Ok, Since I keep modifying my own buildings, i’ve decided to start a new thread, in which I will post my efforts to make a 3d medieval town.
I have modelled a glazier shop so far (which you can find in the Medieval Market Place thread) and a guild hall, which I have restarted in order to achieve better results.
Here is the very start of the guild hall: the external walls (first floor) with a human figure (terrible) just to give an idea of proportions.
In my project 1 blender unit corresponds to 1 meter.
The average height of men in the XIV century was around 1.71 meters.
The ceiling is quite high because the building I’m planning is a guild hall, an important town palace in which banquets, reunions and ceremonies are kept. Perhaps it was built in the XII/XIII century, in the gothic era, when buildings were very tall with arched windows that enlightened the inside.
I mus say im looking forward till one of you attempts the church/ cathedral/ monastery always something very magical about old gothic buildings I am glad the references from the witcher helped they looked to be a similar style to what you were looking for
if you google “flotsam witcher 2” it even gives you the in game map which i think is a nice representation of medieval cartography
Ahaha Yeah, I’m starting like 200 thousand projects and never completing even one… well that’s because I want to model to many things ahaha I followed your example and tried not to use booleans and join faces… I feel like building this guildhall up with stones
The proportions of the windows to the wall look good so far. I’m not so sure about the proportions of the reference to the overall size, especially the hight. If the reference were 1.7m this would result in a total hight of roughly 6.5m which seems to me a bit too high. But you seem to be the better judge of that.
Thanks, actually I based the proportions “study” upon some sketches 3dmedieval sent me, the hall ceiling was as high as 3 men and a half (170x3 + 85 = 5.95 mts) more or less. Perhaps yeah I will lower down the ceiling a little bit and get to 6 meters, which is ok for a honour room/hall, especially if the palace is gothic. Then of course houses and bedrooms ceilings would be much lower, the second floor will be like 3.5/4 meters high.
The top marking shows where I messed because I took the wrong measurement, I did the wall with an array modifier of count 4, repeating each wall segment. Each segment was encased by columns. Therefore the width was given and I only noticed that the two arches are not of the same width as I added the arches. I’m what is the better way to do these double arches, as they are the same I would like to model them only once, which either suggests another array modifier (which would result in a double arch in the middle, which might look ok on the large ones but are definitely out of place on the smaller inner ones). The other alternative would be mirroring the mesh, which results in a mess as you then have to merge some vertices and create new ones where the arches split up.
In my model the arches also curved out of the wall, most of their ends were therefore covered up by another object. This brings me to the next point: I split the arches and the back wall into separate objects. My main reason was that they have different textures.
Looking at my mesh I have to say that I could do with less polys, especially in the columns.
Now with Blender 2.63 and BMesh, I do not think there were much to do for the arches once the poly count is cleaned up, but for the wall this would have great effect.
I did not count how many polys are in there now, but with BMesh I only need 3, as all the surfaces are flat. In BMesh you basically add a new polygon when the new face angles off.
Nice arches, Hotzst! Also, I have seen the boat on your thread: amazing!
I have decided to simplify my arches and remove all those in-between loops (I used them to create a 3d stone effect with gaps in between them), as soon as I’m able to do so I’ll paint shadows on the sandstone with photoshop and just stick the texture on the arches.
I think it should be a double winged door, for that it is too small. How do you intend your door to look like? Rectangular door? How do you fill the arch? Relief, Window panes, plain bricks?
I scaled up the door a little bit, now it’s double winged and circa 2.5 meters high, enough for a main door.
Glass, along with decorated stones and torches is missing
You’ve really made a lot of progress. I wouldn’t worry about joining your windows to your walls. Separate your materials to make it easier to edit things. Yes, those drawings are really useful. Almost too much information.
Thanks, very kind of you. How are you getting on with the market hall? I can’t wait to see it! It was coming on really good. Mhh if I separate them can I still join the faces then? Cause I can’t figure out other ways to make arch shaped wholes in the walls a part from booleans and join in faces…
Well I shall see.
Those drawings are actually fantastic. I haven’t seen them all yet, just printed some pages concerning arches and halls. Anyway, there is enough material to build up an entire medieval town
Market hall - I’ll work on it this weekend. You don’t need arch shaped holes in the walls. Just make a simple cutout that stays inside the arch, if you understand what I mean. If you don’t I’ll draw a quick sketch.
im curious to know about your workflow now manorial do you build the floorplan first and then work up? did you create a plane then uv unwrap it and duplicate it or create the entire floor and then projection paint it?
Hey Do you mean how did I map/build the walls of the first floor? Or how will I build up the second ?
Well I started with a plane, added some edge loops to create walls, extruded here and there in x and y directions to add the kitchen and private room, deleted the faces in-between and then extruded the walls up, cutting the space for the doors. Then I selected all, added the bricks texture and unwrapped it. I extruded the walls up a little bit and then created arches, same objects as walls, and then mapped them (I’ve used 5 textures so far: Floor, Steps Stone, Bricks, Sandstone for the arches and finally an image for the door).
I prefer a different approach than 3dmedieval, though I must say his method has its advantages. I select the edges of the arch, which join the wall, duplicate them and then separate and join with the wall. This results in the vertices at the same position in the wall and in the arch.
always something very magical about old gothic buildings 
I am glad the references from the witcher helped 
I followed your example and tried not to use booleans and join faces… I feel like building this guildhall up with stones 
