Modular Building Techniques

[Sotha]

Obsttorte was interested in what I learned while making the LQD with the modular building technique, so I'll write some words about it here.

What is modular building?
It is about reusing every piece you build. In the old building technique you make things by hand. Then you move elsewhere and make things by hand. Every time you start from scratch and do a lot of work until you have a small area that looks good.

In Modular Building Technique (MBT), you make parts you need by hand, make them into .ase models and then clone them. You spend a lot of effort to make a single pretty detail piece. Once it is done, you can easily clone it. Also you can easily make derivatives of the existing piece. Ie. first make a wall. Then use the wall and make it into a 90 degree corner. And a wall with a doorway. And a T-junction. And a Wall with niche etc etc. Every piece you make, you create with the intent of making it reuseable.

It takes a bit longer to make a single piece, but once you have a library of pieces, you can create good-looking rooms in few moments, just by cloning and bashing the modules in place.

Some history
I first thought about large scale modules, whole rooms and corridor pieces. The module would contain everything: worldspawn walls (the sealing geometry) and the details. In LQD the first floor was built with this principle. The corridors were repeatably cloned: straight corridor module, straight corridor module, straight corridor module, 90 degree corridor module, straight corridor module, T-junction module and so forth.

When I reached the 2nd floor in LQD I started build smaller modules. Straight wall model piece, 90 degree wall model piece... Like seen in the LQ's study and this tutorial, for example.

I personally feel this small module approach was far better than the large module one. The reason is you get more from the pieces: build sealing geometry, then clone the models in. Or the other way around if you prefer. Cloning entire rooms (mixture of worldspawn and models) is a bit clunky and error-prone. It is easier to make the location from several small reusable model pieces and then draw the sealing geometry around it.

How to build modular?

1) Decide a grid size.
This is THE MOST important phase. Try out different scales and decide what size factor your map will be. In LDQ I decided that the grid will be 144x144. It felt right for a castle.

2) Design the pieces so that they fit together and in to the grid.
Here is a single example, which shows how the module pieces fit with the grid. Remember to leave room for sealing world geometry! That is, the worldspawn walls and floors marked in the screenshots below:

The above example is in 2d. I mean the module pieces touch in XY plane. If you design your pieces properly, you can also make them fit in the vertical dimension too. That means you can mix and match pieces you build to have more variety: wall type A, ceiling type B and so forth. See below how the ceiling module fits on top of the wall modules. Pay special attention to the texture alingment. Remember, that the textures cannot be shifted anymore in an ase-module piece. Thus the texture alignment must fit nicely when the module is designed.

3) Build!
Once you have the pieces ready, all you need to do is clone them and create the room. You might want to make the pieces into ase-models for lower memory impact (a model is loaded only once, cloning func_statics will eat more memory) and to protect your func_statics from DR corruption bug.

4) Decal modules!
You can also make decal modules. When I built the wall modules seen in the screenshots above, I also retextured them with dirt decals and saved them into ase models too. This means I can simply clone a decal module on top of the actual module, thus griming it up with a single cloning. See screenshot below, actual module and it's decal counterpart.


This simplifies griming things up a lot! You can also make modules for various other things, like wall damage, windows, vaults and the like. When you need a piece, you build it, make it into a module and place it. Then when you need a similar piece later, you just clone and place. No point in doing wall damage by hand, as you can just quickly clone a piece you made earlier and paste it all around the place:



5) Skins!
Note also that this is not the limit. By writing a skin file, you could have variation within the modules, like the wall paper in the screenshot below:


Summary
All in all, you spend a lot of time designing the pieces. I would recommend building the pieces in a separate modules.map. This way you have a factory: you build pieces there, it is quick to dmap and jump in-game to inspect you work. Once you are sure your piece is perfect, you make it into an .ase model. Then open your map and mash the pieces you have together quickly and minimal effort to create a good looking location. Keep on mapping with the pieces until you need a new one. Then go back to you module factory and build a new piece. Make sure it is perfect, make it into a model and continue.

Look at the wall in the above screenshot. Building that by hand via the traditional way would take a while. In the modular way, once you have built a single unit of that 3 unit wall, you can built the whole wall in seconds. Or any wall of any lenght! That is the power of the modular approach. Good looking details with low amount of work. Downside is that you are locked to a grid and you need to spend a lot of time with the modules initially. Also you need to have the discipline to plan your map a bit so that you won't waste time building modules you don't want or need.

Special considerations:
Note the part where the different modules touch each other. Pay special attention to this spot. You have to be very careful how you align your textures. There should not be a seam there. You could avoid the seam making the texture 'mirror' between the touching module brushes. This is very critical part in your module design so pay attention to it.

Larger modules can be good too. For example, the spiral staircase towers (there are two in LQD) were a single module containing all the worldspawn and func_static walls. I made one tower and then just cloned it and placed it into the other location. Two towers at the expense of one. If I'm gonna map in the future, I'll just grab the tower from LQD and retexture. Assuming the next map uses same grid, that is...

And one more benefit. Sticking to the grid makes later adjustments really easy. In LQD, there is the bedroom that was converted to a storeroom next to LQ's study. Initially this room was just sitting in the end of the corridor and there was no access from the spiral staircase tower into it. When I was drawing the in-game maps I felt that there should be an third option for accessing the second floor. Then I just added a corridor module between the store room and the staircase. Changed the wall modules into doorway wall module and the connection was ready.

Hopefully this helps other mappers to explore alternative mapping techniques.

[grayman]

Very very nice. Makes me glad I have a few WIPs left in me, so I can try this method of mapping.

[Bikerdude]

How have you managed to avoid any ZF issuea with the decals touching the brushwork though..?

[Kvorning]

This is awesome! I've done some modular usage, and I can tell with certainty, that not only does it save loads of time, but it also makes editing easier, and the outcome will in many cases not look trivial, but rather beautifully symmetric.

[Sotha]

Biker, I dunno. It just does not z-fight when placed flush on top of brushwork, so I don't get how I would specifically need to avoid z-fighting. Decals don't seem to z-fight when placed on brushwork faces.

[Bikerdude]

Biker, I dunno. It just does not z-fight when placed flush on top of brushwork, so I don't get how I would specifically need to avoid z-fighting. Decals don't seem to z-fight when placed on brushwork faces.

Got some prefabs..?

[Sotha]

Got some prefabs..?

 

LQD .pk4 contains all the .ase models, of course.

[Sir Taffsalot]

While I wasn't quite enthusiastic about MBT to begin with I have started to use it and see it's advantages on my WIP. Apart from the city area I've used this a lot in my museum. It makes sense for the interior of buildings to have a consistant architecture design so I have re-used a lot of my arches and corridor designs and used different textures and slight variations to avoid boring repetition.

 

I have not however used this method in the city section outside of my museum. This is where I have issues with MBT. While I can see the advantages of using this to create the interior of a building, I cannot see the advantages of outside areas where repeating the same area would be immersion breaking. In real life this would not happen. Especially in a medieval city where wear and tear over time creates holes and bumps in the roads, cracks and structural damage to houses etc. I understand that you would modify each modular piece so as to not be identical to each other. However if you are putting so much time and effort to make each modular piece unique, are you not in theory spending the exact same amount of time that you would in just creating a brand new part of the city from scratch? Would this method even have any benefit at all if you're trying to create a natural looking forest?

 

So I'm not against this method as I have seen its benefits in my museum. I just feel this technique is somewhat limited depending on the theme of the map or area of the map you are working on. Maybe this could work in outside areas and I just dont have the ability to see how it could work. Maybe I just need an example. I'll be more than happy if someone can prove me wrong.

[Sotha]

For a city this might work:

 

See how the building facades are interlocking modules. One could have many different types and mix&match them to create the city buildings. Plinth with and without stairs. Wall facades with doors and windows. Wall facades with balconies and other details. Ceiling parts that could be varied. Finally, add model bay windows and gables here and there. I'm pretty sure this would work.

 

In this proposal, there are also modular roads. They would not be models, but premade patches fit together that are placed modularily, and then further modified by dragging the vertices. To make it natural and organic.

 

For a forest, I do not know. Not every method is perfect for everything, of course.

[Bikerdude]

LQD .pk4 contains all the .ase models, of course.

Ah, they are .ase rather than FS - that might explain why your not seeing and ZF then...

[Obsttorte]

@Bikerdude: As far as I noticed it only some decals are causing z-fighting when placed on the surface of a brush or whatever. Some others seem not to cause this problem, as for example the dripping_slime decals.

 

I didn't tested them all, though. But even if the grime modules would be causing z-fighting, you could just place them a bit away from the *clean* modul.

[ERH+]

I have a bit different approach to modules, mine are smaller but I use less of them to build more varied rooms. And Z-fighting depends on grid discipline: when you use same length and thickness of wall everywhere, you don't need any improvisation -only time to make all modules match. It is worth that time because after they are done you will fit whole rooms in seconds, but you will get very homogeneous environment, it would be good for one big castle done in one style.

Edited May 23, 2013 by ERH+

[Sir Taffsalot]

@ Sotha: It looks like your technique for city building could work. Due to the success I had with using MBT in my museum (I'm amazed it took me only 2 months to build and I credit that to MBT) I might even try it the next time I decide to build a city.

 

My only fear is that mappers will think that this will enable them to build large cities and manors and will just copy and paste modules without regard for details. While this will indeed enable them to build large maps the end result will be repetive and bland to look at. Although this would be the fault of the mapper and not MBT.

[Sotha]

ST, yep, it is always about how much modules the mapper bothered to make. Actually, I've not had much complaints about LQD appearance, but praise.

 

I have to admit, I was rather lazy about the module building. LQD was made using rather low amount modules. One vault. One wall damage. One niche. One window. Few variants of those paint paper walls. One Grime Module per Actual Module. No complaints about repeating dullness of the modules. Surprising, actually.

[Sir Taffsalot]

I look forward the seeing the results when I get around to playing your new FM.

[Obsttorte]

Another thing about MBT that just came into my mind.

 

When you start creating your modules you are going to use in form of ase models later on, you can start with very simple not detailed out ones. After you are done building your mission, you can then start detailing the modules and use the new gained models as a replacement for the old ones. This way you can decide where to put details in the end, but will change big parts of the map as once. This way you can save time from detailing areas where it may not be needed in the end, too, because of lighting or anything else.

[Sotha]

Another thing about MBT that just came into my mind.

 

When you start creating your modules you are going to use in form of ase models later on, you can start with very simple not detailed out ones. After you are done building your mission, you can then start detailing the modules and use the new gained models as a replacement for the old ones. This way you can decide where to put details in the end, but will change big parts of the map as once. This way you can save time from detailing areas where it may not be needed in the end, too, because of lighting or anything else.

 

True. But note that you have to be super-extra careful with the origin. If the origin moves, the updated module will be misplaced. Ase exporter can be tricky. Either the origin is in the center of the new object (can be even off-grid for some strange shaped modules) or you create the module so that it's core is at the map 0,0,0 coordinates and then use the option in the exporter to leave the origin at the MAP center, not the model center. That way you can choose the position of the origin for your module model.

[Capela]

Got some prefabs..?

 

Ok, i was working on my map and drink some beers at the same time. After read this topic something get my attention!! prefabs!

So what you are talking about is doing prefabs, right? or not...

[Obsttorte]

Ok, i was working on my map and drink some beers at the same time. After read this topic something get my attention!! prefabs!

So what you are talking about is doing prefabs, right? or not...

Well, it's a bit more. Of course one could understand the act of creating the single modules as making prefabs. But what is more important is that you divide your map into smaller parts, which repeats. Instead of building the whole map you build the modules, and than create your map out of them.

 

A good example would be if you are working on a castle mission. On each level of the building you would suppose the floors to look nearly the same. If you look at the floors more in detail, you may also think that most things like supports or arches repeat every few meters. So now you just create for example a hallway segment for a straight hallway, a T-segment, a curve and so one and use these to create any type of hallway geometry you are aiming for. Then you just have to fill in the rooms, which you may be able to split up as the hallways.

 

So the basic idea is to reduce the mapping time by avoiding to build things again and again and again by thinking first of were they will appear, create the specific thing only once and then reuse it.

 

The downside of this approach is that it requires a lot of planning, so it's just about changing experiences.

[Capela]

So we are talking about a cryteck engine, but in the end we can change the modules easily, like change textures and architecture... etc..so it will be easy to make some changes to the modules...!!!!

Edited May 23, 2013 by Capela

[Sotha]

Erm.. We are talking about TDM mapping with DR and building reusable pieces, which in turn are used for quick mapping on a larger scale.

[Capela]

Erm.. We are talking about TDM mapping with DR and building reusable pieces, which in turn are used for quick mapping on a larger scale.

 

I think you do not understand what was my thought....maybe its my fault. Never the less i think you get my attention to this method.

Edited May 23, 2013 by Capela

[Obsttorte]

True. But note that you have to be super-extra careful with the origin. If the origin moves, the updated module will be misplaced. Ase exporter can be tricky. Either the origin is in the center of the new object (can be even off-grid for some strange shaped modules) or you create the module so that it's core is at the map 0,0,0 coordinates and then use the option in the exporter to leave the origin at the MAP center, not the model center. That way you can choose the position of the origin for your module model.

I've once made an error fix for that script where I included the option to take the origin of a fuc_static as the origin for the model, as long as only one func_static is selected for export. Strangely it only seems to run under linux. I'll see that I can add this option for the windows version, too.

[Sir Taffsalot]

@ Capela: Here is an example of the Modular Building Technique

 

 

 

What I've done is create a corridor with some detailed arches inside it. I new I would need another corridor later on in my map so I cloned it. In theory I now have two corridors for the time and effort of one. To avoid bland repetition I have given each corridor different textures, furnishings and decorations. This only took a few minutes. As you can see all the furniture and decorations are just copy and paste jobs.

 

I have also tried to keep all modules the same size so they fit together perfectly eg 150x150. However in the examples shown the modules are rectangular. So all I did was double the length so it is now 300x150.

Edited May 24, 2013 by Sir Taffsalot

[Sotha]

ST: That is a great example how to use MBT!

Reminds me of: http://walkingforwisdom.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/imgp0174.jpg