1
\$\begingroup\$

I'm always struggling with creating flexible, reusable rooms for my underground-set games. When creating reusable rooms I have encountered the following problems:

  • Size - levels can have wildly different sizes and separate objects for all of the sizes seems repetitive and unnecessary
  • Holes in the room - i.e. windows, doors. There may be rooms with exactly the same size but different placement of doors, windows, etc... that only multiplies the amount of possible combinations

Possible solutions:

  • Not creating whole rooms but creating separate walls, floors, roofs so I can mix and match in the engine later?
    • Those parts would still require different sizes, unless I am to put 1 object per square meter or similar
  • Creating flexible Blender model so I can quickly change it export different variations of the room?

Thanks for any ideas, opinions, experiences

\$\endgroup\$
2
  • \$\begingroup\$ It sounds like you've covered the bases: break into modules / tiles, or design your source model for easy reconfiguration. Have you run into a specific problem implementing either of these strategies that we can help you solve? \$\endgroup\$ Commented Aug 9, 2020 at 18:40
  • \$\begingroup\$ Yeah, for example with the modules/tiles it is still very tedious. For each wall I have to add a tile/scale/position. If a wall has a door, then it's 3 separate modules (left wall, wall with a door, right wall...) best case scenario I could just "draw" the room with the walls, etc, generating dynamically \$\endgroup\$ Commented Aug 9, 2020 at 20:26

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
1
\$\begingroup\$

It sounds like you understand the pitfalls, so here is what I suggest in regards to room modeling.

Kits. Your best bet is to create kits that you can bash together in your engine of choice. For example, create a blank 1.5m by 1.5m wall. Then a wall of the same size, but with a window. Then another wall with a different style of window. Repeat these steps for their ceiling and floor, if you need variations on those as well. Then once you import into an engine, you just place the "piece" of wall required for that room. You could go a step further and create entire rooms, each with slightly different variations (window position, door size, etc) and export those entire rooms into the engine. This is more helpful if you are trying to build entire buildings more quickly, otherwise creating separate kits of walls and other surfaces will be easier.

Just to note, you can have different sized walls (full wall, half walls, etc) as long as they "snap" to the same grid. You don't want a wall that's 87cm tall and another that is 92cm. Try to keep it in multiples of two or ten.

This kit rule can be followed for different styles of doors and windows too. Just make sure they have an appropriate pivot point and are scaled correctly. (Make sure all kit items are centered to the world before you export, or else you will have pivot points that are WAY too far from the object and it will make placing them in the engine a nightmare)

\$\endgroup\$

You must log in to answer this question.

Start asking to get answers

Find the answer to your question by asking.

Ask question

Explore related questions

See similar questions with these tags.