Filling out the empty SUNTAIL village with 14 filler houses, a river, hills and bridges
The third-person view showed how empty the village was, so I filled it with 14 filler houses, a river, bridges, a pond, hills and a raised upper village. Only the south and east roads are exits, and hills plus two layers of forest keep the outside mostly hidden as the camera turns.
After the default view switched to perspective third-person in 133, it became obvious how empty the village was. This is the first-impression village for the demo (target render / vertical slice), so visible gaps are a problem.
First I decided which areas to fill (northwest, inner west, north road, northeast, southwest, southeast). There are only two exits, south (6 o'clock) and east (3 o'clock), and the north and west roads aren't exits. For the composition I took cues from the seller's images: the river, the arched wooden bridge, white rocks, sandy shores and big trees.
What I built
I placed 14 filler houses on both sides of the main road entrances, at the dead ends of the north and west roads, in the northwest upper village, on hilltops and so on. All 8 house types are used, and a few are turned 3–8° so things don't look too neat.
The extensions I did by hand in 134 are now automatic. It measures the wall line from the second-floor mesh, attaches annexes and pillared porches, fills the remaining sides with flower beds, and mixes moss and slate roofs. Nobody goes inside the filler houses, so I turned off their interior lights (12 per house) and interior sounds. Backyard prop sets like woodpiles, vegetable patches and carts are placed only after checking for free space, so they stay clear of roads, water and retaining walls.
I fixed up the roads too. The south and east main roads went from 66 m to 86 m, reaching across the bridges into the forest, and the north and west roads now end partway. Terrain valleys are only left to the south and east, so the north and west don't look like exits. I also added back roads, alleys and 3 small squares.
There are 6 hills and mounds. The northeast (4.2 m) and southwest (3.2 m) hills have houses sitting on their flat tops, and the rest are 1.2–1.8 m. The grassy areas get small bumps of about ±0.4 m, while roads, squares and house spots stay flat. The northwest upper village sits on a 1.6 m raised terrace with stone retaining walls and fence railings on the south and east sides. You get up there from a back road by a ramp of about 18°.
The outside of the village is hidden. The surrounding hills start rising at a 58 m radius and peak at 120 m (9–25 m), and the forest has two layers: 300 trees inside plus 380 outside. I also added 18 big trees around the plaza, hills and riverbank.
The river wraps around the south and east of the village. The bed is at −1.45 m and the surface at −0.75 m, with sandy ground, rocks, white rocks and reeds along the banks. I needed depth to dig the riverbed, so I lowered the terrain's base height by 3 m. The 2 bridges are assembled from the pack's bridge pieces and widened 1.5× (about 4.5 m). In the southeast there's also a pond with rocks, reeds and a small boat.
Paths connect from the plaza across the south and east bridges, into the upper village courtyard, up to the houses on the hills and over to the pond, and I deliberately didn't make paths through the river water. No filler house overlaps another one or any existing house. The editor Game view averages 77–83 fps, and renderers went up from 6,730 to 11,962.
Things I thought about
- 30 houses → 14. At first I placed 30, but once I looked at it, it was way too crowded. I cut it down to 14 and filled the empty space with the river, hills, pond, upper village terrace and big trees.
- Height variation instead of flat ground. Flat ground alone didn't look good. Houses up on hills seemed fine, so I added some ups and downs.
- Bringing the border closer and higher. So the outside of the village stays mostly hidden even when you turn the camera.
Rabbit hole: the path broke on the bridge
Pathfinding across the bridge was cut off halfway. There was a gap at every seam between bridge pieces. Overlapping the pieces by 0.15 m each connected it.
Rabbit hole: the ground plane covered the river
The ground plane I'd laid outside the terrain sat higher than the river, so it was covering the water. Lowering it from −0.3 to −2.0 fixed it.
Next up
- The northwest courtyard's stone floor still looks too wide (shrink the courtyard or add a big tree)
- Close-up details like vines, window planters and lanterns on the bridges
- Measure performance on a demo build, and check forest LOD and culling
- Interior exits still lead back to SampleScene