The modular houses are already available at the Asset Store! Let me know what you think!
ASSET STORE LINK:
In the meantime here’s a video of putting a simple house together with the pieces.
Made a second house, reusing some of the pieces, and adding a few more. :-]
I’ve been working on a house that’s all made of “lego” pieces, that can be used to put together medieval houses… pieces it’ll include are things such as planks, sets of tiles, brick parts, walls, doors, windows, accesories, etc. Some things comes in groups, or individual pieces… for example, you have both plank surfaces, and single planks.
Right now I’m using this design as reference http://www.tabletop-world.com/Images/TownHouse/TH1.jpg
Although it’s not going to be limited to it, and of course you can tear it apart and re-design, or start from scratch.
Right now? It’s unoptimized. I’m getting 60k for the whole house.
But I might be able to lower it to 30k without loosing much quality, by creating culled pieces (now most of them have front and back) and basically doing thorough optimization of the mesh.
Then LOD versions for lower end machines, and far away houses. (hopefully mobile?)
Another thing that improves performance are mesh combining scripts.
I haven’t optimized it yet because I’m focusing on creating the right pieces. Once I’m certain the pieces are nice and functional, I will optimize, which will take some work.
I recently upgraded PC, and my specs are AMD FX 8350, and GTX 760… I’ve run some test concerned for the triangle count, I start getting less than 50 FPS at 32 houses:
Check Image: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/11214337/Houses Test.jpg
But I will certainly improve these numbers. I’ll keep you posted.
Also several LOD versions, for far away houses, or maybe mobile. But keep in mind lower LOD versions might lose some quality.
Not sure if Unity 5 occlusion culling system works in this case… haven’t tested it :-0
I use a custom batching tool, so i would love to have the house in parts and connect it. This method is also ideal for desruction of the houses (i use a local disasembler for destruction, like the one in InfiniTREE asset for chopping down trees)
That would definitly be one of the most important aspects. Of course it can also include a connected piece for reference and ease of use, to cover every use scenario.
I will provide several configurations, so it’s not mandatory that you build it yourself, but it’s nice to be able to, and modify or quickly create something from scratch, and then apply a mesh optimization/drawcalls reducer script.
I think I might make a first upload of this to the Asset Store in a couple of weeks, providing I have enough variety of items by then. I will post updates here just in case!
Ya ideally I’d be wanting about a maximum of say 10 drawcalls per house (actually just 1 but that’s sometimes not possible).
And 60k polys/tria would be way too much for me. 30 would be better. I think as long as the drawcalls aren’t too bad, I’d use it.
I really need to pick up a mesh combining/draw call minimizing package for myself though. What you mentioned in your last post sounds good though. Different options and a mesh optimization/drawcalls reducer script would be excellent.
I know the cool thing about the house is that you can build/rebuild it in pieces, but I’m one of the people that just wants the whole house altogether by itself lol.
This is certainly possible! I’m going to run several tests. I think there are tools than can help us in this matter. Right now the house has 8 materials, with mesh combine that should take it down to 8 drawcalls if I’m not mistaken; but I’ll see if there are tools that can merge the materials creating a big atlas with all textures; merge it all to one or two materials. If that doesn’t give good results, I’ll see about doing the merging manually. Either case, I’m pretty sure we can bring those drawcalls down a lot.
Good to know you want as many presets as possible. I’ll be sure to include various house configurations!
Added windows, lamp over door, it’s close to completed. Will add some props to place around the house… maybe a couple of barrels and a box (like the reference art I’m using).
Then, before I start making several house configurations, I might start optimizing the geometry, and see which is the best mesh combining option. If we’re lucky there’s a free solution somewhere! :-0
Watching Is it pretty easy to change the color of those roof tiles/shingles?
I’m wanting to change the color of the roof tiles based on what team color the player chooses. This is looking great. I really like the lamp you added. It’s a nice touch.
Update: I did some major optimizations of the mesh. Without major loss of quality.
The optimized house is 33k.
After (33k) triangles:
Before (90k triangles):
I think I can put together a script that merges textures into one, and also mesh into one. Creating a mesh per house, that uses one or two materials. Really bringing down the drawcalls. So houses work at max performance out the box.
I’ve managed to make a script that can combine all house meshes into one. You’ll just have to place it at the root of the house hierarchy, and when you hit play, the house will convert to a single mesh.
Just a quick test below.
