Following the creation of the windmill model, I finally decided to automate parts of the model creation process to make things just a little quicker for the next models - so I’ll use this post to explain in a little more detail.

First of all, let me go over some parts of the process I use to create new models: A little while ago, I created some basic building blocks for the various buildings, such as the wooden and metal beams, wooden planks, etc. Over time, I also created various objects from these building blocks and some additional work, such as the furniture, the doors, windows, roofs, etc. As I create new buildings, I essentially put these parts together in whatever way seems appropriate for the building, and then combine or adjust them as needed. This is a fairly simple and quick process, and leaves me with a building that is made up of sometimes hundreds of little parts.

Of course I am also aware that each of the parts may require an eventual overhaul or some fixes to issues I haven’t noticed yet - so I have linked them into each building file from a central one. If I make changes to the part file, these can carry over to each building really easily, making updating each part much easier. But this also comes with a problem: Many of the hundreds of parts used in the buildings now can’t be easily joined together, some are only references that aren’t considered “real” by blender, others are representations of mathematical formulas, rather than actual geometry. To get the models ready for the game engine, I then have to go through the hundreds of model parts and fix all of these issues - then select the parts I want to combine, and join them, as well as delete any remnants.

Depending on the complexity of the building, this has taken between 1 and 4 hours in the past - and any mistakes I make (and sometimes don’t notice) can lead to longer term problems with the models or mean I have to go back to an earlier version of the file.

After the windmill took me about 4 hours to join together, I decided to try to automate this. Blender luckily allows for some automation scripts to be created with Python, and while Python isn’t my favourite language, I have enough experience with it to have gotten right into it. After a few hours, the result is now a simple shortcut that does the majority of the work for me. I simply select the relevant parts, and the script solves all of the issues, deletes remnants, and joins the parts together into one - usually within a few seconds. This means that I merely need to organise the parts into groups I want, and run the script a few times - having tried it on the windmill, it took the time to make the model game engine ready down to about 10 minutes.

While saving a few hours here and there at the end of a model creation may not sound like a lot of a difference, I am still looking at a few dozen new models to be created, and this part of the creation process was something I was usually dreading for how mind numbing yet fiddly it was. So as a result, I am quite excited to be able to skip it in the future!

Even though I am hoping to get a decent bit of game work done over the holidays, I am probably not going to be writing another post until next year - so I hope all of you have a great holiday season, and a happy new year!

Until next time!

Between Thanksgiving and some travelling, my work over the last weeks has been fairly slow. However, I just finished the new model for the windmill (see today’s image), so let me walk you through it.

The previous windmill was one of the few buildings that I had actually added a small animation to already (the rotating blades), so of course the new one also has rotating blades. However, with building interiors being a thing in the new models, I went a little further than that, and added some gears, drive shafts, and finally a basic grindstone to the model. As a result, you will now be able to see a lot more moving parts as this building is operating than in any previous one, which should really help create more of an atmosphere of a living village.

The moving blades and internal millstone/gears

While the turning gears are more animations than we’ve had so far, there is more I want to add in the future. For one, the building currently doesn’t (yet) have any sounds attached to it. With individual moving pieces, it should be possible to add fitting sounds in various locations, giving a much better soundscape than some of the generic building sounds we had before. I am also planning to use the current animations as a basis for future ones, and I am hoping that I will be able to add some villager animations in the future, e.g. the workers feeding grain into the millstone.

Finally, I have added some meshes to the model of the windmill that are meant to work with the new building script when it is finished. For example, there are meshes that are meant to only be shown as intermediate steps during construction, and to be deactivated again during a later part of the construction. This allows me to play around with new visuals, such as adding (and removing) cranes during construction, or having parts be constructed in an order that would have been impossible so far.

Half-finished blades: An intermediate step in construction

Similarly, the model has a number of optional meshes that are meant to be activated at random. So instead of each building looking the exact same, some buildings will have different ornaments randomly assigned to them. Considering that building construction is one of the oldest parts of the code, moving things over to the new (still unfinished) script has been a little challenging, but I am making good progress.

Until next time!