Introduction

The basic house we will modelize measures 10 meters x 8 meters and has two levels for living and two roof levels. The total height is 12 meters. Of course, to diversify the narrow street, the size of the houses may be modified : length and width can vary from 4 meters to 6 meters. Houses are built according to an assembling system of 2 meters x 3 meters modules. A 128 x 128 map is applied on each module. A basic house requires 192 triangular sides, which makes 100 sides after an optimization with the Scol Engine.

Modeling of the walls of the house
To begin, we are going to start with a simple 2m x 2m box.

To make the house texturizing easier, we advise you to determine from the beginning the number of maps that will cover the house and to create a multi-sub-object with them in materials editor. Then you can allocate the material directly to the box.

From the basic box, we will only save 2 faces making up an angle. (angle of the house). This angle will be our basic material to built up our house.

To realize the ground floor, we will proceed by copying faces. Make sure before anything to carefully select the snap option so that copied faces are perfectly juxtaposed.

To copy a face, select the moving constraint on the x axis.

Then, while pressing the Shift key, move the copied side up to the mother side edge. To modify the texture of each side, allocate the appropriate id in the Edit mesh/face Editor.

Once the ground floor is made, you will have to copy/move its faces on the y axis to built up the first floor.

You will have to proceed in the same way for the last 2 floors. Nevertheless, to form the slope of the roof at each angle of the house, from the frontview, you will have to delete useless edges in Edit mesh. If necessary, if the central edge angle is ill-orientated when selecting it, you can pivot it by using the turn option. Then you will make these faces' edges visible. The last floor will be made of two bevelled faces to form the edges of the roof.

Once the walls of your house are done, you will have to "collapse" each face, then you will have to attach them in Edit mesh.

Modelization of the roof

Now that you have just modelized the walls of the house, you now have to modelize the roof. To do so, use the front view and select external edges that make up the slope of the roof. Then copy / move the edges 2 meters away on the x axis, using the front view. Detach the faces you now have , then apply the roof texture on them by choosing the right id in Edit mehs. Select the faces of the roof, then copy/ move them on the x axis still, do it four times in a row so that it gets completed.

Creation of the village

To finish the village, you have to duplicate your house three times. By deleting some faces, you can modify the dimension of the duplicated houses. You just have to gather houses, letting a 2 or 4 meters gap between them, to build streets by assembling 2x2 meters faces and to give them a cobblestone structure.

Creation of collision boxes

In order to move in the streets of the village without going through house walls, you have to set up collision boxes. These boxes will be 1 meter high (make them higher to enable avatars to fly). Just set up as many boxes as the route of the streets requires and see that they overlap in 20 centimeters at least. The name of these boxes is very important for the conversion of files into the *.m3d format. Therefore, you must name these boxes : box_01, box_02, box_03 and so on...

Exporting the file

Now you just have to export your 3ds file. Before, you have to install the M3D Export for 3dsMax plug-in. Then in the Export option of the File menu, choose the M3D export.