how to make a very simple basic and very low poly house with 3dsmax

[RedKetchup]

Hi gonna make a little tutorial on how it is simple to make a very low polygon simple house.
with mostly only 3 shape for the main part.

Step 1:

Draw a box 3.0 x 3.0 x 2.5 high (screen1)

Step 2:
then clone*  this box and lower its sides per 0.1 minus each side (2.8 x 2.8 x 3.0) high (screen2)
make sure it goes further down up and down (this is why 3.0 high)

Step 3:
Select your 3 x 3 x 2.5 box  (screen3)
Goes in the menu of primitive shape and select Compound objects , click on Pro boolean, substraction and click start picking and select the inner smaller box

you get (screen 4) as result.

Step 4:
draw a big box, bigger than your 3x3 mesh and angle it at 30%. place it so the edge arrive at middle of the house, clone it , turn the new one at 180 degres on horiz line. Place it at same distance the other side. (screen 5)
Go back in the primitive menu and go select Compound objects, Pro boolean, susbtraction, click on picking objects and select the 2 big boxes in 30 angle... (screen6)

you should get (screen 7) as result.

Step 5:
Lets put some material texture to it. press "M" (material) click on diffuse, select a texture, click view in viewport and apply the texture to the selection.
and you see all the walls of the house. in 1 single box (screen8)

Step 6:
Lets do all the windows and door.
draw 6 little boxes of 0.6 x 0.6 x 1.2 high for the door, and 0,4 x 0,4 x 0,6 high for the windows. place them where you want to have your holes. (screen9)

Step 7:
Go in Compound Objects, pro boolean, substraction, start picking and select all your little boxes 1 after the others.... (screen10)

as you can see in screen11, you have now 1 box with empty in middle, walls inside too, with door and windows openings... in 1 single box.

Step 8:
With your building selected , go in 2nd icon "modify" and open the scroll list and select Unwrap UVW.
in that window , top right open the box and select your texture. now click the red square at the right of the screen and select each side and move around the red selected zone to make it stand ontop of a "wood beam" and do this for all the not good little sides (screen 11)

Step 9:
once all the windows and door fixed with nice wood beams... lets do the roof.
a box of 3.2 long X 1.8 width and 0,3 high should be good. give it the roof texture in the "M" material menu. apply to it, and then go in 2nd icon "modify" and select in the scroll box "Unwrap UWV".
Place the thick sides (0.3 high) so it stands on a side on the texture, 1 row of shingles, rotate if need... (screen 12)

Step 10:
rotate it with a 30 degres angle, place it to 1 side of your building , clone it, rotate that clone at 180 degres horiz, place it the other side. make them meet together in the middle of your building (screen 13)

move the lower bottom parts to make the sync vertically for better looking... (screen14)

And then you have a very nice , very simple form with only 3 boxes (1 for walls, 2 for the roof) with almost nothing as polygons amount (screen 15)


Step 11:

and then you can start to add some doors and windows like the the next screen.... (screen 16)


so .. that was very simple to do something more than correct with almost no polygons
Enjoy!

[jesta030]

Trying to get people to use 3DSmax, are you? Nice tutorial, well done keeping it simple.

Side note: I'm also doing timber frame housing as you noticed, but i'm doing it ALOT more complicated because I want the timber and the filling to be in exact locations. So every piece of timber and every bit of wall inbetween is its own face... Which is why my project is coming along at snail pace.

[RedKetchup]

Trying to get people to use 3DSmax, are you? Nice tutorial, well done keeping it simple.

Side note: I'm also doing timber frame housing as you noticed, but i'm doing it ALOT more complicated because I want the timber and the filling to be in exact locations. So every piece of timber and every bit of wall inbetween is its own face... Which is why my project is coming along at snail pace.

yeah it is nice for our satisfaction but keep in mind, in game, we almost see nothing of all the little details we put in our work
in game, we only see the big picture.

[Necora]

@RedKetchup I went through some of my first buildings to re-do them with the new modular toolbar and was aghast at the poly count. It wasn't crazy crazy, but way to much for a simple building. What I did seemed similar to you, to cut a hole for the window I would subdivide the face many times so one side of the building was made up by many many little ones.

I since learnt a few tools, like the knife project. I don't like the knife project though, I find it tedious to 'leave' the object I'm working on and move another one around then come back in then out etc. I now use loop cuts, subdivides, or inset faces, or a combination of them, and move the cut around to where it needs to be. Then I go back through and merge all of the faces that I can, so a side of a house with windows in a row only has 2 faces (not sure about triangles) instead of like 10 or something. I also go through and merge all of the left over vertices together at the corners which means that the triangle count is the same as or sometimes a few more than the face count, depending on the shape.

But I do still do as @jesta030 does and have separate wooden beams for any framing that can be seen on the outside. I am slowly learning what can be seen from the game and what cannot, and a lot of the time a nice AO combined with complementing textures can make those beams really stand out nicely. If the textures are too similar with a lot of shading in them already, like in your wall set, you won't see the AO so there is no point. I remember you saying you could not see the fine detail you added to it even with an AO which is a shame because those walls are beautiful, and I think that is because the texture was already dark with a lot of shading so the AO got obscured.

Cheers for the post! It is always nice to see how other people do things. I like that you but the details in the windows and not just use the texturing, I think that makes a massive difference to the buildings. When I first started I would try to put windows in as just parts of the wall texture but it looked terrible, then I saw how you did it on the row houses, tried it myself, and and the cost of a few faces it makes so much more difference to how good the buildings look (esp. compared to vanilla buildings that use just textures, no structures for windows) than anything else I've learnt so far.

[RedKetchup]

we need to save as much as we can , when we can. Because those details are essential , thats the difference between a flat ugly face.... and rich 3D details like you say and also because it is when we add all those details it start to go up rapidly.
our job isnt perfect. we dont have a mastery from schools and university behind the neck tie to drive us on the perfect way (i dont) ^^
but we are learning alot and we do alot better to compare with our beginings. ^^ i do though
and that is very nice

[Discrepancy]

  very nice tutorial @RedKetchup .


(the next part is about blender)
@Necora , I regularly use the 'knife' tool, but have never used the 'knife project' tool, how does it differ? When i try to use the knife project it throws up the fault that i haven't selected an object to use for projection.
I find the 'knife' very good for making windows/doorways, and now even stone and wall deformities quick and easy.

[Necora]

@Discrepancy haha I've never used the knife tool, not sure how that works! Let us swap knowledge (or I'll give you my limited knowledge for your grand knowledge )

So when I did it, you need two objects in your scene. The first is the face you want to cut, the second being a face that makes the out line for the cut. This is why, way back when I didn't really know what I was doing, I didn't like it because it seemed very finicky to position the second object in the exact place. But it does make a nice cut and I guess you can fine tune the cut if you need to.

I'll attach some pictures showing the basic premise... sorry if my explanation is overly simply but I'm an overly simply kinda guy and too many blender tutorials are so darn complicated I have trouble following them as they seem to not bother explaining the really simple stuff a beginner like me would not instantly understand.

Picture 1 - Your main object, in this case a red cube.

Picture 2 - In 'Object' mode, make a new object, in this case a blue plane.

Picture 3 - Go to the 'Front Ortho' view. Position/size your blue plane to the position and size of the cut you want to make.

Picture 4 - Now, still in 'Object' mode, first select the blue plane, then hold shift and select the red cube so you're know selecting both objects. It has to be in this order. Then hit tab to enter 'Edit' mode, which should be the edit mode of the red cube. In 'Edit' mode, you need to make sure you are looking at the correct angle because knife project makes the cut from the viewers perspective, so in this case we are still looking from front ortho. Select the knife project tool, and the cut is made.

Picture 5 - Sliding the blue plane away and moving the view around we can see the cut.

Picture 6 - Delete the face.

Picture 7 - It also works with a circle, but I could not get it to work with a cube or cylinder, so maybe it only works with flat faces as the second object? It also only seems to cut the front face, so I'm not sure if you can get a cut all the way through or if you have to rotate around to do it.

[Necora]

It might not do cubes but you can do text...

[RedKetchup]

but there is a big difference between both

you only cut the face of the cube and it opens to the entire space that is inside your cube.


with 3dsmax you in fact create new faces inside of the exact same form as your 2nd shape, it doesnt open in the inner empty space that lies inside the cube
(like screenshot 4 : i deleted those new faces created inside)

[RedKetchup]

there is supposely a function in blender too called : Boolean Modifier
https://docs.blender.org/manual/it/dev/modeling/modifiers/generate/booleans.html

[RedKetchup]

do a box like that with blender

how to make a very simple basic and very low poly house with 3dsmax

add another one with less width and less long , but more high and down to make sure you cover like

how to make a very simple basic and very low poly house with 3dsmax

then use the Boolean Modifier of blender to substract shape 2 from shape 1 and get this

how to make a very simple basic and very low poly house with 3dsmax

[Necora]

@RedKetchup I guess the knife project just makes a cut in the outer face, where as in blender to make the complete tunnel in the cube you need to use the 'Boolean' modifier with 'Difference' selected. I remember watching someone do this ages ago and was very confused by it, but just figured it out. Again, you need to have the view in the exact perspective otherwise horrible things occur.


Edit - haha we posted at the same time!

[RedKetchup]

@RedKetchup I guess the knife project just makes a cut in the outer face, where as in blender to make the complete tunnel in the cube you need to use the 'Boolean' modifier with 'Difference' selected. I remember watching someone do this ages ago and was very confused by it, but just figured it out. Again, you need to have the view in the exact perspective otherwise horrible things occur.


Edit - haha we posted at the same time!

exact !
should get used to use this boolean modifier

[RedKetchup]

and you can easily do nice things very quick and very low poly by merging shapes and subtract those modified shapes ...

[QueryEverything]

I don't model, but thank you for sharing, I know some others starting out (even advanced users), would benefit from knowledge shared.