scale/general look of base grass texture, and add in groundcover that would be realistic in an environment with pine trees (e.g. instead of grass it would be dirt, fallen pine needles, etc.)
- Add detail to main wall through use of decals and vertex painting, in order to reduce the appearance of tiling

And finally, I am also planning to go back and unify all of the style/textures. For example, the door texture is pretty different/clashing with the wooden texture around the edges -- definitely something I'm going to revisit.