Small House (Updated 11/8/09)

[Wedge]

Since everyone else seems to be using this section to show off their maps, I'll do it too.

Some of you may recall me having worked on a small partially finished house before. I decided to start over. This time I'm working in google sketchup so it will be much more precise.

The goal of this project is to create a small and properly scaled house. Not a finished house though, just the frame of one. You'll be able to explore the framing of the house and take a look at how exactly we build homes in America. It won't be entirely accurate, I'll probably cheat a bit in places and I'm not going put in finishing materials (sheetrock, siding, carpet, etc), but it will be fairly close. I'll throw in sloppy blueprints that have that information on them if you're really interested.

You can race a jeep across the floors, fly under the floor, build between the rafters. It's all open, and in my opinion, a much more interesting environment then a complete building.

9/26/09 Update 1

The foundation has been poured and ready for the first floor to be framed.

Current dimensions:
32x32 foundation wall with a 16x16 L shaped cut out. The foundation wall is 12" thick and 4' tall (so the footer is just below the frost line). The foundation footer (the wide bit around the bottom of the wall) is 24 inches wide and 12 inches tall, with 6 inches projecting on each side of the foundation. A very typical foundation wall. Just pretend there's some rebar and wire mesh in there too. I'm not going to cut out a section of the wall and show the rebar, that's too much work and I don't think it would look very good. I may model some in blender after I finish the building and place a bundle of it somewhere for scale and decoration.

[Ad Bot]

[heedicalking]

epic.

[Poiuyt]

epic.

I second that.

[Anybody]

I'll say something original instead.

[Niliscro]

Should be pretty cool to have a map of a house that is "under construction".

[Wedge]

9/26/09 Update 2


Now with x-ray vision!

Probably the last update of the day (for those of you on the East US Coast anyway). I've finished all the subfloor now. Plywood is going on tonight but that's not particularly interesting, it's going to cover up most of the subflooring (but not all, so you can still go down into the crawlspace).

9/26/09 Update 3


Okay, I lied. This is a quick rendering of the basement I did after I finished applying most of the plywood. I do this every once and a while to make sure there's no broken brushes - sometimes I'll forget to group a 3d drawing into a brush or accidentally delete a face and the vmf exporter turns that into a huge broken twisted triangle that will crash the torque dif exporter. Better to catch them as I go along then have to go back and replace 3 boards in the basement when the building is already finished (although that's really not that hard in x-ray view anyway but I digress).

[Anybody]

It's just like a real subfloor, amazing!

[Swiss]

How do you put sketchup models in Blockland?!?

[Block Builder]

How do you put sketchup models in Blockland?!?

It takes a funnel, patience, and lots of crying.

[Wedge]

How do you put sketchup models in Blockland?!?

You can find it out here:
http://forum.blockland.us/index.php?topic=84459.msg1508424#msg1508424

It's a very brief tutorial, it doesn't explain everything and assumes you have a good understanding of how to use quark. If you're not very familiar with modeling concave geometry don't try it - you'll spend an afternoon modelling something in google sketchup and then get frustrated when the vmf exporter spits out an error telling you it doesn't like that beautiful series of round windows you just punched through your wall.

[Marcem]

Awesome.  Though I wish you would be doing some more advanced brushwork in google sketchup.  Unless at some point, you decide to add a huge amount of detail to it.
EDIT: Oh, forget.  I guess the power of Google Sketchup doesn't translate into more possible detail, it just breaks the model.  Lol.

[MtnDew]

Yeah, brushes have to be relatively simple.
:/

[Jimmg]

I was thinking about this earlier then I was like nah I'm too lazy to restart.

[Wedge]

No real update today. I probably won't update a whole lot during the week. Since it's in sketchup I can take it to school and work on it if I want, since all the school computers have sketchup on them. I'm an architecture major and no one will think twice about me sitting in the graphics lab drawing a building.

Today I just put down a couple of 2x4s around the perimeter of foundation. Nothing to write home about (or take pictures of). These will serve as a base for studs. By Wednesday I expect to have something you would recognize as the first floor of a house. I'll see if I can get quark running off a flash drive as well. It needs python so that could be a bit tricky.

[Wedge]

9/29/09 Update 4

The first floor is now complete. There's lots of windows. Too many maybe. I'm glad I'm not living in it. Oh yeah and it's only 32'x32' which is pretty small.


And the moment of truth... Well, it's not actually a moment of anything, it's a simple copy and paste job. I've still got to put a hole in the floor for the staircase. I'm also going to tear down at least two walls - I want the second floor to be partly open. I'm only going to put the roof over half of it so people have the option of building on the second floor and out in the bright sun, if they feel like it. I'd like to give a wide variety of settings and locations, and if that means putting the roof on before I finish the second floor then that's what I'll do.


Speaking of stairs, here's me "starting" them. I've sense pulled out my trusty pad and pencil and discovered that this staircase won't work - I'm going to have to redesign it. I mean I could do it but a one and half foot gap between treads is more typical of ladders...

You can see the method I'm using though. Draw a stringer (diagonal peice of wood the stairs rest on), put in a center line, divide it into equal parts and put the center of each tread where the center line is divided. I'm thinking about cheating a bit on the staircase though. Typically stair shaped recesses would be cut into the stringers and then the treads would be laid on top. I'm thinking about just throwing them up between them. In real life these stairs would collapse as soon as you put any weight on them, but they can exist fine in the game.

Then again I'll probably get bored (no pun intended) between classes and do it the right way anyway.

EDIT: Also, quark runs fine off a flash drive but sketchup doesn't. It's a little odd.