MilkShape Modeling
3) How to Build a House in MilkShape 3D


STEP 1: First off I drew a 3d sketch on paper of how I wanted the house to look, I find it much easier to work from reference pics or at least a sketch, it gives you good idea of what you need to do even before you start. Anyway, using the VERTEX creation button as shown I plotted the shape of my house from the side.


STEP 2: Now using the FACE tool as shown, create a face by clicking 3 points ANTICLOCKWISE, this creates a face with the normals facing you. you should see a grey triangle on your 3d view, if its black select the face and go to the menu up top and FACE-REVERSE VERTEX ORDER this faces it opposite to whichever way that face was facing :) if you create your face right you wont need this but occasionally you get a rogue face that needs flipping..


STEP 3: Now do the same for the other faces, watching your 3d view build up until you have a side of the house. Easy enough? I also moved my vertex's at this point to straighten out my wonky edges.


STEP 4: Now go to the top menu and click EDIT-DUPLICATE SELECTION or just press CTRL-D. deselect the Y and Z so just X is selected(as shown), now when you move the duplicate it will slide over staying exactly in line with the other side. It will also be facing the same way, so while the new side is still selected, go and reverse the vertex order, this will flip it to face outwards on the other end of the house! The black faces should all be facing inwards.....


STEP 5: Time to build some doors and windows. Ok, now create 4 vertexs' on the imaginary front of the house and create 4 more just inside as shown. This so we can inset the door, now create all the faces as shown in the next pic......


STEP 6: After creating the faces select the inner 4 vertex's and in the side view move them back a bit, as you can see in the 3d view we now have an inset where the door will be.


STEP 7: DO the same type of thing for a window, then DUPLICATE em and scale em for the other windows, moving them into place making sure they line up in each of the views.I made some for the back by duplicating the top front ones and using VERTEX- MIRROR/FRONT to BACK to flip em then moved them into position.


STEP 8: Now we create the front wall. 1...2...3 create the faces for the lower front wall, the upper front wall and the back wall (CHANGE the front view to back view for this) ALSO MY BIGGEST AND MOST USEFUL TIP EVER: select all the vertexs you wont be needing and hide em using CTRL-H. AS you can see while I was working on the front faces all the back vertexes have been hidden, this saves you constantly trying to select vertexs and getting it wrong..


STEP 9: Again, hide all the front vertex's and even the inner window ones as pointed out, using CTRL H to hide all selected stuff. This helps a lot :) USE unhide all or CTRL U to unhide all the vertex's. I haven't bothered about the roof faces because we will be making the roof's from boxes in the next step.


STEP 10: For the lower roof I created a box, scaled it, rotated it, and moved it into place. The top roof was done the same way, I built one half and moved the vertex's at the top point so they will meet the other side of the roof. DUPLICATE and MIRROR-FRONT 2 BACK. Now I selected each pair of vertexs that were almost touching, used SNAP TOGETHER the WELD TOGETHER to join the top edges.


STEP 11: I kept the roof quite seperate from the rest, it just made it easier to work on and select. Now we can create groups ready for mapping. I selected all the side faces as shown. Use SHIFT-LEFT CLICK to add faces to your selection and SHIFT-RIGHT CLICK to remove faces from your selection. Once all the side faces are selected go to groups and click regroup, then reneam it to "sides" or something.I created several groups:- Sides, front, back, lower roof, upper roof this makes it easier to map as shown in my mapping tutorial. Go check that out next!!!!!


STEP 12: A few different views for ya. As you can see its not that hard and these same techniques can be used to build anything you want. This building is only 149 Triangles which is nothing!!! and with texture mapping it will look pretty good in any game engine. I hope you found this tutorial useful, if you do drop by my forums in the 3DIMENSIONAL section for a chat or explanations etc.