# Mapmaking Discussion & Philosophy (WIP/Critique) > Building/Structure Mapping >  Argona 3D Project

## Ilanthar

So, call me crazy but I'm starting to work seriously on a 3D map of all my city of Argona (remembering the incredible bridge city of THW, I know I'm not the only one, though  :Wink: ). I'll need basic buildings I can repeat many times, in addition to the unique and specific buildings.
Here's a first residential house.
 & 
Working on a more bigger residence.

By the way, any idea of how many different buildigns I should do to avoid a "too repeated" feeling?

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## eViLe_eAgLe

You're using sketchup, right? Are you planning on texturing it?

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## J.Edward

> So, call me crazy but I'm starting to work seriously on a 3D map of all my city of Argona (remembering the incredible bridge city of THW, I know I'm not the only one, though ). I'll need basic buildings I can repeat many times, in addition to the unique and specific buildings.
> Here's a first residential house.
>  & 
> Working on a more bigger residence.
> 
> By the way, any idea of how many different buildigns I should do to avoid a "too repeated" feeling?


It sort of depends. Some cities have a lot of repeated styles. Outer edges of Philadelphia have many that look identical but with different colors.
At certain time periods, some designs get repeated a lot. Especially row houses.

For stand-alone houses, one thing you could do is to create several 'base' houses. 
These would largely be the same throughout the city but you could edit little bits to make them slightly different.

The level of detail you have going right now is nice. But can your computer handle several hundred of those at once?
That was often my problem when doing large projects in SU.

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## Larb

Also depends on area and era of the city I think. For example a suburban area in a modern town or city could get away with just a few standard designs. Old cities might have much more variation. But then Roman cities could have a large variety of buildings or could be towns full of "strip houses", and just a few unique buildings (forum, amphitheater, bathhouse, etc).

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## Ilanthar

@eViLe_eAgLe : yes, I'm using Sketchup, and yes again, I planned to textured it. But I'm not there yet!




> *By J.Edward*
> The level of detail you have going right now is nice. But can your computer handle several hundred of those at once?
> That was often my problem when doing large projects in SU.


Ouch, I didn't really thought about that... Maybe because I got this "base" with no details (mainly Dökkheim, the under part), without specific problems.
 & Dökkheim underneath 

Both of you : thanks for your thoughts about building diversity.
@Larb : it's a big city. From one side to the other, at the middle (the artery), it's a bit more than 4 km.

I'm working on this one right now.
 & 

Well, I guess that if my computer can't handle it, I'll just do some pieces or building then... Time will tell.

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## johnvanvliet

you might also want to think about using Blender

data from OpenStreetMap 
-- on a 5 year old computer

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## ChickPea

Can't offer any advice, but just wanted to say that I take my hat off to you, Ilanthar! This is going to be an amazing project to watch.  :Smile:

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## Ilanthar

> *By Johnvanvliet*
>  you might also want to think about using Blender


Interesting to know. I may consider it if I encouter troubles. The thing is : I have downloaded Blender quite a long time ago and it looks very powerful indeed, but I didn't understood how it really works... Sketchup is so more easier to use.

Thanks ChickPea! I've finished the second one and I'm currently working on a third house and doing some tests about textures.

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## Ilanthar

Some tests about textures. What do you think?

 &

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## snodsy

I think the textures are fine, my only comment would be to put some trim elements around the doors and possibly some gutter or element to finish off the roof line. On the larger building the roof doesn't quite look right, maybe a little more room above the windows.  Your sketch up skills are getting better and better, nice job on these.

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## J.Edward

They look good Ilanthar.
Here's one thing I noticed over the years doing 3d versus 2d illustration...
When you create a map or scene in 2d, you draw only that much detail that you need for what you can/will see in the finished rendering.
With 3d, there is the pitfall of doing far more detail than will actually be seen in a rendering.
Especially with a large city - to fit all of it into view, you generally have to be fairly zoomed out and as such much detail won't be visible from that distance.
Unless you are going to be doing closer in renders of streets maybe.

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## - Max -

Looking great so far !

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## Humabout

These are really quite pretty. You've really put SU on my radar as something I need to take a crack at.

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## Ilanthar

Thanks everyone!




> *By Snodsy*
> I think the textures are fine, my only comment would be to put some trim elements around the doors and possibly some gutter or element to finish off the roof line. On the larger building the roof doesn't quite look right, maybe a little more room above the windows.


Well yes, I completely agree. I'm gonna add a few things to the roof of that big house. What would you add around the doors?

@J. Edward : yes, I've thought about this. I would like to do some reference buildings anyway and in case my computer won't handle the whole thing, I thought it would be nice to do some detailed close-up indeed (like building around a square or view of a street).

@Humabout : it's really worth the try!

A quick try with the three houses. I've probably used too much different colors/textures.

The front side of the third house.

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## ChickPea

Looking really good, Ilanthar. I can't wait to see this all come together.  :Smile:

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## Katto

> They look good Ilanthar.
> Here's one thing I noticed over the years doing 3d versus 2d illustration...
> When you create a map or scene in 2d, you draw only that much detail that you need for what you can/will see in the finished rendering.
> With 3d, there is the pitfall of doing far more detail than will actually be seen in a rendering.
> Especially with a large city - to fit all of it into view, you generally have to be fairly zoomed out and as such much detail won't be visible from that distance.
> Unless you are going to be doing closer in renders of streets maybe.


J.Edward is definitely right here and it is a VERY useful and important comment. If you want to add that level of detail put them into a separate layer, so you can blend them out if not used. Even without those details you will need a powerful computer to handle the huge amount of polygons.

btw: looking good so far  :Smile:

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## Ilanthar

What if I just do the "important" features in 3D, and the rest (windows, doors) in 2D? Like the on below. Do you think it could work?

An Inn is currently in the workshop  :Smile: .

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## J.Edward

That's actually what a lot of game designers do. Though they use a material layer [a UV wrap] to get the 2d windows and such, which is very time consuming. 
I know, as I used to do that. It took longer to create the materials than it did to model the object.  :Smile: 
So yeah, doing the windows and such as 2d will save you a lot of time, effort and comp resources in the end.
It will also render better, if you're rendering out of SU, as there will be fewer edge lines.

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## snodsy

Looks like you solved the issue by of the door detail by adding the windows, it just needed something besides a solid panel, but It really depends on how your going to do this in the end,  

Not sure of your process your going to use - but here's a thought.
You might check to see if in your final rendering program (photoshop?/other) whether you can add more line details, that match what you bring in from Sketchup  , this might allow you do fix anything later and still matchup and not have to go back into sketchup to fix anything.

Also scale will factor, you may want to print it out at final scale and see what details you really need to add, I think the 2D windows and doors would work.

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## eViLe_eAgLe

J.Edward beat me to it, but a lot of people do 2D detail instead of 3D, mainly because it renders easily  :Very Happy: 
I've only ever used sketchup once, what kind of rendering options does it have? Or are you planning to take it to a more advanced program?

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## johnvanvliet

The best option for 3d rendering is using low poly count meshes and NormalMaps 

for example  a full planet map that is 2880x1440 is about 12 meg 
a 3d mesh of that size will be over 450 meg BEFORE UV mapping and about 700 Meg after 

see the file size difference 12 VS 700 Meg 


so low poly and UV map a normal map to it is the best way to go
that way you can optimize the mesh down to something like 20 meg and a 12 meg Normalmap

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## J.Edward

> The best option for 3d rendering is using low poly count meshes and NormalMaps 
> 
> for example  a full planet map that is 2880x1440 is about 12 meg 
> a 3d mesh of that size will be over 450 meg BEFORE UV mapping and about 700 Meg after 
> 
> see the file size difference 12 VS 700 Meg 
> 
> 
> so low poly and UV map a normal map to it is the best way to go
> that way you can optimize the mesh down to something like 20 meg and a 12 meg Normalmap


Do you have an example of a complex city done as a normal map?

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## Ilanthar

Thanks for the comments and help guys.

This said, I'm just giving up on this. Going 3D from a map "designed" in 2D is not the way it works, clearly. For example, I realize that I should have a lot more inner yards and small streets at this scale, to avoid big housing blocks with no lights at all in the middlle...
Another thing : the shape of my house blocks : almost none with 90° corners, making it really difficult to get some "normal" construction pattern.
Well, the buildings I already designed will be used anyway. I can do smaller towns/villages correctly with those. A good lesson anyway!

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## tainotim

Wow, I completely missed your work here Ilanthar.  Don't know anything about these kind of stuff, but the building you have completed looks great, and I really enjoyed your 3D city in the previous challenge so would be sad to see you stop working on the style.

Cheers,
Tainotim

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## Ilanthar

Thanks Tainotim. I'm not giving up the style, just this crazy project for Argona. I do intend to do some buildings, towns or villages this way.

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## Ilanthar

OK... I changed a bit my mind but still want to do a "city guide" of Argona. So, I started again to work on this, with a depiction of each quarter, and for each quarter, maps & views of the main places and buildings.

So, here's a view of the "Quartier des Echanges". I just intend to use it as a base for shadows and some iso views of the main buildings/places, redone quite like Larb's method (I'll try at least).


Here's the first building I'm working on : the "Landings Tavern", with its place in the Quarter.

The general view of the Tavern.

The underground & levels I've already done briefly.
 &  & 

Nothing is yet finished, I'll rework everything with more details and elements in my usual software, I think.

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## ThomasR

Holly F*** ! I passed on this ?? That is a tremendous amount of work and impressive work ! I still do not know how I missed this thread. Hands up for trying and hands up for the result. I find myself dreaming of a 3D version of Fairy Lutece ...

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## Redrobes

Nice work ! Reminds me of one I did a while back with similar tables etc:
https://www.cartographersguild.com/s...ead.php?t=2462

Also, if you need a fast way to generate the texture for all of the houses then the "Thatching for dummies" is a good read.
https://www.cartographersguild.com/s...ead.php?t=1932
See post #35 and similar in that thread.

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## Ilanthar

Thanks guys  :Smile: !

@Thomrey : ouch! I got enough work with this project for several years I think...
@Redrobes : thanks for the help. I'm not completely sure how I'll deal with this base... But I'll probably order a tablet soon (finally!), so, I may use a more "drawn style" in the end. Your work was excellent by the way  :Smile: !

I did the base for the second floor today : 
 &

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## Farland

Holy f*** is right. Wow.

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## Ilanthar

:Very Happy:  Thanks Farland!

I'm working again on this. I've done nothing good with my tests to do some drawing based on the sk plans... So, I'm just using the sk results for now, with a top-down view.
Are the textures too much? I'm not sure it really helps or improve the simple plans...

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## ThomasR

The shadows are a nice add-on but their orientation is weird. Maybe use your windows to orient them ?

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## snodsy

I don't mind the textures, but the stone work doesn't seem right when the pattern on  the wall continues to the inside wall, see attachment to show what I mean (red box).  The top wall look fine (green box) 



I'm going to do a sketch up town at some point, so it's been good to see your issues and comments here so I don't have to make the same mistakes?  :Smile: , I'll get to make other ones though.

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## Ilanthar

Thanks for the comments guys.




> *By Thomrey*
> The shadows are a nice add-on but their orientation is weird. Maybe use your windows to orient them ?


Huh? Not sure to understand... I'm applying the same shadows everywhere but of course the cut-off views are changing things (or I won't have shadows inside, for the most part).




> *By Snodsy*
>  I don't mind the textures, but the stone work doesn't seem right when the pattern on the wall continues to the inside wall, see attachment to show what I mean (red box). The top wall look fine (green box)


You're absolutely right. I would have to rotate the texture to make it fit the different walls. I'm really not sure to use those anyway...
And I'm kinda impatient to see you work a SK town!

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## ThomasR

Je me montrais tatillon (eagle-eye  :Wink: ). Tes ombres sont projetées vers les fenêtres. Ce n'est pas un problème en soi, le boulot est vraiment nickel.

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