Rebuilding the guild interior: a ground-floor hall and a gallery you can only look at

I'd overhauled the village with SUNTAIL assets, but the house interiors were still the old ones. I decided to renew the interiors one by one, starting with the guild. The goal was to match the village: same assets, same scale (0.8×, 1.6 m modules) and same camera.

The old guild scene was built for the old village, so I left it as is. In a copied new scene, I kept the player, dialogue, the receptionist Elise, the gold UI, BGM and door transitions, and only rebuilt the room.

What I built

The hall is 17.6 m east-west and 11.2 m north-south. I set the ceiling at 7.2 m, higher than the camera (4.93 m). The first tier of wall is stone, the second and third tiers are timber, and the third has a window every other section. Ceiling beams run every 3.2 m.

On the north side there's a second-floor gallery, 2.4 m deep and 2.4 m high, with stairs climbing along the west wall. You can see it but can't go up. The reception counter is in the middle of the north side, under the gallery. Elise stands behind the counter facing south, and the spot to talk to Elise is 2 m in front of the counter.

Other than that: two quest boards on the west side, a fireplace on the east side (its flue goes up to the ceiling), 4 tables and 16 chairs, 3 chandeliers, shields with crossed swords in 6 spots, and 4 paintings. Outside the room I laid a dark panel the same color as the background, so the bottom of the screen doesn't go empty even when the camera is outside the walls.

The hall is narrower than the camera distance (8.06 m back), so the camera is usually outside the walls. So I split the four walls, the gallery and the ceiling into groups and hide whichever side blocks the character. Decorations hung on a wall get hidden with it.

For lighting, since the ceiling blocks light, the directional light is weak (0.55) with no shadows, and I added 3 chandelier lights (intensity 2.6, range 10) and a flickering fireplace light. The village is mostly clear, bright colors, so I kept the candlelight to just a light orange.

It all connects: walking in through the guild door in the village, arriving in the new scene (facing north), talking to the receptionist, and coming back out in front of the guild in the village. Actually walking around with the mouse and keyboard and listening to the sound is for next time.

Things I thought about

• Same third-person camera as the village. A perspective camera that only rotates left/right with right-click, no zoom.
• Focused on the ground-floor hall. On the second floor you only see the stairs and railing, and you can't go up.
• The chandeliers don't cast shadows. The light right under each one was stamping a big chandelier shadow on the ceiling.

Rabbit hole: the shields and swords on the wall fell to the floor

The shields and swords hung on the wall fell to the floor as soon as I hit Play. The pack props (38 kinds) were originally physics props meant to be picked up. When placing them, I now remove three components, including the Rigidbody, to turn them into fixed decorations (0 Rigidbodies in the scene).

Rabbit hole: the backs of the shields showed and the swords sat in front

The rotation that stands the lying-down models upright was in the wrong direction. Changing −90° to +90° fixed it.

Rabbit hole: stairs in three pieces and a checkerboard floor

The stairs looked broken into three pieces, and the floor had a checkerboard pattern. I rotated the stairs 180° to join the 2 m and 1 m pieces, and lined up the floor planks, which had been alternately rotated, in one direction.

Next up

• The hall is a bit bigger than the guild's exterior in the village (about 15 m wide)
• When coming back out to the village, the camera is at the village's starting angle (north), so it ends up in front of the player (same for the other doors)
• The smithy and tavern interiors are still the old ones