3DForge Exteriors

Hi @Grendelbiter ,

Just some questions so that I can understand exactly what you requesting.

Extended floors:
It appears as if the parts I have given are of the right type and idea, just at this moment they add only small extra overhands instead of say full width room extensions ?

It would sound like the sides and the underneath is the problem of not being addressed as you would want it to be ?

Thanks for showing some screenshots, they designs are lovely.

Please come show some more of your project.

These are def coming, they still as part of the upcoming roadmap

Cheers
Cobus

 

Yes, the underneath and sides. This shows exactly.

What I would like is a way to add 1/4 of a room extensions or even only 1/8. I have marked the places on this pic that are important.
Fun fact: these extensions weren't to make more room but to keep the rooftop from sagging. The extensions kept the roofline taught by adding stress in opposite directions kind of like a bow, where the rooftop is like the bowstring.

I have found a workaround. First I want to show what I tried first and why that doesn't work.
Let's start really simple adding a floorframe: http://imgur.com/clcTj3j
Next add a Veranda on top 1/2 a floor sticking out: http://imgur.com/Kz1gUuV
Then, to close it off some beam ends underneath: http://imgur.com/mA4Pz1u
As you can see though there are some faces missing. You can kind of cover it up with a floor piece but not everything. If you could fill in those faces this would be a viable option to make extended floors.

The workaround I have found looks like this: http://imgur.com/VZECy0S
I just turned a frame_front piece upside down to close off the floor underneath, then add an upright in the corner: http://imgur.com/fAHTubg

While doing this I had a eureka moment and realized I could just go a 1/4 floor out on each side of the building, then I'd have 3 1/2 blocks upstairs which I totally can fill in. Here's how it looks, with smaller beam ends too: http://imgur.com/7a25GHm

Then I discovered all the small upright wood pieces and it seems that everything I need was there the whole time. So I guess, problem solved?

Will post a finished house with this method later.

 

Getting really close to the look I want: http://imgur.com/0qvvPGs

Thinking about doing all those support beams as a texture. I kinda wanna redo all the textures anyway but I don't know where to start. I've got substance painter, I'm not sure if I need headus to redo the textures.

Edit: Just messed around a bit in Substance Painter, and yes it turns out I need something to combine the textures again. I can combine the Albedo and Normal maps with Gimp but I haven't figured out how to combine alpha channels for the metallic/roughness map. I would be really grateful if someone could point me in the right direction.

 

Well done! It'd be kewl to see a stone chimney, running up one of the outside walls.

 

@Grendelbiter That's looking really good. How you your workarounds affect the interiors? We have fewer 1/4 pieces for interiors.

 

I will do 3 1/2 floor pieces upstairs. Gonna do the interior when I get home from work today. That reminds me. We need half-wide stairs. It always irks me that the stairs eat up half the house.

 

Stairs can be an issue. They're wide enough for a capsuled character which is good; I'm not sure half width would work. A nice triangular wall section would be great to go under the stairwell (which was often used a cupboard). Maybe some stairs without the wooden railings would also be handy; just treads or just treads and risers.

 

Its always possible to just scale the stairs a bit, textures still looks ok if you just scale it around 2/3.

 

Well done.
One of the coolest things about the packages is seeing them used past what I even thought or intended.
Your designs and the small extension additions is looking lovely

Not right now with this update, but surely worth adding some parts that would give a selection of solutions with similar looking results, for it really adds a very nice medieval extra spice to it.

Easy enough to add Stone Chimneys to this update with the castles stone texture I mean and maybe more with the older one, let me dig those working files up.

That is always what makes just adding anything, for I need to know that it will work with the Interiors prefabs.
Just adding tons of pretty outer snap-ons is easy, making sure they also work with the interiors is a different story.

I was not to well for the last several days but am back on track to better health, so I am pushing and trying to get all done and completed on the weekend.

Some other VERY cool surprise parts coming as well, that will be shows in screenshots on the weekend

Cheers
Cobus

 

Stop giving him ideas. It'll only stop him from starting on new packs. lol

 

@Grendelbiter,

If the stairs are taking up half of the house, then my suggestion is to make the house bigger. I'm not joking.

It's well known amongst experienced level designers that you generally need to scale up interior environments to about 150℅ of their real-life dimensions in order to accommodate the camera, character colliders, pathfinding, etc -- as well as to avoid the feeling of claustrophobia. This goes for both 1st and 3rd person views.

Props like furniture don't need to be scaled up, but features like staircases generally need to be wider (than real life dimensions). Note how narrow the baked NavMesh can get on staircases with the default 0.5m Agent Radius.

The narrow wooden stairs in the Exteriors kit really don't leave much walkable space on that part of the NavMesh, and the steep, narrow castle stairs are quite easy to walk off the sides of if you're a bit sloppy when moving your character. So half-width stairs aren't necessarily ideal.

I have found that I need to widen the ladders in the Village kits by 1/3 in order to make it easier for a character to not be partially off the ladder when climbing... It's difficult to position the character exactly in front of the ladder when starting a climb. (Using either ootii's Motion Controller or Opsive's TPC)

As a general rule, I'd make any interior that needs stairs a minimum of 4x4 (12m X 12m), and with those dimensions the stairs go in the corner. For stairs in the middle of the room, I'd make that space wider. For a 3x3 or smaller interior, I'd suggest using a ladder instead.

 

That's interesting. I've always scaled up by a third due to feeling cramped. I didn't know that the usual is to increase by half. It does make sense though.

 

Interesting, i wonder if that "rule" is true for VR as well, might be a bit different there since the sense of scale is quite different.

 

I should point out that my figure of 150% shouldn't be taken literally. It's more of an average and it depends on the situation and context. Sometimes scaling up by a third works well, and sometimes you essentially need to double the size to make the space play well. First-person games don't need their environments scaled up as much as 3rd person "over the shoulder" games. Top-down perspective games often need to have their environments scaled up horizontally by an even larger factor, particularly if the player controls a party of characters.

What sometimes happens is that the art director and environment artists push for realistic dimensions while the design team argues that the spaces need to be scaled up to accommodate gameplay. Some members of the design team might even back up this argument by referring to post-mortems of other games that came to the same conclusion. In the end a lot of time and effort is wasted until the art team finally acknowledges that the designers were right all along.

No, this has never happened to me... I don't know what you're talking about.

 

This makes so much sense, and reading it has given me a totally new perspective and a burst of motivation for this weekend. (Likely short lived because of my attention span, however) So thanks for the info!

 

You're welcome!

You thank me now, but the next time you play some of your favorite games, you'll curse me because you can't stop studying how all of the areas are built.

The Gothic and Risen games are good examples to look at, as are modern Bethesda titles like Oblivion, Skyrim, Fallout 3/4, etc.

 

I play WoW, GW2, AoC, Rift, and Conan Exiles - I'm always looking at how things are built and what fudging has been done to make things work. A poor internet connection also helps, as it can show up how the server sees the world, and how the client predicts.

 

But what about games with a free first person to third person transition? This seems rather difficult to me to fit for both views then.

 

If I do that I have a gap in the cieling and floor above because there's no 1/3rd floor piece. I just tried it with 1/2 width and yeah it really does look too small. I guess I'll really have to build the houses bigger.

 

I'd err on the side of building to fit the 3rd person view. Skyrim, Fallout 3/4, etc allow you to switch freely between 1st and 3rd, so those are good examples to study.

 

I tried doing the interior on that little house I showed last but it really is too cramped inside. I can't make the inside bigger than the outside though because we are making entry/exit seamless. I am developing an open world rpg for VR with @virror .
I guess this house is gonna be decoration only. I've made way bigger houses already. One is an Inn for a city. Here are a few screens showing it off:

Outside front: http://imgur.com/BcZv0Xo
Outside back: http://imgur.com/UC37N6P
Entrance bar view right: http://imgur.com/1sljXlP
Entrance bar view left: http://imgur.com/Cey7Jg5
Bar Upstairs: http://imgur.com/PSuB8yA
Kitchen: http://imgur.com/MNhG8NR
Dining Room: http://imgur.com/pq3eY6F
Office: http://imgur.com/f531jHV
Hallway to rooms Downstairs: http://imgur.com/FIqb8T3
Room: http://imgur.com/jA9YlY3
Hallway Upstairs: http://imgur.com/qWnCNqU
Luxury Suite: http://imgur.com/szKi93F
Luxury Suite Library: http://imgur.com/wueUHvO
another angle of the Luxury Suite with an Empty Corner. A BATHTUB would look nice there: http://imgur.com/htQggrV

There are no small props because we're still trying to figure out which ones we wanna make interactable.

 

Just installed Skyrim again and it looks like the inside of the houses are double the size of the outside shape. Riverwood houses have really a lot of space inside.

 

Yeah, I'm not a fan of making the interiors larger than the Exteriors even when they're on separate maps. Unless we're talking about a game with a high degree of abstraction, such as most CRPGs of the 80s (Ultima I-V, Wasteland, SSI's AD&D games, etc).

I suppose I might fudge the interior size slightly if I needed to in such a case, but not enough that anyone would notice. Games like Gothic I-III, Risen I-III, Ultima IX, etc all tend towards buildings that are larger than they would be in real life (especially noticeable in Gothic II), but overall it works just fine.

 

Look at it in VR

 

WOW, thanks for sharing

For those that want to grab them FREE ( think there is more then 280 of them )
Main BLUEPRINTS page > with explanation of how easy to add too your project
Exteriors BLUEPRINT page
Interiors + Exteriors BLUEPRINTS page

Cheers
Cobus

 

Nice video! Im using the exterior and interior kit for a VR game myself with a lot of houses and i think it works fine. Just have to make sure i lightmap all the interiors, and i also have a collider around each house that loads the interior when the player is close to the door.

 

Awesome idea with the proximity colliders! are you using that just to teleport them to the interior? Or you using the colliders to trigger the interiors to unhide interiors for seamless looking into windows, entering buildings?

 

Im using it to enable the interior only, everything is seamless. The doors are interactive, so the player has to open it with the controllers, then they slowly autoclose so it wont show empty houses when the player leaves and interiors vanish.

Edit: Using VRTK for door interactions

 

Hey all you 3DForgers

Just a heads-up on the FREE contents that you are getting next.
It should be available inside the next 24 hours !!!
I will be releasing screenshots of cool build examples and with each set of screenshots a downloadable BLUEPRINT file for all package owners to grab and explore the examples as they are released for themselves.
All these fresh examples will be added to the package as well as part of the download for future, so no need to archive them anywhere, just grab and have fun

Cheers
Cobus

 

nice!

 

Hey everyone,

In case you do not have the Village Exteriors Kit yet, go grab it
EXTRA Castles & Cathedrals prefabs: Updates v1.2.2c Waiting to go LIVE
256 Meshes & 256 Prefabs have been added
- Classic Vaulted external roofs for Cathedrals.
- Pitched standing roofs for Cathedrals as well as traditional castles structures.
- Metalwork for either of the roof sets.
- Metalwork for between parapets or can be used as fences.
- Staggered Stone corner set.
- Wooden Beam Corner sets X 2.
- Small, Medium & Large portcullis.
- 4 new entrances to assist with making enter-able towers and castle walls.
- 1,2 & 3 Unit wide enter-able tower walls, 0,200mm thick Double sided, 1, 2, 3, 4, & 5 floors high for each of those widths.
- Modular parts to add arrow slids where you would want to.
- 1/8 corner parts for Wall type 04(1 unit thick) & 07(2 units thick) that is going to open the world to non square Castle and Castle-Wall layouts and designs.
- Selection of arches that can be added to any wall that will break up large surface areas with nice detail ans shadows.

* More will be added during this week and submitted on the weekend coming
- Modular external staircases similar to that wish comes with the Interiors kit
- Ramps for Castles
- More Modular Bridges
- Tall Castle chimneys

Cheers
Cobus

 

Village Exteriors Kit v1.2.2C FREE Update is LIVE !!!
Go grab it now if you do not already have it
Cheers
Cobus

 

Hey everyone,

For some reason the file size of the download is quite a bit larger then what I uploaded, so I am double checking myself
I finished importing and there does not appear to be anything wrong.

Let the fun begin !!!

Inside the next few hours you going to see some very nice examples of what can be done withe some of the new contents. I am not going to nuts and build giant scenes, but if there is requests let me see if I can reply to them satisfactory

See you soon

Cheers
Cobus

 

Hi,

When checking through everything I could pick up to small prefab matter that needed attention for they are prefabs that is going to be used in these example BLUEPRINTS, grab them and install/unpack them

Lets call them HotFix1 & HotFix2. They will be added and corrected with the update coming next weekend as well.
They contain only mesh and prefab data, no texture data that is why they are so small.

Next post will be the first Example BLUEPRINTS

Cheers
Cobus

 

Hey there,

The first of many BLUEPRINT Example files

1. Download the SingleWallExampleBLUEPRINT file and import into a project that has latest Village Exteriors Kit
2. It will generate a directory looking like this
Assets\3DForge\Blueprints\BPVillageExteriors\BP_VEK_Temp\BP_VEK_CityWalls
3. Inside will be a single prefab SingleWidthWall.prefab
4. Pull the prefab in and below is what you will see.









Cheers
Cobus

 

This is awesome! Can't wait to play with these.

Did you build any 1/8 wall pieces that work with the enterable towers?

 

I've been waiting for this update, great to see it finally released! It would be fantastic if you could also share the castle/cathedral prefabs or even the whole scenes you've built to make these beautiful screenshots: https://www.facebook.com/pg/3DForge-535899169786851/photos/

Btw, there is probably a problem with normalmaps. The "y" (green) channel looks like it is reversed. I'm not sure if it is the case for all textures, but I've noticed it with the "fe_village_castle01" material. Could you look into it?

Also, if it's not too much trouble, the materials could use some heightmaps. Parallax mapping would certainly make everything (especially the bricks) even more immersive!

 

They will work with any tower, they stop right outside the tower, then just pick tower outsides that has doorways in, add internal floors and there you go
I will be using one of the 4 prefabs that you will see that has been freshly added
Village & Towns\Prefabs\CastleCathedral\Castles\BaseCastle\BaseEntrance\BaseEntranceA
I will do that as Example BLUEPRINT next

The idea is to at the Main gate/Entrance, go left or right and up inside one of the towers that hug the entrance structure, then be able to run around the Village Keep/Castle on top of the wall, every-time when meeting a tower, be able to run right through and carry on ,on top of the wall.

Together with the 1/4 and 1/8 slices you can really make for organic shaped walls the way folks would have actually build them hugging and embracing the landscape making the city development look way more at home then before where you were limited to 90degrea angled designs.

Glad you guys are enjoying what has been released, it was fun doing and is very cool to see users enjoy.

The method of releasing BLUEPRINTS was thought up specifically to easily share designs without sharing copyrighted data. They contain no texture or mesh data, you in essence sharing recipes/designs and therefore VERY small as well.

I will be in the near future release Premium BLUEPRINT PACKAGES that will be for sale at reasonable prices and assist those short of ideas and time to easily obtain handcrafted sets of themed designs, like full village layouts.
a Central Church, several Houses, some Shops, Local Inn, Castle Keep, Stables, Village Wall, Bridges into Village.
Fenced gardens, Farms and all medieval, fantasy themed package requirements that users might have.

Feel Free to email me or post here any ideas you would like to see that would fill this need for you so that you can concentrate on the rest of the development and I can focus on bringing them to life and have them ready to use for you.

I will look into the mentioned possible required texture adjustment, but in the mean time, keep playing, I will fix that if that is the case.

Have fun
Cobus

 

Great idea Cobus. A massive amount of work goes into creating these, and they are a big time saver for people who just want to get things in so they can get on and create their games.

Looking forward to getting some Gaia and Gena integrations going with these as well

 

That's exactly what I meant - demo scenes or just prefabs like the ones that are already in the package, they're small files and don't need contain any additional data. The castles and cathedrals on those screenshots look great and I'd love to build something similar, but it's quite hard when I don't know exactly how elements are named and searching for the right part takes a lot of time. A very handy example would be something like the St Alessandro Cathedral Demo from Interiors Kit - just outside

Keep up the good work and I look forward to see the new blueprints!

 

Glad that makes you excited, for that is what is coming up

 

Sweet!
More angles for the walls is just whats needed, perfect : D

 

Hi there,

Enter Able Tower alone, then another style and with castle walls and basic entrance
You will see two of the new corner details, staggered stone and braced wooden beams, looking lovely.

2X2TowerBLUEPRINT file
What is different with these walls is that they are 0,2 thick with both the inside facing surface and outside facing surfaces and normals. So you only use the data from the Village Exteriors kit to build them.









EnterAbleTowersEntranceBLUEPRINT file
I love the way the Arrow slid parts came out.
Also take note, one of the other roof styles added with this "C" update








Cheers
Cobus

 

Hi everyone,
Unity back-end engineers is just busy fixing a wrong reported file for the Village Exteriors Kit.
It should be round 600mb, but it showed 1.15 gig for the v1.2.2C update.
You can still buy, just wait to download when it is fixed shortly.
Cheers
Cobus

 

Hi everyone,
The UAS now reports Village Exteriors Kit package size correct, so go download it now

 

Yay : )

 

What is it they you were waiting for that now makes you excited ?

 

That i can now get the latest stuff from the store : p

 

I know it's a little bit petty to ask for things to be added to a package that already offers so much, but I was wondering whether you might be willing to add some large round rampart crowns to the castles. I'd love to be able to use something like that for a scene in my game.

This is the kind of structure I was thinking about.

 

Hey there,

No BLUEPRINTS today,
but rather Screenshots of EXTRA contents for the Village Exteriors Kit

Just finished adding a full modular staircase set for the exteriors kit that I am sure everyone will agree a castle setting can do with.
Now, the set includes :
- Rail less basic set.
- Full railed (left & right).
- Left railed set.
- Right railed set.
Proper simple mesh ramp coliders have been added and setup so that you can just have fun using them.







Cheers
Cobus