TUT- Modular enviornment art

[Sup]

Needed:

-3ds max 4-9; the newer the better.

-Photoshop or alternative

Easily the biggest problem an independent modder faces is time, and a disorganized approach to mapping will definitely take a lot of time. The second problem, usually, is resources. A game as old as GR can't run that many textures and polygons, so, so help preformance and save loading time, an artist wants the map to use as few individual textures as possible.

I'm not sure how familiar any of you are with a modular approach to environment assets, but hopefully it can help you in both of these respects when making content for your GR maps, or for any game you chose to mod. Almost like working with legos, a complex environment can be built quite quickly from interconnected tiles or blocks.

I'm going to start this pretty slow (and with the very basics,) but I'll update with progressively more complex uses of these principles as I have the time.

Anyway, to begin, something pretty simple. Everything in this first scene is going to be based off of a simple rectangle texture with one vague concrete wall and a colorful green trim. It's applied to a model at six triangles. The texture size is irrelevant, for this part of the tutorial, but in practice it needs to be kept at a size appropriate for your engine of choice (gr1, in this case.) I'm using a near 512 for this example, but for GR you'll probably want to use a 256x256 when possible. The six tri wall should be okay on newer computers, but whenever possible it is important to use as few polygons as possible for the desired effect. I definitely could get by with a simple two triangle plane, but in this case I really want the extruded detail.

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As with almost any environment texture, this wall is designed to tile. (It cannot be tiled vertically, only horizontally.)

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Simply cloning and tiling a texture saves a great deal of texture space and time, as I'm sure most of you already know. Working with a modular environment applies these same techniques and tricks to every aspect of your model. The artist creates and clones a great variety of interconnected peices, all tiling at their edges, but providing unique details and shapes. From there, they can create a great variety of environments very quickly, without visibly rushing their modeling and texturing at all.

For this example, I'm trying to keep all of my 'pieces' to the same width and length, when possible. In editable poly, using primarily connect and chamfer in the edge subobject selection (usually with Preserve UVs checked,) I created a few simple variations on the original wall. All of them connect to eachother seamlessly, and could be arranged in any order or amount.

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The variations include:

1- Original wall

2- Sharp corner

3- Rounded corner

4- Doorway

With the proper planning almost anything can be made with these modular concepts. It's most ideal, in my experience, for urban environments, but with a little creativity an awful lot can be done quite quickly using the same concepts. Cliffs come to mind immediately. A handful of unique but connectable rock walls could seamlessly border an entire level. Here are a few more objects I made with the original wall texture.

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The exact same philosophies apply to texturing. With clever uv mapping you can add all manner of uniqe details in the context of a tiling texture, a concept I was taught as thirding, which I'll try to cover in detail with my next update.

Additionally, I'll try to include the construction of a more complex (and practical) environment, texture variation, and some uv mapping practices for scenes with a greater variety of details.

Any questions?

[Phlookian]

Any questions?

Yeah, where were you when I started out?

This is a year too late!

Actually, this stuff is dead handy,

I have very few Max skills (it's all trial and error)

I do plan to do another GR1 map and It'd be nice to not just fumble along like usual.

How many more Tuts have you got planned?

(Hmm.........I still haven't created believable trees...................)

Well done Sup (what you need is a trusted apprentice to pass your skillz onto)

[Sup]

How many more Tuts have you got planned?

At the moment, I'm planning few more enviornment art tutorials building on this one, and maybe a GRAW spec version.

[H-Hour]

I think it's great to see some tutorials on construction methods, but I want to point out a couple of problems with your example regarding poly conservation. I frequently use a sort of modular style, copying and pasting things, but in your example you've created quite a few unnecessary polys.

By angling the corners around the door like you have in your example (see #4 in Sup's images), you force extra polys when extending the wall. If you want the wall to extend beyond the width of the poly above the door, you will have to create new polys. The example above (see #1 in my image), however, helps reduce polys, because the wall on either side of the door can be extended as far as it needs to be without creating any more polys.

In diagram #2 above, I'm trying to show the angled corner from your example (see #3 in Sup's images), but this is a top-down view. The arrows in my image show where the flat wall "module" poly ends and the curved wall "module" poly starts. Because you're using modules, you have basically doubled the flat wall poly. Instead, you could extend the flat wall "module" poly all the way to the corner, so that your curved wall "module" only consists of the actual angled wall.

The same problem occurs with your modules #1 and #2. You've essentially doubled the amount of polys for the wall segment there by breaking it up into modules. Because of the extruded detail on the bottom of your wall, you will need to modify a straight wall "module" when it reaches a corner, but by simply putting two straight walls up against each other you've created double the polys you need.

Counting only the polys "facing the camera" in your example and including the angled corner poly (though not the wall portion of the angled corner module that is facing to the left), your example will have 44 polys. If you implement the change in poly construction around the door, then remove the "moduled" walls and extend them to the corners (and counting the angled corner poly), you will have 20 polys. This would use less than half the polys.

So, while I do support the use of modules when constructing maps, I think they should be used more like "clay" than "legos". You need to be molding the models individually to some degree in order to conserve polys.

[element11]

EDIT: My bad, h hour is right, you do have an unnecissary polygon in there. If an extra edge dosent make any change in shape then its unnecisary.

Edited October 27, 2006 by element11

[SnowFella]

It's true that Sup's door (fig 4) has a poly or 2 more than H-Hours example but it does have one huge positive though. All verts around Sup's doorframe can be welded together, something H-Hours edge layout doesn't allow.

In some engines not welding all verts in a mesh like that could cause lighting to bleed through even if you snap the edges together.

So for all accounts, in this case I'd pick Sup's variant over H-Hours anyday....2 extra polys is nothing to worry about really.

@Sup:

[Sup]

You bring up some good points, about tri count, h-hour, which was probably under adressed in this first tutorial.

To clarify:

For ease of use I'm keeping everything in even sized blocks at the moment. This was I can very quickly switch out modules and see what I like. Before I export a model like this to any kind of game engine, though, I delete and weld unnecessary loops away. Optimizing the finished building(s) will only take a couple of minutes, which I'll try and cover whenever I have the time to get the second part of this tutorial finished.

I do agree with Snow on the door, though; I'm going to have to terminate those loops somewhere, for economic welding, and it really works best to do it straight from the corners.

[H-Hour]

All verts around Sup's doorframe can be welded together, something H-Hours edge layout doesn't allow.

Good point!

[Sup]

Sorry about this, been really busy (and may be for a little while.)

I may cut down on the size of the update so that I can get something posted.