Need advice - Lego House :)
polycounter lvl 7
Hi everyone,
I am modelling quite a cool and different looking Lego house for my portfolio but am unsure how to approach certain areas and need some advice. The house has some cracks in it parts of it which have curved bricks. I have highlighted these parts in red. I am not sure whether to model these into the structure, or to leave the surface flat and try and create an illusion of them through normal mapping? Also in the lower part of the house, the bricks in the wall come out and at different levels. The approach I thought to take was to extrude the bricks that are most obviously sticking out (highlighted in green) and do the rest of the surface through normal mapping.. but I'm not sure how this will work as again, some of the bricks are curved, and there are also deep cracks. I am also wanting to make this as a game asset, so am trying to preserve my poly-count a bit.
Any advice is much appreciated, thanks
Reference Image
Highlighted Reference Image
My model so far (WIP)
I am modelling quite a cool and different looking Lego house for my portfolio but am unsure how to approach certain areas and need some advice. The house has some cracks in it parts of it which have curved bricks. I have highlighted these parts in red. I am not sure whether to model these into the structure, or to leave the surface flat and try and create an illusion of them through normal mapping? Also in the lower part of the house, the bricks in the wall come out and at different levels. The approach I thought to take was to extrude the bricks that are most obviously sticking out (highlighted in green) and do the rest of the surface through normal mapping.. but I'm not sure how this will work as again, some of the bricks are curved, and there are also deep cracks. I am also wanting to make this as a game asset, so am trying to preserve my poly-count a bit.
Any advice is much appreciated, thanks
Reference Image
Highlighted Reference Image
My model so far (WIP)
Replies
It really depends on how far you want to take it, there are several paths you could take.
1) Do a high poly doing as much detail as you can do, using as many individual pieces as you need. As in the bottom floor doesn't need to be modeled from one object. Those bricks above the door can be floaters. Then the low poly can be a lot simpler with a unique layout and just include all of the high poly meshes in the bake.
2) You could do it fairly low poly using tiling textures, creative UVs and strategic cuts to the meshes.
That kind of seems like how you're going? But I'm not sure if you are planning out your UV's as carefully as you probably need to?
Maybe read up on Thirding and texture atlases.
Some other examples:
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=79177
http://www.thiagoklafke.com/modularenvironments.html
http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/ModularMountAndBlade
Maybe create the texture tiles in zBrush https://dimitriscg.wordpress.com/2013/04/16/tiling-texture-in-zbrush-and-the-tilde-key/ and use those on the base shape and float some details like the bricks above the door. It can be the same brick copied over and over again.
You can also float some of the unique details like the little holes just above the surface. Similar to the broken edges in the fallout games. http://simonschreibt.de/gat/fallout-3-edges/
Or model them specifically and give them a unique space on the texture sheet. Everything around it is using the brick tile, that little chunk uses a unique spot.
I hope you don't mind me asking a few noobish questions in regards to what you said.
I have read over the links you have shown me and I have drawn out an approach that I might take with the model. I think it seems to go more in line with path number 1 that you mentioned, but I would be interested to see what you think.
Heres the reference image highlighted again. The parts outlined in blue are the parts I am thinking to build as a low poly of the general shape. Here is an example of this done in 3dsmax.
Then all the parts that I have outlined in green will be floaters, the gray bricks will all share the same texture, the brown panels will all share the same texture etc etc..
The parts highlighted in pink, I am thinking I float them also, like the example you showed of the broken edges in fallout.
Now, for gray walls of the house, and maybe the roof, these are the parts I am thinking to do as a high poly, with as much detail as I can do, using as many individual pieces as I need, like you mentioned, and then using this to create a normal map and AO which I will bake on the structure. I have never done this before, but I am understanding that this would be using the same method as shown in the link you provided for me here http://www.thiagoklafke.com/modularenvironments.html am I correct?.
Hope my post makes sense, I would love to hear your thoughts and thanks so much again for your help.
As always its a bit of a crapshoot, you might run into certain aspects of this plan that don't hold up like you want and you have to change it, that's normal. Especially with odd and unique things like this.
There is always a certain degree of "oh crap how do I handle THAT!?" with every project, its normal. Everyone always looks back at the end of a project and sees things they would probably handle a little different. That's how we grow
About the baking, I don't think Thaigo covered it but it's a pretty standard procedure, there are a lot of baking tutorials all over. Its pretty straight forward in 3dsmax.
Here is a pretty good one: http://cgi.tutsplus.com/tutorials/how-to-bake-a-flawless-normal-map-in-3ds-max--cg-925
One thing that might help you out is the"topology tool" in the graphite modeling tools.
Autodesk Documentation: http://docs.autodesk.com/3DSMAX/15/ENU/3ds-Max-Help/index.html?url=files/GUID-7358B7AB-86DB-4B3F-9954-BB11AA6FF3FE.htm,topicNumber=d30e121109
If you're object has enough edges like in this example, it will create the pattern on your model. Then you can use bevel/outline on the faces to create mortar channels and then bevel again outward to make the bricks. OR...
You can use the tool to generate a plane and then build your walls out of that plane. OR...
You can generate the plane, create a tiling texture, bake it out, apply it to your walls and the normal map will be captured when you bake the final version. OR...
That all might be too much work to make it fit a "lego style" pattern. If you didn't know about it play around with it for a while, get comfortable with it. If it helps, great! If not, put it back in the toolbox and save it for later.
Good luck!