Modular Environment modeling question.

PolyPutty

I have a question for you master environment artists. How do you go about building an architectural structure to both look good inside and outside seamlessly in a modular fashion? I am really fascinated by Modular modeling I just can't seem to figure out a way that it could be used to make a building that you can move in and out of. Could one of you give me a possible breakdown of how it could be done?

pliang

Hi, you can try cholden's site: cholden.net and you'll see a tutorial that will help you build outdoor and apply the same to indoor.

Another thing you will want to consider is depending on the complexity, how many textures will you need to tile consistenly without looking like its pasted together.

Mark Dygert

I went over my workflow here

Jesse Moody

Vig pretty much nailed it. Pretty close to how I handle things as well.

Also if you have a piece of concept art or reference. Take it into photoshop and on seperate layers painter over areas each with a different color to break the pieces apart.

If you organize things on paper or in a document before hand I find it much easier to follow and do.

Spend more time with the planning stage and things will go smoother than if you wing it.

Ghostscape

Something to think about - if you're having trouble understanding how they keep it looking good inside and out, you're probably making your modular chunks too big. The idea isn't to create a 8 foot wide section of building, but instead to create walls, columns, balconies, windows, etc. The more pieces you have, the more options you have, and the easier it is to put things together.

PolyPutty

thanks for all the help I wish I could pick apart a game level and see how it is put together to get a better idea, I always learn a lot from taking stuff apart. Is there a way to open up gears of war level in the unreal editor or something?

Mark Dygert

When it comes out for the PC... On MS's schedule I would imagine that would be sometime late this year or early next.

vahl

ut2004 is making heavy use of modularity, especially levels like CTF-MoonDragon (retail level) or ctf-CBP2-Decadence (from the community bonus pack 2 are great examples of what can be achieved when you master that technique.

PolyPutty

thanks for the level suggestion looking at that really helped. I just have one question since it uses BSP brushes how do you do walls modular seamless indoors and out doors? Basicly blocking in the bulk of the building with geometry instead of BSP Brushes.

vahl

what I usually do is that I build a full wall panel and some variations, same as for an inside wall panel, then corner pieces, towers, panels with doors, etc, wether or not you divide the floors is up to the engine you use and the ressources you have available, the more pieces, the more ressources it will ask to the GPU, so you have to find a balance between lots of small meshes and fewer but bigger meshes, most the time you'll end up with a mix of small and big chunks. Decals and unique architectural objects (electric poles/boxes, vegetation, ornaments) will help you breaking the obvious tiling you can get with modular pieces, lighting does a lot too, finally variations of the same piece (broken parts, windows, different vertex blending) will add a lot more too.

as for the building process, I think ror explained it in detail in a post about the lack of environment artists, or something like that, but what I usualy do -and that reminds me that Brome is gonna kill me since I haven't started on that workflow paper he asked me- anyways, what I usually do is that I start by building the most representative chunk of the building, sometimes it's a simple wall panel, sometimes, it's a fancy entrance with loads of details, the important thing here is that you have to be able to derive all the other pieces from this one easily, of course you will have specific pieces with higher complexity, but I always use a common piece for a specific building to keep consistency. I also tend to have a test scene where I build the close to final building with modular pieces, this stage is really useful to you but also your team : by building a template/sample building/room using your pieces, you can figure out how to break the tiling, which pieces are missing, etc and it becomes a good example for your teammates (the layout/level building guy or level designer for instance so that they know : 1. that your pieces exist, 2. how to use them to get the result you had in mind while building them.

once again the way you do all this stuff is totally dependant on your ressources, engine and company workflow, ours makes very little use of BSP in the end so we tend to build full chunks of buildings, sometimes even full buildings to be able to populate a city faster using less ressources, again, it all depends.

PolyPutty

thanks for all the help, really good info.