Making House Siding-blender

[beli Lorefield]

Anyone have a good tutorial they can point me too? I tried doing a search and nothing really comes up.. there was one.. but for some reason mine's not coming out right and they're using a cube instead of "walls"

[Aquila Kytori]

On 12/3/2018 at 1:41 PM, beli Lorefield said:

Anyone have a good tutorial they can point me too? I tried doing a search and nothing really comes up.. there was one.. but for some reason mine's not coming out right and they're using a cube instead of "walls"

It would have helped some if you had pointed to the tutorial you were trying to follow :)

Google suggests that House sidings is what I know as cladding.

One way of adding cladding to a wall in Blender is to use the Array modifier followed by the  Knife project tool to cut out the holes.

 

The wall to be covered in cladding :

 

Part 1, Array modifier.

In Edit mode create the lowest section of cladding:

 

With this cladding board selected hit the P key to open the Separate menu and choose the Selection option.

The front wall faces (coloured pink in the screenshot above) can now be deleted.

Select the Cladding object and tab into Edit mode.

Next Add an Array modifier with settings similar to those shown in the screenshot below.

 

Adjust the Count number until the the copies of the cladding completely cover the wall from bottom to top :

 

In Object mode with the cladding object selected, Apply the Array modifier.

Tab back into Edit mode and select all of the cladding then hit the W key to open the Specials menu and choose the Remove Doubles option.

 

Part 2, Knife Project.

Select the wall object and Tab into Edit mode.

Select the outer edges of the door and window frames then use the short cut keys Shift D to make a copy  of these.

Move the copy a little in front of the rest of the wall with G Y -1 Enter. (moves it along the negative Y 1 meter).

Hit the P key to make these edges a separate object. This new object will be used as a cookie cutter to cut out the window and door openings in the cladding.

Tab back into Object mode and deselect everything.

To use the cookie cutter : First select the Cookie Cutter object then hold down  Shift key and select the Cladding object.

Now go into Front Orthographic view (or Side view depending on which axis your wall is on. The view where you are looking straight onto your cladding)

Tab into Edit mode and from the Tools tab (on the left), Mesh Tools  >  Add sub menu hit the Knife Project tool. This will cut out the window and door openings.

The faces that have been cut should now be selected. These faces can be deleted, ( X to open Delete menu and choose Faces option ):

 

Tab back into Object mode and delete the Cookie Cutter object.

Finally Select the Cladding object then Shift select the Wall object and join the two into a single mesh object with the shortcut keys Ctrl J .

 

This may appear a little complicated when written down like this but once you get the hang of it, it will only take a couple of minutes to do each wall in Blender :) .

[Chic Aeon]

Great to see Aquila's lovely tutorials!!!!

MEANWHILE to the OP. Please take into account that while siding looks lovely it can add a fair amount to the mesh density and often (oh so often) people don't upload their mesh so that it can be seen further and a few feet away.  So TESTING IS GOOD.  

 

I can't tell you how many houses I have NOT featued on my blog because of this.  You can see one example of it with GOOD LODs here:  http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/LEA6/210/148/2002

 

[beli Lorefield]

2 hours ago, Aquila Kytori said:

It would have helped some if you had pointed to the tutorial you were trying to follow

Google suggests that House sidings is what I know as cladding.

One way of adding cladding to a wall in Blender is to use the Array modifier followed by the  Knife project tool to cut out the holes.

 

The wall to be covered in cladding :

 

Part 1, Array modifier.

In Edit mode create the lowest section of cladding:

 

With this cladding board selected hit the P key to open the Separate menu and choose the Selection option.

The front wall faces (coloured pink in the screenshot above) can now be deleted.

Select the Cladding object and tab into Edit mode.

Next Add an Array modifier with settings similar to those shown in the screenshot below.

 

Adjust the Count number until the the copies of the cladding completely cover the wall from bottom to top :

 

In Object mode with the cladding object selected, Apply the Array modifier.

Tab back into Edit mode and select all of the cladding then hit the W key to open the Specials menu and choose the Remove Doubles option.

 

Part 2, Knife Project.

Select the wall object and Tab into Edit mode.

Select the outer edges of the door and window frames then use the short cut keys Shift D to make a copy  of these.

Move the copy a little in front of the rest of the wall with G Y -1 Enter. (moves it along the negative Y 1 meter).

Hit the P key to make these edges a separate object. This new object will be used as a cookie cutter to cut out the window and door openings in the cladding.

Tab back into Object mode and deselect everything.

To use the cookie cutter : First select the Cookie Cutter object then hold down  Shift key and select the Cladding object.

Now go into Front Orthographic view (or Side view depending on which axis your wall is on. The view where you are looking straight onto your cladding)

Tab into Edit mode and from the Tools tab (on the left), Mesh Tools  >  Add sub menu hit the Knife Project tool. This will cut out the window and door openings.

The faces that have been cut should now be selected. These faces can be deleted, ( X to open Delete menu and choose Faces option 😞

 

Tab back into Object mode and delete the Cookie Cutter object.

Finally Select the Cladding object then Shift select the Wall object and join the two into a single mesh object with the shortcut keys Ctrl J .

 

This may appear a little complicated when written down like this but once you get the hang of it, it will only take a couple of minutes to do each wall in Blender .

Aquila  This is the tutorial I was trying to follow.. and I will follow yours when I have some time this weekend inbetween packing lol  

 

[beli Lorefield]

2 hours ago, Aquila Kytori said:

 

 

 

 

 

1 hour ago, Chic Aeon said:

Great to see Aquila's lovely tutorials!!!!

MEANWHILE to the OP. Please take into account that while siding looks lovely it can add a fair amount to the mesh density and often (oh so often) people don't upload their mesh so that it can be seen further and a few feet away.  So TESTING IS GOOD.  

 

I can't tell you how many houses I have NOT featued on my blog because of this.  You can see one example of it with GOOD LODs here:  http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/LEA6/210/148/2002

 

 

 

Wow.. nice! kinda the siding I'm looking for lol 

Edited December 5, 2018 by beli Lorefield

[MirandaBowers]

Great thread for help! I didn't know a lick of any of this useful advice 

[Anna Nova]

Hmm?  For cladding I'd be thinking bump-map on the textures, rather than all those extra verts.....

[Chic Aeon]

1 hour ago, anna2358 said:

Hmm?  For cladding I'd be thinking bump-map on the textures, rather than all those extra verts.....

That works well if everyone can see that normal map :D  AND you have control of the lighting ^^. Both are true in Sansar but not here. Hence I almost always use normal maps in Sansar and almost never here.  They can either not work at all for some folks OR they can be so over the top depending on the the Windlight setting that your build gets very VERY ugly :D.

IF, however what you are building is just for you AND you opt into EEP --- then that would seem a more viable choice.

Also, when you look at the cladding from an angle it is very obvious whether it is "real" or "faked".  So as long as you keep all that in mind and TEST TEST TEST, the actual siding works fine.  The land impact in my photo above --- complete house with deck, ladder, fireplace doors et al -- is 86 with extremely good LODs.    

 

 

[Robert Galland]

As Chic mentioned, making custom LOD's of your siding walls is very important to control LI.  If you control your UV map well and get a nice, crisp AO map, you can flatten the wall in LOD2 and it can still look very good in SL.  Let the AO "shadows" do the work for you for LOD's 2 and lower.