Note: you can also use BSP brushes to do this. That is probably more efficient in resource consumption. Using a mesh like in this example gives the building a slight minecraft look.
First I created a cube in blender and brought it into UDK.
A few notes about the cube:
1. I used the default cube in blender. no size adjustments
2. export size = 48. The cube perfectly aligns with other cubes in UDK with a grid snap of 16.
3. I added collision
4. I took the time to perfectly lightmap the cube using as much of the light map as possible
Within UDK I set the light map resolution to 128 on cube.
I then created a copy of the cube for every seamless texture I had.
This was the result:
Using these cubes and a few other meshes (tree, grass, stacks logo) I built this house in 2 hours:
If you look carefully you will see dark seams at the edges of each block. This is due to the light map surfaces bleeding onto other surfaces. I could fix that but I like the look of that so I left it alone.
Original reference photo:
That was a lot of fun. I will be doing a demo of my game to my daughter's class in a few weeks. I will show them this house of an example of how to build something quickly.
Most developers actually just use the BSP tools. It's much quicker to drag out large shapes and refine them to fit your needs with the CSG operations. It's also super quick to change after you've created the shapes, and you can throw whatever material you want on them tiled how you want.
ReplyDeleteThanks. I need to take the time to use BSP tools more. I guess I'm a glutton for static mesh punishment :)
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