How to model a building

Mods
1

BUILDINGS

Buildings are structures than are builded, and also decay with time if no properly maintained.
A building construction can have as many visual steps as desired. They also can have as many visual decay steps as desired. But it’s recommended to use as few as possible to have a nice representation.
To incorporate to the visual building steps some elements that help to give the impression of the work being done is a nice touch and recommended -like some material to be used on the ground, or temporal support structures, etc…

Vertex color information: WIND(optional) or COLOR + AO(optional)
Textures: several C, N, T(optional), O

It’s possible to use more than a model per building step, but not recommended.
Its also possible to use different texture sets for each step of build/decay visualization, but not recommended.

It’s recommended to use the same number of steps for building and decay.
The same representation of the complete build structure should be used as the last step for build and decay.

The apparent material incorporated or remaining for the equivalent step of build and decay should be visually the same or close enough.
The appearance of usability should exist from 75% of building process or less than 75% decay.

A hut showing its build/decay steps. Note that the last level representing the full building it’s shared:

Building
Building512×512 5.91 KB

  • LODS
    Each step of build/decay can use up to 3 LODS, and at least a LOD0 and LOD1 must be present for complex buildings, at least for the last steps of build/decay which are the ones that are more complex and also are the ones that are visualized most of the time.

  • NOTES
    The building can incorporate animations for supported actions, like open or close the door.
    If that’s the case the model need to be properly skinned, animated and exported.

5 Likes
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I’m wondering if the game does/will support buildings that do not contain animations per se, but they contain pathing, where people could walk over them, such as bridges or the balcony of a building?

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Not at this point

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Ah, alright. I thought I would bring it up. Now that I really think about it, another example would be an open temple with a raised floor that people would would perform religious ceremonies on/at.

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Is there a program that we can use to start modeling buildings for the game? Any recommendation?

What exactly does the game do with these different C N T and O textures, with a building?

I’ve messed around with FreeCAD a little bit, trying to make a simple bracket to print with a 3D printer. That pretty much sums up my 3D modeling experience.

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You can use any 3d software that support fbx format export.

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Check this post for specific info