Background buildings

Vassk

Hello everyone, I would like to ask experienced people how the background of buildings is made? According to my location, they will be located 500-1000 meters from the player. How to do them technically? Thank you so much for your help in advance! Because I can't find help anywhere, no one wants to help... I want it to look beautiful and the windows to light up, because it will be late in the evening in the location.

Vassk

a little closer, there will be more buildings, they will be of the same type, but I want to make them different in color. This complicates the task. I damn much want to learn how to make the background of the city very beautiful in Unreal Engine 5.

okidoki

Well maybe just try it.. start simple.. a cuboid with textures only.. or some simple subdiv and extruding.. or some bit more..
Try to put it into a real scene for comparison.. (don't focus too much about the fitting into the scene.. just the difference in noticeable details.. )
The textures maybe in some generative way.. with alternatives.. some switching lights..
Only for a night view.. or even on daylight.. and so on..

Bigger Studios don't use black magic.. ( ..i guess  )

Alex_J

a good reference would be the matrix demo for unreal.

i havent looked at it yet but watched some of the videos they made about it. looks like they just make modular buildings in the typical way and nanite takes care of optimization for distant ones.

for windows they use some fancy parallax shader to fake an interior.

not sure about the lights but if I had to bet i'd say its emmissive material, not actual lights. you might be able to randomize emissive being on or off using per instance custom data if the windows were each instanced static meshes.

Vassk

Thanks for the answers, I would like these buildings to just be the background, and look close to realism, but I wouldn't want to get too hung up on detail. Choose something in between. For windows, I originally planned to use just emissive.

poopipe

just texture some boxes like @okidoki says

if you're never going to get near the buildings you have no reason to modularise them or do anything clever

Vassk

poopipe said:

just texture some boxes like @okidoki says

if you're never going to get near the buildings you have no reason to modularise them or do anything clever

Thank you all! cool! Well, maybe someone can tell you now how to texture the box when there are many windows and balconies repeated? Everyone draw by hand in SP ? I didn't plan to use photo textures.

Vassk

Perhaps this was the most important question, how to texture such background buildings without using photo textures. I should have asked this question initially.

okidoki

Vassk said:

Perhaps this was the most important question, how to texture such background buildings without using photo textures. I should have asked this question initially.

Same principle.. try to paint some simple pattern ( "brick brush" ?), rectangles for the balconies/ windows..  maybe using some gradient.. some strokes for the window frames.. curtains.. lamp reflections..
Add details as you like..

Vassk

okidoki said:

Vassk said:

Perhaps this was the most important question, how to texture such background buildings without using photo textures. I should have asked this question initially.

Same principle.. try to paint some simple pattern ( "brick brush" ?), rectangles for the balconies/ windows..  maybe using some gradient.. some strokes for the window frames.. curtains.. lamp reflections..
Add details as you like..

thanks! Try to do it