Modular Facade Challenge - Rick

Rick Stirling

I've not done environments in about 5 years.

I snapped some possible facades today, I THINK I'll go for the one with the clock on it.

Edit -yes, the clock one. It's the 1911 Leith Provident Co-op Store.

Joshua Stubbles

Building's got a lot of character. Looking forward to it.

Rick Stirling

Started cutting up some images. Hopefully tomorrow I can get some proper shots of it.

Rick Stirling

Looking at the main body of the buildings and not the corner, it's essentially a large mirrored block.

My images don't line up perfectly, but I've got enough to plan out where they will mirror. The shop section has normal doors leading to flats under the middle set of narrower windows.

By cutting the blocks vertically into three strips 8 blocks high, cutting just underneath the windows and stopping two blocks above I can clone the sections upwards and use trim sections to separate them.

That gets me the bulk of the building quickly and it can be extended upwards as many floors as I want, mixing up the trim sections. Horizontally I can clone sections and mirror them or not. By cutting the stairwells into a separate modular element I can add them where I choose to - I could for example place the stairwells between each pair of bay windows.

The join between the bay windows will also be partially hidden by the drainpipe.

Rick Stirling

Quick grab showing how my modular section tiles:

okkun

You've got a lot of vertical breaks (painted in white). You'd probably save some polys if you just split once between each window and floated that trim piece. Would be easier to deal with tiling too.

EarthQuake

Okkun: Can you explain that a little more? I really dont see how adding in extra detail floating on top would be easier to deal with.

Rick Stirling

Actually, I agree about those vertical breaks, but that just because I was a spastic when I split it up because I was concentrating too much on that trim - and I had planned to float/intersect other trim sections.

The cut just below each window will be removed so that each section will equally have to blocks above and below each window.

okkun

What I meant was; the way he had the white lines painted made it look like he was going to need 5 vertical UV breaks instead of one tiling window texture with no UV breaks.

Xenobond

Ooh, yes. I do like that clock topper, very much.
Can't wait to see more.

Rick Stirling

The wall texture repeats a little when I duplicate the modular section, but I have 2 options:

1. I built the wall texture at 1024x1024 and 30 bricks high, so the section I built only uses 1/3 of the image. I had planned to shift the UVs of each section since I thought it would tile WORSE.

2. I change the wall textures to 1024x512 and make it 10 bricks high and edit it to tone down the repeating sections.

The windows are on a 512x512 sheet at the minute with several window variations not shown in the capture.

kio

small detail, dont know if you even bother (or already have plans for that), bricks around the windows should match up somehow - as there are no half cut bricks in real world. maybe you can work around that with some uv scaling..

Rick Stirling

Kio - not quite sure what you mean? I'm going to make the lintels be full brinks.

kio

actually i meant stuff like that

Murdoc

As much as it annoys me in games, walk around town and you'll see there are half cut bricks everywhere.

Rick Stirling

what part - the side or top? As I said, I'm fixing up the lintels, but the sides are correct. they are no bricks, they are cut stone:

bluekangaroo

^ ha! yeah i see that alot...even the real world isnt perfect, nothing lines up perfectly all the time

Rick Stirling

Minor update - I spent a few hours on the main section tonight. I'm happy how it's going, plus I've been beta testing Silo.

There are a few triangles in the window frames that I'm probably going to remove my using more floating geo for the windows




Next step is probably to cut out those windows into modular block, so I'll tile 3 panes and trims together. The arch will be mirrored, and lots of the building will get cut up into modular bits.

Joshua Stubbles

Oh cool! Seeing more of the structure certainly helps get a sense of the overall feel. Very nice so far.

Rick Stirling

Wee update tonight - I've been breaking the structure up and laying out UVs.

Pedro Amorim

This is looking really nice Rick! Keep it up:)

Rick Stirling

Ta!

I'm in no hurry, I reckon I'll tackle the clock next since it's a nice feature item.

Sage

Looks great. This contest is very helpful.

Rick Stirling

I might pop out again tonight to grab a couple more shots - like a fool I never took any with the clock straight on. Removing perspective from a square isn't too bad, but trying to do that on a circle.

Sa74n

looking good, rick.
which program do you use there?

Rick Stirling

Cheers Sa74n!

I'm using Silo.

Rick Stirling

Still in no hurry, just working with parts of Silo I've not used before, using UVs and snapping in ways I've not tried before.

Joshua Stubbles

Sweet! Great combination of pieces so far. Looks good.

Pedro Amorim

looking sweet! slowly but steadily you will finish for sure:)

Rick Stirling

Finish? Nah, I'm just doing this for fun. I do want to get the clock tower sorted though, it was interesting (I've sorted most of the textures sheet and you can make out some rough forms at the left.)