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- Sep 7, 2012
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That's really coming along nicely. Now you need to put it in a playable map, and give it a meaningful layout! (That's the REALLY tricky part)
How do I make such well-designed buildings?
- Thread starter biskuu
- Start date
ok comp
L2: Junior Member
- Mar 16, 2011
- 51
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Try not to craft your map around buildings, rather craft buildings from your map. This falls under "layout first, detail second" but there's a bit more too it.
Let's refer to the second screenshot you provided. I bet when they were developing this map early on it was a large, flat wall, which is pretty challenging to detail. It was done masterfully though: the detailing breaks this down into different visual areas, with the wood support below and the tiered structures, including roofs and catwalks that break up the flatness up above. Despite being a very large area it is not visually exhausting. I guess the idea I'm hitting at is that probably no one said "I want to make a building that looks like this!" but it just came about because that is where it needed to fit in the layout.
Your progression is pretty cool to watch though! Just learning the detailing basics will help when you need to apply them to these random situations you'll come across.
Let's refer to the second screenshot you provided. I bet when they were developing this map early on it was a large, flat wall, which is pretty challenging to detail. It was done masterfully though: the detailing breaks this down into different visual areas, with the wood support below and the tiered structures, including roofs and catwalks that break up the flatness up above. Despite being a very large area it is not visually exhausting. I guess the idea I'm hitting at is that probably no one said "I want to make a building that looks like this!" but it just came about because that is where it needed to fit in the layout.
Your progression is pretty cool to watch though! Just learning the detailing basics will help when you need to apply them to these random situations you'll come across.
This is one of the most important things I've had to learn about mapping. While what your doing seems to be more of a test than a actual map, never put a ton of work into detailing anything until you get some kind of basic layout down. It really sucks to have to remove a area you've put a lot of time on.
Hey, thanks for replying!
The structure is not that detailed other than the railing and 2 pallets + 1 barrel inside the house, but I definitely see your point!
I disagree, there's more than approach to mapping and if it turns out designing a set piece and building a map around it works, then go right ahead and do it. I actually think a lot of people around here could benefit from trying it, sometimes it feels like there's too much "mapping by the numbers" going on. You may find that a flashy structure can function as that one unifying detail that sparks a cascade of creativity through the rest of the map.
Just be aware that it will almost certainly need adjustments later to accommodate balance changes, so you obviously don't want to do any final level of detailing. The good news is if you're cautious about how you structure the brushes this shouldn't take more than a few minutes.. select the effected brushes, go into vertex edit mode, and stretch to fit. You may find this even helps with the map feeling more organic, when building structures in Hammer we tend to make everything perfectly symmetrical and a little bit of chaos can actually be a good thing.
The buildings you've posted show a big improvement and they could easily be pasted into a new map and built into a scene.. both of them seem like useful spawn structures that would feel right at home in a payload map or something.
Just be aware that it will almost certainly need adjustments later to accommodate balance changes, so you obviously don't want to do any final level of detailing. The good news is if you're cautious about how you structure the brushes this shouldn't take more than a few minutes.. select the effected brushes, go into vertex edit mode, and stretch to fit. You may find this even helps with the map feeling more organic, when building structures in Hammer we tend to make everything perfectly symmetrical and a little bit of chaos can actually be a good thing.
The buildings you've posted show a big improvement and they could easily be pasted into a new map and built into a scene.. both of them seem like useful spawn structures that would feel right at home in a payload map or something.
Its not just the roofs. They are important, but its not everything. I see 4 important parts on the badlands walls:
- The lower part is made so it has a diffirent look
- The middle part is the normal wall you expect. Long parts are broken by giving it a diffirent depth.
- The roof itself on the first layers is the main roof on those with just 1 layer, in some cases the building itself however continues.
- The top roof is the final roof giving just that extra bit of detail to the roof itself. This is what realy gives that extra bit.
Although it looks nice, having too many of these extra layers is going to make the map look boring again. On your 1st screen the left has mainly single layer roofs. on the right side its double layered. On the 2nd screen you only see the double layer, but on the left you still have that little part with just 1 layer.
4 layers is alot of detailing on a single wall, and even though the brushwork is simple it just adds alot. And thats exactly why not to have too many of these. Too much detail is going to distract and will reduce the focus on the best detailed parts.
And even then, a roof doesnt allways have to be a basic roof. In some cases it consists of a minecart bridge. Its still that extra layer that adds a bit. On your 2nd screen on the right you can see such bridge. Layer one is just 1 layer of supports with metal plates, the 2nd layer is the bridge.
The top of the roofs on badlands arent special at all (its just a displacement), its expecialy the sides that matter. Anything building up to the roof level is going to make that roof look more detailed. People normaly dont see the top of the roof, they only see the part just below it.