Creating modular environments

Creating modular environments is our brand-new course, focusing on large scale environments. For a long time, we had this dream of building a scene that had multiple areas to highlight. The classic approach was building a scene from one or two perspectives and make renders out of it. This new course lets you build villages, cities, and castles in a very efficient way. We achieve this by modular building design, already quite common in the gaming industry.

This course is designed for students who have basic knowledge of Blender and have a passion for large scale environments. If you are new to Blender and have no 3D background, I fully recommend the ‘Creating 3D environments’ course to start with, also available on Udemy.

This course includes a massive amount of high quality content

· large library of high quality 8K texture Photo-scans (Texturehaven)

· 26 hours of  video content ( Udemy uses 1080p)

· Photo scanned wooden beams and rocks

· Animated medieval characters, sheep's and cows

· 4k aerial video reference content

· Nature pack with grass, plants and trees

I know how to make a scene, but the next step scares me...

If you reached the point of making a small environment scene with some buildings and vegetation, you know how much time this involves. Thinking about creating a small village or city can scare you because of the large number of buildings and terrain objects.

This course covers this creation process. In 8 chapters, you are able to design your own modular collection and build any type of building you can imagine in a very quick way. Each chapter covers a specific part of this process. It is a fun and easy-going course that won’t stress you.

But it’s not only about building design. The course also shows the story behind the scene: how to find a subject, work it out, and make it yours. From start to end, it will feel like an adventure that you don't want to stop. We care a lot about your development, therefor you can join the discourse masterclass for personal help.

Course overview:

Chapter 1: Introduction

In this chapter, we start with some introductory lessons. We talk about planning, motivation, and field experience. There is no need to take action with Blender, just write down the things you want to remember. You get background information about modular building creation and how this works in 3D. At the end of this chapter, you will know exactly what to expect from the course.

Chapter 2: Basics of Modular Building

In this chapter, we make our way in Blender and start with introductory lessons on modular building. This is one of the most fun lessons I ever worked on and it could be a course in itself. We will design some simple modular objects and make a construction collection.

After making a basic set of modular pieces, you can start building a simple medieval house. Everything will be explained step by step. After completing this chapter, you can start making brick building variations. I trapped myself making constructions because it was so simple and still so effective.

Chapter 3: Making a Modular Building Set

From this point, we start with the building process. We will design some modular walls and other types of modular objects. In the end, we will build a simple medieval house. At the same time, we start with the shaping of the large environment by making a base map with some rough shapes.

We will work on the master material shader and work with vertex paint to blend materials on the landscape. After this chapter, you can easily construct medieval modular constructions and outline and shape a landscape in Blender.

Chapter 4: Making A More Advanced Modular Set

In this chapter, we continue making modular building parts. We will add a new wall material and work on a thatch roof design. This allows you to make a farmhouse or similar types of thatch buildings.

At the end of this chapter, we will continue shaping the landscape and add some low poly trees and bushes. We use the EEVEE rendering engine to preview the scene. After completing this chapter, you will have a wide range of modular objects to design all types of medieval buildings.

Chapter 5: Building A Church And Making Trees

We will continue with making some new modular walls, this time focusing on ornamental walls with a large window frame. With these new modular walls, you can construct a church that will be the hotspot of your village.

After completing the church, we will design some pine and fir trees. There is no need for a plugin, we will create the trees from scratch in Blender

Chapter 6: Making A Ruin & Castle Complex

In Chapter 6, we will design a new set of modular walls to construct a castle and a ruin complex. By making battlements and crenellations, you will have the freedom to build any type of castle you prefer.

We offer a blueprint that helps you design the complex but feel free to make your own structure in this chapter. We will also work on two new tree types, the birch and maple tree. For this, we work with the free add-on M tree.

Chapter 7: Finishing The Main Scene

Now that we have all the necessary modular building blocks, we will make some building variations. We will construct some more modular buildings, a fort, and a town hall to fill up the scene.

For this purpose, we will import all the buildings and work out the main scene. We will add displacement maps on the terrain and add more details to enrich the scene. We end up making a final scene render in cycles.

Chapter 8: Making Scene Renders

Now that we have a large landscape, we can pick some nice spots to make some nice-looking scene renders. We will make some new particle systems to add grass and reed.

We will also import the animals and characters to fill up the scene and add multiple cameras to easily switch the camera position.