Better looking buildings
by Ferret (view all articles)
unrated
Using angles to make better looking cities and towns
by Ferret (view all articles)
unrated
Using angles to make better looking cities and towns
This tutorial will be more of a theory base exercise in which you will use your head to create better more clean brushwork when creating cityscapes, though of course you can apply this to other areas of world building. So to begin with we'll start with the 45 degree building.
First I created a section of the building that is aligned to the grid. This will simply help in some of the discussion for this article so it is not nesc. in your maps. As you can see I created a rather large brush 192 units tall. I will now use my clip brush in the next step.
As you can see I already cut a 45 degree angle to the side of the building. This will be the faces visible to the player. Next I took the same corner I cut from before and cut 2 down and 1 right. The reason I did not cut an exact 45 angle like the other edge is because then the building would be more abnormaly wide compared to other section of the building. This method also works well with walls/fences in maps.
Now I'm going to clean it up. I used vertex manipulation to connect all vertices and create a seamless building. I then shift dragged it up for the second floor. I did some adjustments and built onto the building to create something that looks semi neat for the 3 minutes I spent on it (lol). On a side note, using these angles with my texturing tutorial can be a very powerful combination.
Using the same ideas you can create clean brushes. Just know that to get a 90 degree angle you want to match your cuts. For instance if you wall goes 4 up and 1 over, than to create a 90 degree angle you need to select the corner and go 4 over and 1 down. I personaly stick to 2:1 ratio's with an occasional 4:1 ratio just to keep it clean but use the method that works best for you. Remember to keep your brushwork clean and you wont have leak issues. Also NEVER have one large brush under all these angled brushes. The compiling process will cut it up awkwardly and create lighting errors.
Here are some examples with some curved corner pieces. If you wonder why I made them seperate brushes, it is due to better texturing look for some nice pillar trims.
Forty Five Degrees, not the band
First I created a section of the building that is aligned to the grid. This will simply help in some of the discussion for this article so it is not nesc. in your maps. As you can see I created a rather large brush 192 units tall. I will now use my clip brush in the next step.
As you can see I already cut a 45 degree angle to the side of the building. This will be the faces visible to the player. Next I took the same corner I cut from before and cut 2 down and 1 right. The reason I did not cut an exact 45 angle like the other edge is because then the building would be more abnormaly wide compared to other section of the building. This method also works well with walls/fences in maps.
Now I'm going to clean it up. I used vertex manipulation to connect all vertices and create a seamless building. I then shift dragged it up for the second floor. I did some adjustments and built onto the building to create something that looks semi neat for the 3 minutes I spent on it (lol). On a side note, using these angles with my texturing tutorial can be a very powerful combination.
Using the same ideas you can create clean brushes. Just know that to get a 90 degree angle you want to match your cuts. For instance if you wall goes 4 up and 1 over, than to create a 90 degree angle you need to select the corner and go 4 over and 1 down. I personaly stick to 2:1 ratio's with an occasional 4:1 ratio just to keep it clean but use the method that works best for you. Remember to keep your brushwork clean and you wont have leak issues. Also NEVER have one large brush under all these angled brushes. The compiling process will cut it up awkwardly and create lighting errors.
Here are some examples with some curved corner pieces. If you wonder why I made them seperate brushes, it is due to better texturing look for some nice pillar trims.
but if you made, for instance, a very very long (emphasis on LONG) highway with buildings on the side, naturally you will want to change the sizeshapecolor of the building, and therefore need a new object. If your buildings does not line up with the road, you will need to slash it in order to do so (helps to work on 1 unit grid ) 
