Map sets Thread - UT40K: The Chosen mod for Unreal Tournament 3

Hey guys i am workin on some map sets now, as ive put the basilisk on hold until i get a little better at uvw unwrapping. I think i tried to run before i could walk with the basilisk (eg. it was a little above my skill range).

So anyway after playing some DoW2, ive sorta gotten into the mood for a desert map, and so i picked Calderis as my first choice. Now ive taken some screenshots of the sort of buildings that the designers put in the Calderis maps in DoW2, and now im going to replicate them somewhat. My idea is to make a Calderis set of buildings; complete with civilian houses, guard towers, stairs, manor houses, meeting halls, wells, walls, etc etc.. Now this will make it very simple to organize, and make the pieces i create available not just for me to use but for any wishing to make a Calderis themed map. Briliant right?

So ive hit a little snag making my first building, a civilian house. It is a dome-like structure with a door and 4 windows. Now i was wondering, if i wanted people to be able to walk around inside my house and shoot from the windows and all that, should i make it in 3ds max?

This is what i have done so far. The other problem is, i dont know how to give the walls any depth. Does anyone know how to do this? As you can see they are about 1 pixel thick, which would not look very realistic as a fly could break through it. (I believe once i give the walls some depth, i should be able to fix the ugly looking windows too)

(Click to enlarge)
(I have deleted the bottom of the house so you guys can see up inside it, obviously i will not do this on the final model)

In order to give the walls depth, you need to build the inside faces of them. Here's an illustration of what I mean, perhaps it'll make more sense. (The building in my little doodle is much simpler than yours, but the idea is the same.)

For your building, you simply need to make the red polygons. Then, connect the interior to the exterior at the doors and windows.

The important thing is to pay attention to the surface normals. In 3ds max and maya both sides of the polygons are rendered by default (you can turn this off in the settings, but I find it easier to work with them on). However in games, polygons only render as one sided to save on cpu resources. If you were to import your building "as is", start the game and run inside of it then you would be able to see right through the walls. Some game engines support 2-sided materials. 2-sided materials are much more rare and are only ever used for things that are supposed to be paper thin, like grass and bushes. But for a building it is much better to leave the polygons rendering single-sided and to actually make polygons for the outside and inside faces of the walls.

Does that make sense?

As a side note, a lot of people make 2 versions of a building such as this for use in their maps. One version will have the inside modeled so that players can go inside. The other version only has the outside modeled (and usually has closed doors/windows) that the player can not go inside of. Since the closed up buildings do not need the interior modeled, they are cheaper from a cpu resource point of view. This version is then used anywhere that you do not want the player to have access to, such as beyond the boundaries of your play area, or mixed in with the interior-detailed buildings (because you don't really need to be able to enter all the buildings, do you?).

Yes that does make sense thank you ministry. And yeah i know of the two-version building method, with some having access and some not, i was gonna do that anyways lol, but thanks again.

Also, i figured out a simpler way to do give the walls depth; use the shell modifier.