To Model an Urban Campus

News & General Discussion
1

So I been continuing to learn unity (at a slow pace), and been looking into modeling buildings and etc of the campus. My last thread only asked questions about performance.

Now I need to ask about software capabilities. I’m aware that Blender is fully capable to do the task, but it seems Google Sketchup is designed for architecture in mind. However, it seems that many of the posts (the free version, as I plan to use) have problems with Sketchup. Then there’s also Google Building Maker which sound like a good fit as I plan to model the campus and then put it into Unity.

However, this creates so many possible paths that would take alot of time experimenting to figure out which works or doesn’t. Should I use SketchUp and then import to Blender for the details? Should I just use SketchUp (and bite it and shell some money for LightUp) and then Blender only when necessary? Should I just use Blender? Should I use Building Maker and then export to Blender for detailing and interiors. Speaking of interiors, how should I approach to making interiors of buildings, currently, my thinking is the first floor of buildings should eventually be added as part of the single building and upper floors can be separate scenes.

Now, I did search the forum and did found previous threads of SketchUp vs Blender and even a thread about modeling buildings, but it is still lacking, partially to my novice level. With so many different combination of making the buildings for my campus project, which way have the best product while minimizing learning curve (IE, blender is probably most powerful, but like the steepest in learning to model buildings, but it seems possible that Sketchup/Building Maker may not be powerful enough or cause too many glitches.

Obviously, I still have alot of learn and Blender and Unity minimally and that’s without the special needs of my goals itself.

2

You want to use Blender + Unity. Once imported into a Unity scene, you can tweak your blender (or Maya/Max/Lightwave/C4D etc…, but not Sketchup) file, save and see it update in Unity immediately; this can help you learn them both, and makes the whole process more fun. Blender and Unity will repay every bit of effort you put into learning them, just start with simple things (i.e. box modelling) and iterate until you’re sick of it, then do a little more… Good luck!

3

Anyone else got any related experiences?

Doing everything on Blender would teach me the most, but so is doing this whole project in OpenGL, my first objective is making the campus.

I’m thinking that using basic modeling then doing the full detail work on Blender would be best. However, I then need an answer of how well Sketchup can be exportable as long I only do the basic modeling of the interiors and exteriors and the more complex detail work and texturing goes to Blender. I’ll still learn plenty just figuring out how to do detail work and texturing anyways.

Google Building Maker is also a possibility then also, as it can make the exterior models (interior, detailing, and texturing can go to a combination of Sketchup and Blender).

Of course, this all goes to the question, which would work faster and cause the least issues. Anyone got any experience with these types of stuff?

4

Check out a project I did, http://WPImap.com/index.php?section=screenshots2 (campus map)

5

A really easy way (although not always pretty) is to use Google’s Building maker and then download it in Collada and stick it into Unity. Quick and dirty, but not something that want people interacting with closely (background objects perhaps) or a good way to get started.

Another tool that is cheap and easy to use is Milkshape. For me, Blender has too steep of a learning curve and 3DS max is too expensive.