My First Building

[von_Maximilian 12]

So I started on this last night. I've never used blender or any other 3d modeling software before but so far I am happy with how this is turning out (of course it may not at all be optimized for the game). I was kind of bored and was looking at a building in Kansas City that I'd love to have in the game and thought to myself... maybe I should start creating buildings. That particular one is way too complex for me so I found something a little bit simpler. This one is based on this building. Need to add some windows on the back but the lack of photos from the back of the building makes it hard to see just how exactly it is laid out (there is an opening in the building and maybe a loading dock area).

Anyways, I have no idea how to texture and have been trying to watch some videos but it is all going over my head right now. Maybe I'll try some more work tonight. But just wanted to share this with everyone else.

 

 

[DaEgi 14]

looks good keep it on.

[Avanya 2,605]

Looks nice!  Yeah, parts of the building you can't see are always a bit of a challenge. I usually try and find some similar styled buildings where I can see more sides to get an idea of what might be there. Sometimes I can find some images, sometimes streetview, sometimes 3D view. And then I just slap some stuff on there and pretend I know what goes there and call it a day.

[boformer 3,169]

Very nice, reminds me a bit of this collection.

I have an idea for the side walls, though I'm not a professional modeller. they are quite huge, you could split them up into smaller faces. That will help when you texture them (you can use a smaller seamless brick texture and repeat it in every part of the wall, resulting in smaller textures or a smaller texture map).

For the LOD: Here is a nice video tutorial how you can bake LOD textures in Blender (you model the LOD mesh, create a very simple UV map, and then blender creates the texture for you).

[von_Maximilian 12]

7 hours ago, DaEgi said:

looks good keep it on.

Thanks!

5 hours ago, Avanya said:

Looks nice!  Yeah, parts of the building you can't see are always a bit of a challenge. I usually try and find some similar styled buildings where I can see more sides to get an idea of what might be there. Sometimes I can find some images, sometimes streetview, sometimes 3D view. And then I just slap some stuff on there and pretend I know what goes there and call it a day.

Thanks Avanya! I can see some of the building in 3d view and there are some images from google review pictures people posted so I can get a little bit of it. I just wish they had walked down a little further and got a closer picture lol.

3 hours ago, boformer said:

Very nice, reminds me a bit of this collection.

I have an idea for the side walls, though I'm not a professional modeller. they are quite huge, you could split them up into smaller faces. That will help when you texture them (you can use a smaller seamless brick texture and repeat it in every part of the wall, resulting in smaller textures or a smaller texture map).

For the LOD: Here is a nice video tutorial how you can bake LOD textures in Blender (you model the LOD mesh, create a very simple UV map, and then blender creates the texture for you).

Thank you boformer, I'll take a look at that video. I was actually inspired by Lightfooted's work on Kansas City's older buildings and a desire to make some buildings for the Industries DLC. I really want to make a brewery/flour mill that I came across that happens to be KC but as I said, it is a bit too complex for me right now. And this wouldn't be a growable, it would be 4x6 I guess based on the grid. And I might try to make the rest of the buildings in the complex - but one step at a time

[von_Maximilian 12]

Just wanted to share that I got the back of the model finished. Took a couple of liberties since I can't actually see what it looks like on the bottom, but I like the look of the loading dock. Also got it to upload into the game as you can see, which took a little trial and error (found some old posts of yours Avanya, thank you for the help ), and put a couple of props in just to see if I got the height correct.

Now time to try the texturing....

[von_Maximilian 12]

Haven't had a lot of time the past week, but this is where I am currently at with this. From a YouTube video I was following, I should be able to apply the textures as different materials and assign those materials to various parts of the building (as I have done). Then from my understanding I can bake it which will give me the texture file for the building as a whole. That part is still a little unclear to me but I am hoping I am doing this right.

Getting the UV map to be rotated properly and lined up has been a pain but I think I got it now. It is okay to overlap the components on the UV right? It's the only way I can get the brick to line up around the corners. Also, 1024x1024 seems like a lot of space for this model since it is simple and if I can overlap it will reduce the space by a lot. If I use 1024x1024 textures though, does the UV also need to be the same size?

[boformer 3,169]

Again I'm not a professional, but I think the general approach is good.

You may want to overlap the UVs for the repeating parts to save some space on the uv map (like having 3 or 4 window variations in the uv map, and then just using the same part of the texture for all windows). Same with the gates, maybe even the wall segments between the pillars. The left wall could use the same texture as the right wall etc.

I think to do that, you would uv-map one of them, then bake the texture, then create the uvs for all the repeating parts.

I think 512x512 or 1024x1024 would be ok for this building, just make sure that the LOD texture is really small, like 128x128.

Not sure about the UV map size. I think you just have create a new texture in blender that has this size, and load it in the UV editor. It was a long time ago that I did that.

Btw, you can also do some detail work like adding grunge or cracks in GIMP or Photoshop after the texture was baked.

[Avanya 2,605]

Overlapping UVs is a good idea to save texture space, but it isn't really something you can do if you're going to bake textures at the end. I would suggest either not overlapping on the final UV (which means a bit lower resolution than if you overlapped - but will also let you bake ambient occlusion in) or making a rough texture with a large area with bricks, some for roof and a bit of empty space for windows. Then you can overlap things on the bricks area and line them up perfectly there. Downside to overlapping is that you can't always bake AO or add grunge/cracks/dirt because it's easy to spot the repeating pattern - or at least you have to be a bit creative when doing so, which might be better left until you're more used to the whole process.  (If any of this doesn't make sense or I totally glanced over something that's complicated, just poke me for an elaboration)

If you're overlapping on the final UV you might fit it on a 512x512 or 512x1024 with good results. If you're baking the final texture, then I would suggest going for a 1024x1024. Windows you will want to overlap some. I would probably do something like 4 different windows and then mix them on the building for variation. Maybe 6 if I had a little extra space on the texture. Lastly I recommend making sure the roof has a nice texture, maybe some grunge or dirt to make it interesting. It's easy to forget or skip over, but we end up spending a lot of time looking down on the roof of buildings, so imo it's worth making sure it's a good texture.

[Mr_Maison 2,426]

Looks really nice! I like the detail you have with the loading areas. I can see your imagination at work.

What paint program are you using for textures?  If you become uncomfortable with baking (like I am, but not saying anything is wrong with it) That building is simple enough to do some manual UV mapping easily. One thing you can do is do some renders in ortho mode in Blender if you know how to do that (I do this in Sketchup sometimes with my render software) and simply collect the various texture areas into one texture map in your paint program. You can then line up the faces inside Blender's UV map editor and they should be a perfect fit as you scale the areas to your mesh faces. Takes a bit longer but you are sure to get the textures where you want them. You can even select faces in Blender and export the UVs, bring them into your paint program and build your texture that way too. Just sharing another option.