Very general environment question

superpeon

Hows does one go about getting started with environment modeling?

I know that's a broad question, but I'm at a loss. I'm very used to (for character modeling), starting with a box, creating a torso, limbs, etc... It makes sense to me.

For an environment, how would you go about doing it? Do you start with a box and start extruding from there? Do you create a floor plan and extrude up from that?

Basically any advice you can give on how to get started with an environment from someone who is more used to character modeling, it would be greatly appreciated.

EarthQuake

First off figure out what you want to model
Gather some reference/concepts
Block out your scene with some basic geometry
Proceede to iterate on that geometry until you've gotten the amount of detail you're going for

Pretty standard stuff, also thinking about creating modular peices is really usefull for enviro stuff, models you can construct like lego peices to build a wide variety of different things...

Eric Chadwick

Do a search for modular, you'll get some good threads.

Ryno

It varies drastically. I'll block stuff off with temporary geometry (Boxes for buildings, cylinders for light poles, etc.), then proceed by refining stuff, or replacing objects entirely. Doing this will help from being overwhelmed. It's typical to question where to start, but good reference/concepts/photos can give you better direction.

A modular approach is an excellent one for most man-made environments. But even so, I'd recommend blocking out things ahead of time rather than just building a couple of modular pieces which could trap you and make everything look like lego-land. You will need some unique transition pieces and special objects which can serve to break up the monotony of a modular environment. Using modularly snapping pieces to quickly fill out hallways can be a great time saver.

For natural environments, I'll usually start with the terrain, as that defines the space. Then I'll add in landmark features such as large boulders, bridges, houses, large trees, or whatever. Then I'll fill the whole thing out with repurposeable assets such as trees, shrubs, rocks, etc.

As far as the objects themselves, there are no hard and fast rules as to what geometry I'll use as a base. For buildings, boxes are the most common. For light poles, cylinders. For trees, renderable splines and planes.

If it's a very unique environmental object, I'll just see what basic shapes most resemble that, and start with those.

Even if a model as a whole is not going to snap into a grid as a modular piece, you can still use a modular constuction approach to save time and mantain consistency. I recently did a hotel building with dozens of windows which could have been a real pain. But I worked modularly, and simply figured out the width of the window, and the brick facade next to it. I then made the window, it's framing, molded decorations, and the adjacent bricks. I UVd it, then just duplicated and snapped this piece together to do a large section of the building in one quick pass. It saved me a ton of time.