I’ve all ressources I need ( historical & archeological references, illustrations, also textures, PBR, … ) so I can start but I have few ways to make it but IDK which one to choose and which one blender/cycle prefer.
First way : Making some assets of houses, road, walls,… and then import it in a main file. This way is quicker in modeling but slower in rendering because of the non visibles faces.
Second way : Modeling all the houses, roads, one by one in a same file, but only the visible faces, very slow for modeling but probably faster in rendering. And more realistic.
Third way : Mixing the first and 2nd way by modeling something like 50% of the houses … and then modifying a bit and copying the other 50%
IDK … Maybe you know, What is the best way to create large scene with a lot of different models ? I mean, at the same time, a logical way and a blender way (
Thanks !
Do the layout and the houses have to be correct or do you need an approximation that looks correct. Are all houses different or can you copy and paste at least some?
In any case I would recomend looking at the linking system of Blender.
Linking allows importing objects or colletions from other files without actually importing them. Your Blender files sort of reads the model inside another Blender file and then displays it there. You can not modify it only in the original file . This is very efficient for rendering and saves a lot of computing resources.
I would then build each house you need in a separate file.
Then I would create files in which I assemble blocks. For that I´d link the aformetnioned houses into a “block” file.
Then I´d build sectors of the city by linking these block files and assembling them.
After that you´d assemble the whole city out of the sectors in another file.
Build the fields, forests and roads in the same way.
Create a master file into which you link the city, the roads the forests, fields and all the other elements. Create the lighting in this scene as well and place the camera.
Use particles for as many things you can, for example the roof tiles (unless you can use a simple texture), for the trees, bushes and perhaps even the city walls.
In case the layout doesn´t have to be exact you could even distribute some types of less important buildings via particles. Particles save tons of computing resources and you can make the same object vary quite a bit with the help of the particle info shader node.
Make heavy use of procedural textures as these can easily add variation to your scene which will be needed to make the city believable.
The results have to be the more realistic as possiblie, I mean, historicaly correct.
I have the location and size of houses ( cadastral map ) and the actual city appearence didn’t change a lot since XV-XVIth century, BUT, it’s a personnal project, so, sometimes, I can do what I want, so I’ll copy/past some houses and other elements. And to be honest, no one alive was here in the XVth century ! so …
If i understand well ( each " - " is a .blend file ) :
Main file ( ground, background, lights, + weightmap and particles … )
City sector 1
house 1
house 8
…
City sector 2
house 9
house 8
…
Tree 1
Tree 2
…
Everything linked into the main file.
I am good ?
And yes, most of the visual realism will be done with PBR ( wall texture, tiles, roads, city wall, … )
In the main file you would not have any real geometry. Everything would be linked including the terrain, trees, roads, water (lakes and rivers) and so on.
It might even make sense to create the lighting in a separate file but personally I tend to do the lighting in the main file.
Main file ( background, lights, camera)
City sector 1
block 1
house 1
house 8
house …
block 2
house 8
house 9
City Sector 2
block 2
block 3
forrest
tree 1
tree 2
water
roads
primary roads
secondary roads
Depending on the complexity of the houses it might make sense to separate them even further:
Are you planning to do some animations ?
about linking stuff, it’s the way to go for big and collaborative projects. But think about it , you want to tweak a house, you’ll need to open another file, tweak the house , reload the scene to see if the result is correct and go back an forth until you’re satisfied. I won’t do that for your project, or at least you can just use dupli-collections inside the blend.
Just model one house in one collection, then make Shift-A → collection instance → House
Or you may just need to use regular object instances (alt-D instead of shift-D) inside your scene so you’ll render faster and modifing one element will modify all the corresponding other.
Do that only if it’s relevant , like a part of the city that is not seen from camera. You won’t get much performances benefits from modeling half of the houses. It’s clearly not worth the efforts.
However, you can model lowpoly and rely on textures instead of making heavy meshs. Or having detailled model on the front and lowpoly ones on the back.
By judging your picture most of the house are made of a few cubes, all the details are in the textures.
Maybe the trees are a bit detailled, but all in all I’m sure this is quite a light scene even if lots of stuff is going on .
No animation ATM, just some views.
I was thinking in my " third way " to play with Shift D and Alt D but i’m affraid that my tree look like a big mess !
The way of Lumpengnom is maybe more tricky but more clean.
The question now is which way is less expensive for modeling and rendering
About the example, I’m agree with you, and if you look at well, there are some copy/paste + rotation, but the final render is pretty good ! it’s what i’m looking for
I don’t think one way or the other is especially more expensive,
You’ll just be switching from one .blend to another and you may loose some time doing that .
On the flip side it’s a bit cleaner , and maybe easier to tweak a house in the center of a scene rather than rotated and placed among others.
Either ways you’ll need a bit of organization because it’s a big scene. One question that you may want to think of , is will you start by blocking out all the scene with simple geometry then start detailing ? or model/texture all the asset then construct the scene ?
Both methods have their pro and cons in your case, going for the big picture first need some more organisation and take a good use of instances, but prevent you from getting lost in the details.
The other one is more simple, but you may end up by working on stuff that you will not see in the final image.
All that said, you can start without having answers to all these questions to get warmed up , then when you’ll have a better picture of what is important and you can go back and organize your scene better.
All that matters is the result , people won’t judge how it’s made but is the render looking good. Even if you make some mistake you’ll learn from them and even with that nothing will stop you from making a great render.
For rendering time, you can use the new denoiser that is available in 2.81 beta , with 10 or 20 samples you can get a clean image (not for animation , but for still pictures it’s perfect).
That’s a very good question ! probably the main one.
I think i’ll use the second way, i’ll modeling something like 15 houses then texturing, because of the method that you pointed " all the details are in the textures " this step should be coming quickly to modify them and move from 15 to 45-50 different houses.
I think I’ll separate my bulidings in 3 groups :
the high detailled ones : church, castle, …
the normal ones : the visible houses
the low ones : the non visible houses
With this method, I’ll have less " stuff that you will not see in the final image. "
Cool !
It’s a good and easy way to approach these kind of projects.
It’s a fun subject to work on, not as difficult as it sound but the result could be quite impressive if done well !
I would begin by modeling the town – that is to say, the set or sets – doing to “to scale.” Then, for each asset (whether it be a building or a prop), create a simple named stand-in object that is also “to scale.” It can be a very simple geometric shape.
At this point, "shift gears to your final show." Where do you want the camera(s) to be, what sequence of shots taken by those cameras will tell your story. Start visualizing your finished film right now, using just those stand-in objects. This will quickly help you realize where you need to focus your future attention, and where you don’t.
As others have said, everything should be “linked.” You never want to “import” anything. Every time Blender needs to find “that wheelbarrow,” no matter in how many places it appears in the show, it should always link to just one source.
When you’ve developed your show into a rough-cut, you can one-by-one begin to replace the stand-in objects with the real things. (I ordinarily place them as “Groups” and link to the “Group.”) The change is of course instantly reflected everywhere.
I only focus on modeling the surfaces that will be visible to the camera, but I paint all the “hidden” surfaces with a garish, fluorescent-orange material. (Linked, of course …) So that if any of these faces actually show up on-camera I can spot them and fix it.
No you don have to reload the scene. You can just reload the specific asset in the outliner.
You do have to open another file for modifying but hat is the point. That is what makes it clean.
I’d also recommend sundials advice with the drop ins. In fact search his posting history. He created a detailed thread about linking in complex projects.
Indeed , you can work with 2 blender open, one to edit the scene and one to edit the asset.
But you still need to manage reloading, to tweak a mesh you’ll need to go back and forth , reloading stuff instead of just editing the mesh.
On most projects I’ve worked on I’ve use linked instances, especially when it involve animated characters, shots ect…
I’ve also worked on animated projects without instances (not mines) and I witnessed how much of a mess it was.
On this particular project , to me it seems a bit overkill, it’s simple geometry where it won’t make much difference to have one house = 1 mesh, or one house = one instance.
By using collections you can organize your work and keep a clean scene.
Linking and instances are great , but it’s also a constraint , it help manage big projects , collaborative work and avoid duplicating stuff all around shots. But it also make things harder to edit. Like for materials , in this case , if you want to tweak materials you’ll have to do some guess work on the asset’s scene instead of doing it right in the scene.
I’ll look for sundials’s post because I’m always interested in the subject, it’s something tempting to overabuse and if you can go with local stuff it’s generally simpler and faster to manage.
I don´t know. I recently built a city and even though it was probably 20 times the size of this one i´d go the same route.
Reloading stuff is just a single mouse click and the advantages of having everything cleanly separated is worth it imo.
But I guess everybody has to figure this out for themselves.
I begun my work, I’ve made 3 normal houses ,
The first one was something like a cube I modified, boolean, textures, …
And finally, I did the second and the third as Lumpengnom suggested on his second post. I mean, all parts of the house are in a specifc collection that I can AltD or ShiftD, windows, door, Ivy, …
This way have two " plus "
earning some time , to make my window, i’ve just to copy/paste, a cube is here for boolean, done !
because of my town is on a hill, I can move on Z my doors and elements to be right on this axe
But I’ll do three or four files : lighthouse.blend, normal, detailled, world, …
This way, I’ll be able to easily use my elements on other projects !
I’ll probably change this post to a WIP, and then everyone will have access to the general idea,the " genesis ", of this project
