Videos and books on how buildings are constructed?

littleclaude · Oct 28 2025

Hello

I’ve been looking into videos and books on how buildings are constructed. From an environment game artist’s perspective, I’m mainly interested in understanding materials, architectural feasibility, and how real-world construction informs believable design. Does anyone have any must-have resources or golden nuggets of knowledge they’d recommend?

Examples, anything like this would be greatly appreciated and anything on Architectural basics 101 would be great.

Book - Engineering in Plain Sight: An Illustrated Field Guide to the Constructed Environment

https://youtu.be/_ivqWN4L3zU?t=220

littleclaude · Oct 28 2025

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4lszlCXYP8

littleclaude · Oct 28 2025

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tcNMQiIPkn8 

sacboi · Oct 28 2025

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jn6jpxCqcFc

Guédelon Castle is the world's biggest archeological experiment. Ongoing since 1997, the project seeks to build a medieval castle from scratch, using only the tools, techniques and materials available in the 13th century.

jStins · Oct 28 2025

I'll be interested to see where this thread goes. The uncanny valley gets all it's pop in the realm of character art, but I think it happens in environments as well when things are 'just off' from how they would be built. Maybe it doesn't create the same sense of unease when it happens in environment art, but it can still create a feeling of a place being unbelievable for the audience.

2020/2021 I went down the rabbit hole of wanting to better understand why certain elements of urban environments look the way they do (building facades, various elements of urban infrastructure like utility poles, etc...). Especially brick construction/facades. I found some good PDFs from various eras centered on brick engineering that have some good illustrations. Not sure the best way to share 'em. Let's see if this works:

A Manual of Face Brick Construction

Modern Brick

I found googling for trade publications, engineering guides and things like that to yield good results. They can be dense and have too much info, but generally include at least a few illustrations/diagrams that are useful to artists.

littleclaude · Oct 29 2025

Houdini to Unreal

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b34KU4Iu74g&t=83s

https://youtu.be/aqJJ-D7vv38?t=750

https://youtu.be/euZPmXKAnog?t=224

https://www.sidefx.com/titan/

littleclaude · Oct 29 2025

Searched the Titan project above on ArtStation

https://www.artstation.com/polybean
https://www.artstation.com/maxlessle
https://www.artstation.com/annamolamphy
https://www.artstation.com/freddoes3d
https://www.artstation.com/siver

littleclaude · Oct 29 2025

https://80.lv/articles/how-to-model-texture-a-moody-environment-featuring-architecture-of-haussmann-belle-epoque-styles

littleclaude · Oct 29 2025

Efficient Environment Design

https://www.artstation.com/artwork/QXZKwZ

Efficient Environment Design tut in Blender

Eric Chadwick · Oct 30 2025

Great thread. We have a bunch of stuff on the wiki. Mostly older things from back when I was doing environment art, but still a bunch of useful nuggets.
http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/Environment

Benjammin · Oct 30 2025

If medieval gothic architecture is the thing, the repair of Notre Dame is a goldmine. Things have been (re)discovered in the last few years because its the first time in centuries that engineers had been able to see parts of the structure.

sacboi · Oct 31 2025

"The Hagia Sophia was built during the years 532–537 CE by the Byzantine emperor Justinian and designed by Isidore of Miletus and Anthemius of Tralles a physicist and a mathematician respectively. Its dedication to Hagia Sophia, did not refer to any saint by that name but to Christ as the Wisdom (Sophia) or Word of God made flesh which is confirmed by the fact that the patronal feast was celebrated at Christmas, on December 25th.

This was the imperial church in which most major celebrations were held, the emperor participated in thirteen major celebrations per year, by the 6th century it was already considered the eighth wonder of the world. However several disasters would befall the edifice in which parts of it were demolished, for example in 558, the original dome collapsed and was replaced by a higher reconstruction including supporting walls that were also duly reinforced.

Once complete was re-dedicated in 563 but again just a few years later the new dome partially collapsed, requiring further repair hence after several modifications to both the interior and exterior, had considerably altered the behavior of light within the church."

sacboi · Nov 10 2025

Examples of Traditional Japanese Wood Joinery

"We tend to think of knowledge in terms of progressive accumulation, with each succeeding generation having more information at its disposal than the one that came before it. What is less recognized, however, is the knowledge that gets lost in the course of progress. In architecture, particularly, little attention is paid to the way in which the standardization of building practices led to craftsman techniques falling by the wayside"

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/5021068/uploads/editor/tv/h23m1f6tcgxq.gif

Kumiki

Tsugite

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_vvgzfQRdaE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ofVrRrkC1k

Lamont · Nov 25 2025

Joinery is just a part of some houses. They are all pre-cut and slot in now a days then some huge bolts.

I can't find the book I had used, but pretty much for a traditional Japanese home 182cm, 91cm, 45.5cm and 27.75cm are numbers you will see often in a home when measuring things. Having gutted my house down to the frame, I did see this joint used. Not only as shown in the image, but also as a way to extend/join two 10cm x 10cm lengths of beams. But overall, bolts and stuff are used.

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/5021068/uploads/editor/fj/50vqdqafz3v6.gif

There is a YouTube channel that's pretty good. He doesn't go into how things are done, more about why he is doing such and such, a lot of his work is on newer/modern homes but sometimes he does do an older home that needs a bit of refresh.

https://www.youtube.com/@CarpenterShoyan/videos

Videos and books on how buildings are constructed?

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Efficient Environment Design