Modular Kit - Italian Coastal City

Alright time to make a rundown of how I created my Italian Coastal CIty Modkit!

So I was looking at pictures of Manarola (Pic below) And I thought, "Wow! This is beautiful! And all of these buildings could be made off of one kit! They're so similar!" That was basically what made me want to do an Italian Coastal City.

From there, it was really just choosing which elements of the city are A)The most prominent and B)Were used the most. Yes, their can be a difference between the two. I was using this HD shot of Manaorla's main street for ref:

Here's how the kit is built: I have each individual asset as well as blueprints for the assets that would need their color changed (Ex. stucco, shutters and the like) But I also build prefabs of the buildings that you can simply snap together and swap out on a whim! Basically, there's the base, an array of middle pieces, and a variety of tops. Here, you'll see what I mean:

This way, you can easily build cities and extra buildings quite quickly! However, if ya need to build to very specific designs, it is totally possible since I made all of the basic assets available in the kit!

Here's a visual of how much space all of the textures take up in relation to a 2048 map:

Definitely making good use of that RGB packing! I'm getting like, four times the amount of space because of it! Also, I snuck one of my DFA assignments into the room interior texture!

Hilariously in hindsight, I nearly lost the whole project thrice all in the span of two days when I tried to put the project onto Perforce. Aparrently it didn't upload the changes and I lost everything on the D-drive. Fortunately, I copied the entire project over to a clean project and things have run smoothly since.

During the course of the project, I would send pictures of the world to my parents who toured Italy during their honeymoon. (It was a few years ago so it's not like they're recalling an event that happened over 21 years ago) It helps to have people that actually stayed there, ya know? Luckily I got to a point in my progress where they told me it was spot-on! My mum started telling me about a particular alleyway that she swears was identical to one she walked down. She said there was an elderly woman who would hand out towels and you could tip her if ya wanted.

Here is the same shot over the course of the project:

And yes, the bricks are actually that size. I checked and have loads of proof.

I'm pleased to say I learned a lot on this project! Not just with materials but with lighting! It was also a personal thrill to basically design an adventure field like the kind you would find in Sonic Adventure or, more likely, Sonic Unleashed! The windows are particularly interesting as they are a double-trick: There area actually two different types of windows in play here! There are windows that are transparent that look into a makeshift room and then there are the simpler looking but more complex flat windows! Basically, one is faked with geometry while the other is purely material fun. Here's a screen grab of the flat window material. Honestly, it's not that complicated!

Oh, did I mention that building lighting with a modkit is unbelievably difficult? There's only one reason for this: It bakes the individual pieces in an nonuniform manner! I looked into this error and A)The collective staff at Unreal are fully aware of it and B)They've been unsure how to fix it over the course of building two engines. All entries describing this severe bug have resulted in this: Sorry, but your best bet is to find a workaround.

The one I found works best is to make the problem assets blueprints and edit their color by hand so as to match the pieces around it. It's a true pain in the @$$, but that seems to be the only way to semi-fix it. And I mean, "fix it" as loosely as possible.

Welp, that's about it for now! Until next time!