Revamping exterior buildings, A feasable endaveour?

[King of Worms]

I guess time will tell how the textures will translate to your models. Ive made textures for all the houses in the Dream mod. Lets hope it fits

[Ninelan]

I guess time will tell how the textures will translate to your models. Ive made textures for all the houses in the Dream mod. Lets hope it fits

I could plop on your textures as a test and render the result

[Hrafnyx]

An architect here. I was always annoyed with the fact that daggerfall buildings lack foundation and stairs at the entrance. And this very building lacks a column supporting the 4th corner. This won't work IRL. I also think that buildings need more details and more logic.

The bricks at the corners can be made with just 4 tris mesh and 1 material with an alpha map cutting out the contour of bricks (a skyrim approach to decals)

[Ninelan]

An architect here. I was always annoyed with the fact that daggerfall buildings lack foundation and stairs at the entrance. And this very building lacks a column supporting the 4th corner. This won't work IRL. I also think that buildings need more details and more logic.

The bricks at the corners can be made with just 4 tris mesh and 1 material with an alpha map cutting out the contour of bricks (a skyrim approach to decals)

The houses do actually have a pillar! It's just a separate model that is assembled onto it in the game.

[BadLuckBurt]

But another point, while I saw some houses have 1 texture per model, a lot of house models change textures between regions! Basically, the texture won't match the house shape lol, so that's something that will need to be resolved when making the mod. I don't have programming knowledge so I'm stumped in that aspect!

With the original models, there's a separate model ID for each region. I don't know if you've used this tool: https://www.dfworkshop.net/downloads/da ... modelling/ but if you look through the models with it, there are a lot of 3D models of the same shape that use different textures. This is especially true for buildings, inside and outside.

Revamping the buildings is quite an undertaking but if you manage to complete it, all you'd have to do is map the resulting building sets to the correct model ID sets and it should work.

If I recall correctly, TheLacus has made it possible to use the texture arrays that DFU generates at runtime to assign textures to a model in Unity. XJDHR (did I spell that right?) needed it for the fixes he's done I think. Setting up the models in Unity that way should automatically make them work with the seasonal changes in regions as well.

I know that for custom models (not part of Daggerfall originally) to be climate and season dependant you need to use a _RegionClimate suffix, for example _MountainWinter. I don't think that applies here since your target is revamping original models so as long as the model IDs are correct and the textures are set up correctly, you sohuld be good.

[King of Worms]

I could plop on your textures as a test and render the result

Nice idea.

I can send you a pack of my buildings textures. In 90% it will fit the originals very well (in the terms of windows placement etc) ... but Im sure there will be some issues, especially with the windows on some buildings. Rest will be ok. Will make a pack and send you a PM with a link.

[damo]

Hello!

So I actually had a go at exactly this about a year ago now, used the tools to export one of the buildings into Maya, added new geometry to the existing design and a chimney to see if I could get particles working in Unity too. I also had a look around online and found a shader for the windows that simulates interiors using any image that works pretty well. I've uploaded a short video here of the result:



As you can see I'm no architect and my 3D modelling skills aren't pro but it turned out looking not too bad.

Unfortunately I started to realise the amount of work it would take to do all the buildings in the game, especially taking into account all of the climates and regional variations in the game and I ended up putting the project aside. I've been keeping an eye on the forums since then though so it's great to see someone else maybe jumping on this because the buildings definitely need some love.

Any questions let me know, I'll try and remember!

[Ninelan]

-/snip/-

OH, I did check, but some houses are...
Like here the same ID appears under multiple textures?


While some other houses do appear to have a different texture per ID, I think I was checking a lot of house sets and the climate distinctions don't seem as clear for all models?
This is still very useful information too.

Any questions let me know, I'll try and remember!

Your result is quite wonderful actually lol!
Perhaps we could join efforts?

It's very easy to figure out that the 'bulk' of the work is merely going to be copypasting the corner trims, windows and sills.
Fixing up the appropriate roof and that will be it. (And maybe other cute details like your stair and chimney~ ?)
This is something I imagine myself doing while listening to a let's play or a docu in the background.

Handpainting normals over the original textures is also not going to be much of a bother either.

[l3lessed]

Please give me buildings that make architectural sense. Stairs for the second floors, where it makes design sense, would be an amazing addition to the buildings and give the cities a different feel.

I can't wait to see your work finished.

[Ninelan]

Normal maps, as in of how well they follow the contours of the of OG Daggerfall images are promising and shouldn't conflict much with other texture sets.
Here, only the windowsill and the floor trim don't match up.