Hey, I want to build my housing estate where I live (it’s small, only about 15 - 20 houses) and put it into a game with a character that I control and he can walk around. This is just the first phase of practice for a bigger game with more features. I just need to get an idea of the best way to go about this.
I’ve been doing Java for years so that part is fine.
I’ve been learning how to use Blender for a few weeks now. I can create buildings with textures etc.
I’ve been learning about the scene graph for a few weeks too.
I’ve gone through all the “Hello…” tutorials
I don’t know whether to build all the houses in my estate on Blender and then export them as one object or to save each house as a seperate object and then position them one by one when creating the objects in the simpleInitApp() method. Which way do you think is better? or do you know a more efficient way to do something like this? Any help with be greatly appreciated.
Thanks.
Both can be equally efficient if done right I guess.
If you make the objects seperate you can more easily modify them (like move rotate ect) them.
If thats not needed everything in blender might be better, since the design process is then only in one programm. (depending on planned size you have to make some thoughts about performance here, the blender export can be splitted up in smaller chunks for example and only the nearerst are loaded.)
Also, use uv maps as much as possible, since jme can batch meshes by material. (belnder does similar on exporting) → So for example a house should only have one texture in ideal case.
Thanks for the reply.
One of the things I’m unsure about is how big the houses will be when the game is loaded for example. I know you can set the dimensions of the object in Blender but are those units in feet, metres or world units or what? I don’t want the houses to be the same size as the character etc.
For modelling the estate do you think it would be best to start with the roads in the estate and texture those and then create the houses? Also for parts where the road is straight do you think its best to repeat a small road object (with its material/texture) along the axis? If thats possible.
You can set whatever scale you like - however a common default many people use is to say one world unit = one meter.
For terrain look at terrain grid. Don’t model the road as a separate entity, do it within the terrain.
I’d suggest starting off modelling just a simple two or three room bungalow. Once you have the house and your person in it and can move around it then think about doing one with stairs and another floor and/or a scene to put it in.
Thanks for the reply.
What do you mean by for terrain look at terrain grid? Is it some sort of feature in jME or in Blender?
The thing I don’t understand about scale is that lets say you start of with the default cube in blender, you give it some sort of rock texture, you export it, load it in the game and scale it to 10 times the default exported size, will the texture not be all stretched?
https://wiki.jmonkeyengine.org/legacy/doku.php/jme3:beginner:hello_terrain
Make sure you go through all the other JME tutorials as well though.
I’ve read all the tutorials a good few times but I’m still lost when it comes to the terrain. From the tutorial it seems a terrain is generated from a black and white image but that is different from what I want to do (I think anyway).
I want to model my housing estate in the game with the 3D houses and the roads outside the houses. Do you know any good tutorials on doing something like that? I can make the buildings in Blender I just don’t know how to make the roads and have a character be able to walk on the road and into the front garden of the houses or wherever he wants to go around the housing estate.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
@metallicalive said:
From the tutorial it seems a terrain is generated from a black and white image but that is different from what I want to do (I think anyway).
Do you read the tutorials? or just look at the pictures....
The black and white pictures are the heightmap, this does not mean your terrain will be black and white, you don't even need to use it if you don't want to... Get a bunch of textures you want to use... Open up the terrain editor, play around with it, see if it is what you want.. In the 5 hours it would take you to get the answer you want on here you could have already explored multiple terrain generating options....
What i would do
Model all the houses in blender, export uv maps... paint over them in favorite photo editing software... make the terrain in the terrain editor, use the scene explorer to apply materials and place houses on the terrain....
Your asking for one tutorial to cover a myriad of topics specific to you... try looking up
Modeling houses in blender
UV Mapping
Etc.
The SDK has a terrain editor, where you can create, sculpt, and paint terrain. You can then use the scene composer to import your models onto the terrain and paint around them.
Okay thanks for the replies I’ll get working on this. I’ve read alot over the last few weeks and watched lots of tutorials but I think getting all this information is making me forget stuff and get confused but I’m slowly getting there I think.