Creating Buildings and Levels With Pieces?
So I was reading this tutorial that kind of became famous thread its from a Gears of War Artist and he was talking about making environments in zbrush and than bringing them into 3Ds max. Anyway he mentioned you should use snap toggles to make levels and say make a box that is 6 segments high and wide so you can bend it. He than showed a bunch of other blocks that are the same width so you can put them together using snaps so you can make various levels n such.
My real question is wouldn't making levels and buildings this way waste polygons? I made a box and you cant bend it at any degree 90 or 180 unless you add segments a lot of them.
Anybody got any suggestions on making models for game environments and making buildings specifically. I have been told thats its best to make a building all one object but it seems people aren't doing that when I look at tutorials at least.
My real question is wouldn't making levels and buildings this way waste polygons? I made a box and you cant bend it at any degree 90 or 180 unless you add segments a lot of them.
Anybody got any suggestions on making models for game environments and making buildings specifically. I have been told thats its best to make a building all one object but it seems people aren't doing that when I look at tutorials at least.
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This is called modular building, by the way. From my understanding, that is the commonly accepted term for all "abstracted" pieces of art that allow them to be used over and over.
It makes things easier and allows you to change levels and designs on the fly without remodeling or retexturing anything. It also saves on texture space and ensures that you are getting the maximum resolution out of your textures.
Any building that the player can get close to or go inside of is going to be modular. The only buildings that are all one object are going to be far in the background or distance.
Check out this tutorial on 3DMotive - Modular Building - it is $15, but well worth it, and it explains everything you'll ever need to know about modular building techniques - planning out the pieces, making the textures, laying out the UVs, measuring the pieces and snapping them together, etc.
Sure, it might waste polys, but it really doesn't matter these days. The amount of polys a modern game system or PC can handle is way above what it used to be, to the point where it's not the bottleneck anymore. What does cost is drawcalls for textures. So by reusing texture sheets with modular pieces, you're actually optimizing the scene/level much more than you could by polys alone.
Really, you should read this: Game art optimisation (do polygon counts really matter?)
http://wiki.polycount.com/CategoryEnvironmentModularity
check use axis center as snaps starting point and I like. to have the rubber band display on
I uncheck the use axis constrain. but sometimes i have it on... can't explain why i do that.
if you want to snap to a grid point check it and I usually have vertex snaps on so i can grab the object from the corner for example. I also turn them on to snap the pivot to the corner vertex. if you want to snap to another object you might have to turn grid points snapping off.
Depending on the version of max you have you might have a different experience, they seem to be better in max 2009 compared to earlier versions.
in 3ds you should be able to set snaps and and you should make sure you meshes are a good number to work with after you create them.
Yes I have 3D snaps on with Grid Points and Grid Lines by Default. So I made one box that is 140 Length, 10 Width, and 100 Height. Than I make an clone box and I try to snap it side by side like I'm building a building and it is off center like it almost looks perfect but it is not
2x2,4x4,8x8,16x16,32x32,64x64,128x128,256x256,512x512,1024x1024,2048x2048 and so on.
Power of 8 would be some completely unrelated number system.
You can use somethine like 512x256 for example,which works quite as good as 512x512 but best is to stick to the same dimensions.
Just your textures need to have a power of 2.
Maybe you got something wrong there.
If you work with snapping on the grid you can be almost sure that all parts you make fit together, the power of 2 is only for textures.
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use axis center as start snap point!
Set the grid spacing to a power 2 if you are working with udk. Check out their site for details. Just think of the grid spacing as the steps of the grid in unreal. The size you set your grid will depend on your project though so it depends. All this does is ensure that your object is the right scale for the game engine you are using. You don't have to snaps on while you model just turn them on so the bounds of your object fall on the grid.
You need to turn on vertex snaps to drag the geometry, that's the only way it works for me. Doing this makes it behaves more like being inside unreal editor (udk). Sometimes you might have to change these though it depends. You might have to snap to edge for example, it depends how zoomed in you are to your object.
You don't need to have grid lines snap on all the time, I guess it's a matter of preference. Having too many snap options on at the same time causes problems. You'll just have to try it and see what works best for you.
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Well I have been trying to do it with the gizmo mainly because thats how its done in game editors like UDK right? I have not tried vertex yet but wouldn't that change the shape of the object? I mean what if I make this huge piece of a house and UV map it and than want to snap it and if I drag by vertex wont that mess it up?
Also what do u mean lol? I have never tried by vertex any examples?
It finnaly worked! Any tutorials on this? Its like I'm learning modeling all over again so many steps missed it seems :shifty:
Also before you begin, merge the other textured model(s) if you have them into the scene and vert Align (not attach!) it (as I showed in prev post) to the untextured one and then you can see how it all lines up in realtime as you adjust the UV's.
There are tons of tuts out there for photoshop and other 2D programs...typically you will use the "Offset" feature, if your texture is 512x512 say...you will offset by 256 either horizontally or vertically or both to tile both ways..then use the heal or clone tools and get rid of the crappy seams..in the case of a wall I usually just do horiz..unless I will stack them up directly on top of each other without any other geo or 2d break... really you can offset by whatever number you want it depends on the texture, sometimes with bricks for example just offset little by little until you see a good place for a break that offers the least amount of work to clean up and will tile nicely. Hope it all helps!