Journal

I will demonstrate how I will approach this technique and then ultimately say which process of modular design I think is the most effective. To do so, I will be modelling a rock face modularly, which can also be used in our game, as we need some rocks.  The procedure and journaling of which will follow. My ultimate goal is to find what way to do this technique most effectively and also when do I use this technique over more conventional methods.

 Research

I started my research by compiling as many online links as I was readily able to find, I did this by using keywords and searching for them, I could not find many articles on modular modelling, but I find a good few articles on modular design. After a bit more research into both these, I discovered they are one and the same, owing that modular design is not specific to just 3d modelling but all forms of modular design.

I went to the library in the college also to find a few books on modular design. I was only able to find 1 book however, and it wasn’t much good in a modelling sense as the book mainly focuses on Construction, however the same principles still applied, as they were making things modularly. The Builder’s guide to modular construction by Jonathan F. Hutchings was the title of the aforementioned book. In this they show how the building are modularly constructed, which is similar to how models are modularly made in 3ds max. Then they are built up like Lego pieces, the same as in 3ds max when you model modularly.

The online research seemed more fruitful, I discovered a lot about modular design, and how to implement the techniques by finding tutorials that show you how to make rocks modularly and also how to make a corridor modularly. This is exactly what I need for my game, our rocks are bad as of this moment, so I have decided to make some rocks modularly as the artefact, so that it will also help improve the realism of our game, as there is nothing worse than a rock being really bad looking and taking you out of the immersion of the game. The actual model I would be making for the artefact would be the rock formation that the waterfall will be placed on. It will give the waterfall a more genuine feel, and hopefully highlight the beauty of the Unity in-built waterfall perfectly.

Artifact Construction 

For my artefact, I decided to make some modular rocks for our game, as we need rocks for both a cliff face, and to fill up the scene, this will be easy to make and even easier to make modularly. They can be diverse in design also by using this modular technique which is good from a design aspect.

To make these rocks, I followed a tutorial online, working with Modular Rocks by Philip Kletsav. First of all for starters, we make a texture, which I made in Photoshop using a custom brush that gave the sense of rocky terrain. I then painted over all the cracks, trying to keep a variation in the crack sizes as much as possible. 

Then, I brought this into Crazy Bump, A tool we used in 2^nd year to create normal maps. The importance of making this texture as that it was tillable and have some defined cracks where the mesh could be split up easily.

To create the actual model that we would apply the texture to, we start with by making a plane and subdividing it so it has 16 faces.

We then place the texture on to this plane. Then, I started cutting along the cracks that are associated with the texture and connect new edges where I need them.

As we have learned previously however, I have tried to avoid using triangle polygons in the object as it is bad practise. It will also help when I will no longer have to worry about getting a look that would be obviously in a rock face, square in shape, rather than triangular. I then extruded the edges then.

To get the edges to look sharper, I chamfered the sides of the stones. I furthered these previous steps across the rest of the object making sure that each part of the texture that looked like stones was extruded out, and that the texture wouldn’t look odd.

If the object you create is very high poly count, you can use the techniques to go from high poly to low poly which will significantly reduce the poly count.

However, I do not see how a simple rock face could be too high poly. However, if you really want your model to be really useable in game, you must cap the borders, I just selected all border edges and extruded them and then I pulled them back to make a box shape across the entire mesh.

And, the finally I just finished unwrapping the object, made sure all the areas of the texture lined up properly and so on. Here is the image of my final artefact.

One thing must be said, keeping an eye on your poly account, it is one of my major flaws when I am modelling, and I tend to get carried away, modelling this way it is even more important that you keep the same amount of detail across all the models you wish to connect, as it would look extremely weird to have an extremely high poly wall next to a very low detail wall.

Another way of modularly modelling would be to use sets, which is like when building a corridor in a sci-fi world, would be to build each section of the corridor modularly so that the corridor is easily made and can be made diversely for use in other parts of the game, for example you could make a corridor in one level, and use the exact same object in the next level, with a different layout, but with a different texture representing the floor number or something to that vain. These “sets” would be then joined and interlocked together to make a corridor, this is in essence similar to the train tracks that children play with, where they can make a custom track for their trains by interlocking the objects together.