Gothic Cottage

nevets2001uk

I'm still very much learning 3ds Max and modelling in general and after perhaps biting off more than I can chew with my first project I've decided to reign it back and try and model something for UDK from a photo reference I took recently.

This is a Gothic Cottage and I'm at the initial blocking out stage. I plan to make some parts in high poly for baking our normal maps. Today I got the arches section more complete using a separate object which I'll attach later. It took a while to find a way to construct this but got there in the end.

As this is a learning to project I'm interested in peoples thoughts as I progress. I hope to update reasonably often.

Reference:


WIP Blockout:

OtrickP

That's a great little building asset. Lots of interesting shapes, good silouette, interesting arch. Good looking block so far, keep truckin!

Joopson

Check out this link:
http://www.newyorkcarver.com/geometry/equilarch.htm

Love gothic architecture! I'm making something similar at present-
I like it! Continue. Can't wait to see more.

nevets2001uk

Thanks for the support and link.

A little bit of additional work done on the blockout.

Guy123

Hey man, looks like you're off to a solid start! You've got rather a lot of loops that don't appear to be doing too much around the windows. However, this is a WIP shot and I'm sure they'll be put to good use!

Lovely building, lots of scope for some really interesting shapes, I particularly like the way the bench joins the wall beneath the window, it's these little 'mini scenes' that make for good environment work

nevets2001uk

Thanks. It's turning out to be more complicated than I thought. A bit stuck on the arched windows at the moment.

nevets2001uk

Okay a bit more progress on the windows. Reasonably happy with them, not sure the topology is that great, especially if I'm going to add edge loops for turbosmoothing but will figure that out I guess.

SimonT

Could be nice to see how you plan your sharing texture space. I mean for example the window arcs could share some textures. Or is that a problem? I heard UDK is problems with a) UV seems and b) mirrored normal maps. I heard thats why the have unique textures for all the stuff.

Wahlgren

Simon: Nah. Tiling and sharing is a common thing in unreal. Everything unique would be crazy expensive. You just gotta know what works and doesn't work as Unreal is a bit bitchy in this regard.

This would work fine. No artifacts. No nothing. I'd probably be doing it like this aswell but maybe have 2 windows for variation depending on the scene. There's always overlay and grunge stuff you can do with material shader to add extra variation.



While mirrored like this might give a seam/artifact down the middle.



I usually think like this. If it's a solid object don't split it down the middle. It will produce seams in UDK. It's totally fine to mirror a whole object with a normalmap however without any artifacts.

Best example is the wheels of a car i suppose. Don't split the wheel in half. Give it it's own normalmap. Then you can mirror the wheel to the other side of the car aswell without issue. I should make more pictures but eh, I hope you understand me

SimonT

Yeah no problem i understood. Ok that makes sence. I hope they will get this ready in the future - i mean: mirroring one mesh in the middle without a seem

Busomite

Nice start, can't wait to see when it's finished.

jsargent

yeah me too! Its so annoying! Cottage is looking really cool btw, looking forward to seeing more progress!

nevets2001uk

Thanks for the feedback. My plan was to do probably two main variations of the window texture, shared between the 8 openings. I'll be building a HP of the window to bake in the lead work and details.

The window arcs will most likely share a single stone texture. I'll need to experiment with the space I have available on the map. At the moment I'm thinking a 2048 texture for the unique details + a tiling 512 for the thatching on the roof. I'm not yet sure exactly how best to approach texturing and unwrapping yet.

I've done some more blocking out for the seating. Took me way longer than I'd have liked but now have something pretty decent. Again, I'm planning to make higher poly versions of the seats for the detail which I'll bake into the normal map. Not sure yet whether to build out a bit more in the low poly silhouette for the backs of the seats or just rely on the texture.

nevets2001uk

I think the bulk of the blockout is now completed. I certainly need to do some more tidying on the roof.

nevets2001uk

First of the HP pieces which will be mapped onto the lower poly game asset. I really struggled with the best approach to this piece which is the seat one of the seats as getting my control edges in for turbosmoothing was really tricky and new for me.



Here's the topology before the turbosmoothing.

nevets2001uk

I'm still making slow progress on the higher poly work for this but one thing I need to think about also is the unwrapping of the low poly pieces. I'm interested in people's thoughts about how best to do this. Would you look at a tiling texture for the main walls to save texture space or mapping them out? I'd like to represent the building quite closely so unique mapping would be best for that as the building character is in the stone work.

P442

I would use a basic tilable texture for the building and then add specific grunge with decals, decal materials, or LERP materials. If you have like 3 LERP materials, it should still be better than uniquely mapping the whole building.

nevets2001uk

Thanks. I will need to research LERP, not come across that term before. So would it be safe to have say a 512 tiling texture for a roof material, a 512 for the wall and then say a 1024 for other details and elements? One thing I've read is reducing texture memory and that's a lot of textures when you include a spec and normal for each. For the walls I guess I could have the texture on the main sheet and then divide the mesh into pieces for mapping, although it's not uniform so this may be tricky.

Xendance

nevets2001uk wrote: »

Thanks. I will need to research LERP, not come across that term before. So would it be safe to have say a 512 tiling texture for a roof material, a 512 for the wall and then say a 1024 for other details and elements? One thing I've read is reducing texture memory and that's a lot of textures when you include a spec and normal for each. For the walls I guess I could have the texture on the main sheet and then divide the mesh into pieces for mapping, although it's not uniform so this may be tricky.

LERP = Linear interpolate. In UDK material editor it has three inputs: the alpha source, A and B. Then it interpolates the output between A and B based on the alpha. You can use different things as the alpha source, vertex colour for example.

nevets2001uk

Thanks. I'll take a proper look later but found a couple of videos which show this and it looks like a good option.

P442

Yeah, if you were to uniquely map the building, you would probably need a 2048 at least. If you have 3 Lerp materials at 512 you'de be saving some texture memory. The lerp materials make more sense if you're doing a larger environment with a bunch of similar buildings, so you don't have to uniquely texture each one, right? If you're only doing the one building it doesn't really matter. Your call.