Architecture Series® - Hip-and-gable roof + glazed tiles

Mant1k0re

Hi all,

I am currently trying to model an East Asian style hip-and-gable roof complete with glazed tiles.

Here's a rl example of what I am trying to achieve:






I am going for something slightly more curvy on the edge, though. Here's what I came up with so far.






As expected, the headache started when I started to model the tiles. Trying to align tiles evenly following the curvature, specifically. I tried a couple things... Since I am using Max, I cut the mesh at regular interval, created splines from edges, and then used spline tile profile to create the glazed tiles.



The problem obviously is that this is not working where the roof is getting curvy as topology does not flow straight, by definition. So from there on a lot of manual adjustment is needed to cut, rotate and place tiles, and this is taking forever.

I was wondering if anyone had a tip to come to the result I am looking for in a more strealined manner?

Ramseus

That looks like a headache. Have you tried just modelling it out without the extra upwards curve, then bending the corner(s) after the geometry's all there? Sounds hacky but that's what I would try.

ZacD

Luckly, you only need to do one corner, and then duplicate the others, I'd try bending like Ramseus suggested, and then fixing the small issues by hand.

Mant1k0re

With soft selection on you mean, merging tiles with the roof (right now tiles are separates elements)? That is pushing vertices all over the place on the tiles and produces real ugly results. There's got to be a way to do this properly, the guys at Crystal Dynamics did it all over the place for Tomb Raider, and in later levels, tiles are definitely actual geometry. The question is how...?

ZacD

I looks like they baked the texture into a tiling material and just bent the low poly model.

Mant1k0re

ZacD wrote: »

I looks like they baked the texture into a tiling material and just bent the low poly model.

It looks like geo to me for the most part.

ZacD

You can use geometry with a tiling texture, what I'm trying to say is you don't need to model a huge high poly roof with all the details when you could make modular pieces that use the same texture, and you could merge the modular pieces or leave them seperate depending on your needs.

Mant1k0re

Hey, thanks for trying to help. I must admit I don't understand, the model I am trying to make is symetrical - so yes, I only need to make a corner. But that's about all the modularity I can think of for it right now. And coming back to the bending option, I' ll give it a go tomorrow, maybe I can figure a way to do it that doesn't involve soft selection. A FFD modifier maybe...

Shrike

have you tried putting everything into a FFD or similar bend modifier ?

Lamont

I would use splines to deform a series of the meshes in a row (make sure they have adequate subdivisions for the deformations of the spline).

Mant1k0re

Hey guys,

duh. Yeah, the solution was to use a FFD nodifier. I remodeled the roof without curvature, and used a slice plane to cut straight on x and y every 20 cm, like so:




Then used a simple FFD modifier to get the shape I wanted:



After that it was as easy as creating shapes from my edge selection and use spline profiles to turn them to geo. Rince and repeat for beams. It's not 100% perfect but it's pretty damn close to what I want, adjustment should be minimal from there on (obviously I'll remove as many edge loops from the roof as I can).




Thanks all for helping