Modelling The First House

Overall I tried out 3 different methods of creating the basic structure of the first house to find the best way that would also work efficiently within the Unreal Game Engine.

Method 1

The first method I tried was simple box modelling, where the whole house was one element. I found this to be rather time consuming especially when trying to connect 2 separate walls (using the weld vertices tool) whilst trying to keep the measurements exact. I wanted to try a method that was quicker but maintained accuracy.

Method 2

The second method was using splines; this was less time consuming and ended up with a decent basic shape rather quickly. I realised that problems had occurred when certain vertices hadn’t matched up very cleanly, meaning I had a lot of polygons with too many lines and vertices that stretched over the element.

Method 3

The next idea I want to try is creating each room as a separate element, I’m hoping this will mean my laptop will be able to keep up a bit easier and allow me to hide rooms when focusing on one specifically.

I read a lot of articles about modular building, power of 2 and how it works well in UDK and how to efficiently create buildings for the Unreal Game Engine. 

One really good article (http://blog.joelburgess.com/2013/04/skyrims-modular-level-design-gdc-2013.html) by Joel Burgess shows how modelling a kit streamlines the process. 

I also found this article (http://www.worldofleveldesign.com/categories/ue4/ue4-guide-to-scale-dimensions.php) really helpful; showing how you can change the snapping feature (it doesn't need to be a power of 2) in Unreal to suit the pieces you want to create among lots of other helpful points. I really wish I had known that I could change the snapping feature when I was working on my previous games as I encountered a lot of problems with gaps and Z-fighting causing horrible glitches in game.

In conclusion from the research I have done I think the best way to create the house in my game efficiently in both 3ds Max and Unreal is to use well measured kit pieces, an example of this is shown below.

This image is from the article by Joel Burgess. By keeping widths, heights and lengths of walls, doorways and spaces the same throughout I will be able to mix and match each piece to suit the overall structure I am building. 

In the end this will create a good base for each house then detailing such as pipework, wall plants, lights and other decorative meshes can be added in to add interest and avoid repetitive looking structures. 

My first worry using this method was that each house will have an array of different window types like full length, alcove and small ones (e.g. for bathrooms). Along with different shapes and sizes of windows each would correspond with the different styles of the house from ultra-modern to older styles. A way to combat this issue is to create a few different wall segments with ‘window holes’ that vary in size and shape. Then when I am modelling the different style windows for each house ensure that the frame is the exact measurements to fit.

Here is a link to the dimensions I will be working with - The Dimensions.

I will post updates on the house model along with the complete kit list soon. 
That's all for now.