Modular Arches

Corey Miller · Sep 2011

So I have been doing some searching around polycount on some tips on how to do Arches On the grid for UDK. Basically this is just some block out that I have done, Is my approach to this (asside from the glaring problems such and no vertical sub-ds) solid or where do I need to look. Basically just looking for pointers
Thanks Guys!

Ben Apuna · Sep 2011

Well since it's a blockout there's not much to say other than I think you should not put your mirror seam in the center of the keystone. You will likely end up with some nasty lighting seams that way once there's a normal map on it and you build lighting using lightmass. A better way would be to place the seam just to the left of the keystone which will make the resulting lighting seam look more natural.

As far as being modular just make sure that the model fits nicely on the grid. It doesn't necessarily have to be an exact power of 2 in units (like textures) because you can adjust the grid's level of accuracy within UDK, but making it multiples of 64, or 32 units in width, depth, and height will help. Going lower than 32 like 16 or 8 unit multiples makes moving things around very "fiddly" in my opinion.

knak47 · Sep 2011

You said its a blockout. Dont know if you have already thought this far ahead but you could also save a lot of polys by making the wall and the arch itself separate elements. Just a thought.

passerby · Sep 2011

your wasting a lot of verts and faces make arch a different element.

gsokol · Sep 2011

One thing to consider with modular stuff that I learned...is you want to avoid having the pieces directly snapping together like you currently have. Youll have issues with lighting/light baking quite often, and even if your textures line up well enough, you can get seams from specular highlights being slightly off. I would suggest this:

Here, you have some sort of pillar between each arch. Also, if you felt like only making half the arch and mirroring that for the other side or something...you could have a key stone break up the seam there.

As far as your faces...its just a blockout so I don't know what you are planning on doing with this, but the only reason having the geo seperated there is if you were using 2 tiling textures and used the edges to seperate the material ids.

Corey Miller · Sep 2011

I was using separate Geo for the arched stones and the "wall" that connects it was because I am planning on having a very different texture between the two. I really wanted the separation to punch. These arches are actually going to be on top of pillars supporting heavy vaulted ceilings. Thank you guys for the quick and on the money responses.

passerby · Sep 2011

Corey Miller wrote: »

I was using separate Geo for the arched stones and the "wall" that connects it was because I am planning on having a very different texture between the two. I really wanted the separation to punch. These arches are actually going to be on top of pillars supporting heavy vaulted ceilings. Thank you guys for the quick and on the money responses.

ya you still could save a lot of verts if you would just connects all the edges leading away from the arch to the corners of the block. with LP's if you got a vert somewhere it should actully be doing something but with this you got a ton of verts on a straight edge.

also gsokol idea works good for mirroring and having that little red piece in the middle can help hide any weird effects by not Haveing 2 mirrored surfaces touching one and other.

Modular Arches

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