Ground-floor extensions for SUNTAIL houses that looked like mushrooms, plus different roof colors
The houses looked like mushrooms because their second floors stuck out, so I added ground-floor annexes and pillared porches with SUNTAIL modules. Of three look-alike blue roofs, the tavern's is now moss green and the guild's dark slate.
Walking around the new village, the houses were big on top and small at the bottom, so they looked like mushrooms. The blacksmith was the only one that actually stood right, and the blue-roofed houses all looked the same, so you couldn't tell them apart.
Looking into why, every SUNTAIL house has a second floor that sticks out 1–2 m past the first floor on all sides. The first floor's stone base is narrow and the floor is raised 1 m (the tavern's base is ±5.3 wide, its second floor ±7.5). Only the blacksmith has a first floor as wide as the second and a floor height of 0, which is why it looked stable. The tavern, shop and guild all have blue scale-tile roofs with a front gable, so they resembled each other.
What I built
The tavern before. The second floor sticks out on every side and the first-floor base is narrow, so the bottom looks flimsy.
I attached first-floor annexes reaching up to 2 m out from the second-floor wall line, so the bottom looks wider than the top. The upper end of each lean-to roof tucks under the second floor, and the lower end forms eaves over the outer wall (2.5 high). The enclosed annexes are stone walls built with window and door modules and topped with a lean-to roof, and their end walls go up to the second floor to close the gap. The pillared porches have stone-based pillars and crossbeams with a lean-to roof, and props underneath.
The tavern got a two-window storage annex on the west side and a pillared terrace facing the plaza with tables, chairs and barrels, and its roof is now moss green.
The shop got an annex on the front west side, pillared storage eaves on the east (crates, sacks, food boxes) and an annex in the back, and its roof stays the original blue. The guild got symmetrical stone wings on both sides and a dark slate roof. The house got a woodshed on the west side, and I left the blacksmith alone.
On sides without an annex, where the second floor sticks out more than 0.6 m, I planted bushes and flowers underneath. The 2.2 m in front of doors and steps stays clear. I also made a menu that reapplies just the annexes and roof colors and bakes the NavMesh, which makes it easy to rerun the design over and over.
I cleaned things up so no props, trees, rocks, bushes, grass or flowers overlap the annexes (the props under the porches are there on purpose), and moved 3 existing props that were in the way off to the side. Paths reach all 3 doors, the arrival points and all 8 NPCs, and in Play mode I walked between the extended houses all the way to the guild door.
Things I thought about
- Extending instead of swapping models. I tried the other 3 SUNTAIL houses in the tavern's spot, but they all have the same overhanging second floor, so swapping wouldn't help.
- Roof colors from material copies. I copied the pack's blue roof material and only changed the color. The pack original is untouched, and the annex roofs use the same material as the main building.
- Annexes as children of the house. That way they follow the building's scale-down factor and rotation.
Next up
- The annexes are just exteriors, so you can't go inside (the door modules are decoration too)
- The roof colors (moss and slate) are a first try, so refine them by tweaking only the color values
- Still holding off on the scale factors (models 0.8×, layout 1.3×)