Medieval Object Builder

Community Forums/Showcase/Medieval Object Builder

6(Posted 2009) [#1]
Here is a wip screen of the project I'm working on. It's a simple tool used to create medieval structures by moving,rotating and scaling a variety of simple building blocks (i.e. windows, doors, walls etc) and then applying different textures. The final model can currently be exported to .x and shadowmapped in gile[s].

Its still in the early stages at the moment. 80% of the programming is finished, but only about 20% of the art is complete.




puki(Posted 2009) [#2]
This looks exciting.


granada(Posted 2009) [#3]
That looks realy cool.


Pete Carter(Posted 2009) [#4]
What a good idea, the idea could work for other types of models as well. cool for anything were you need a high number of builds and havent the time to model each one from scratch.


Nate the Great(Posted 2009) [#5]
cool. is it going to be free or comercial?.... this looks like it will make an excelent modelling tool for the next b3d game I had in mind.


6(Posted 2009) [#6]
It is going to be for sale, but my idea is to make it very cheap. I'm thinking of between NZ$25 and NZ$50, but haven't made any concrete decisions yet as its still a bit early.

As Pete mentioned, it takes about 2 or 3 minutes to build a house, so making lots of different looking buildings doesn't take long.

The internal file format for the structure is XML and there will a Notepad like function where you cut/paste this text. Users will be encouraged to share these files on a web forum that I've yet to build, but it means if someone else has made a nice model, you can copy and paste that file directly into the application and a new building is created. This way there should be many different looking buildings to choose from.

Also, at the moment this pack only includes 'house' models. But later I'd like to provide additional packs for bridges, castle parts, shops, industry, farming and flora etc.


RifRaf(Posted 2009) [#7]
What would be useful is an automatic texture packer along with this. One example is to allow the user to select what kind of wood will be used for the beams , what kind of plaster or walls to use ,roof , windows, trimwork, basebricks and so forth, then peice together the texture used on the house from several material selections. Packing to one texture would be ideal to save surface count, imo. Perhaps at least the option to export into one texture.



Just a thought.


6(Posted 2009) [#8]
I think that would be quite tricky to do, ( beyond my skills anyway), and the final texture would have to be pretty big to retain all the detail. If you made 50 different structures it would require 50 seperate textures.

This program utilises shared textures, so for example, there are 8 different shapes of roof and each can use 1 of 6 different textures. Thats 48 different looking roofs. The same applies to all the other objects, where each object can pick from several different textures. You can therefore have hundreds of different houses but the number of textures remains quite low.

The textures will be in either png or dds format so if someone wants to create a new texture they can use these ones as a template.


matibee(Posted 2009) [#9]
I can't help seeing tools like this without wishing for a random generator ;)


Ginger Tea(Posted 2009) [#10]
dont want it too random now do we, the last thing we want is for the roof to be on the floor


skn3(Posted 2009) [#11]
As long as it has some inteligent snap/align ability then this will be a winner!

EG trying to align two windows vertically. If it could try and align based on existing objects, that would make things nice and easy!


6(Posted 2009) [#12]
In the screenshot you'll see a little check box to turn the snap on and off. I guess its not a true snap feature though, it really just moves the objects in whole numbers i.e 1,2,3 rather than exact positions.

All the objects are built with this snapping in mind, so with the snap feature on, all windows, door frames, roofs, gables etc will fit perfectly into the places they are meant to fit without micro managing their locations. Its also handy when stacking rooms on top off or next to each other as it means there are no visible seams.

As for the random generator, I had thought of that. It doesn't seem that hard to do either so will probably be added later on but it's not a priority at the moment.


Flemmonk(Posted 2009) [#13]
This looks promising, the house parts, are they spatial? (i.e. are they block models or do they have insides)


6(Posted 2009) [#14]
At the moment the objects are just block models so you can't go inside them, but that isn't to say a new set of objects couldn't be created to allow that. If its something people would like to see included, then i'll add that in too.