The beginning for making towns?

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#1

For me designing and making buildings is something I believe I’m relatively good at. However when I’m working on making towns and cities with those buildings, I often get stuck on some questions of mine.

I would like your opinion on what would be the best way to start laying out the foundations of towns and cities. Do you start by making the roads then putting in the buildings afterwards? Do you put in the buildings and build the roads around those buildings? Or do you simply go with no plan at all and just build the entire thing from scratch?

Once again I would like your take on this. What would you say is the beginning/start for making towns? All opinions are appreciated.

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#2

Hey @CareFreeTremity!

I find that having no plan at all is the best option. (This is my opinion mind you) I just start out with some roads, then make some buildings. (My favorite part) ; I make roads then there will be some green spaces that’s were I put homes, and shops.

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#3

Hey,

I’d say both option are the same. If you go without plan you will get stuck and if you go with plan you’ll get stuck. And also when you design a plan you’ll still change things when building. So basically my opinion on this is go without plan and start slow.

How to do this? Easy. Roads → green spaces → houses → deco aka trees fences and stuff that’s gonna make it look better.

I hope this helped you.

  • Cheerful
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#4

Neither…
Start with drawing, digitally or physically, to help you get a visualization of what works and what doesn’t work. It shouldn’t be detailed, just a bunch of sketches the get the general idea of what would go where, how it would fit, proportions and relative sizes.

If you start with simple sketches it will be easy to refer to your original idea as opposed to just trying to refer to memory, as your mind will constantly change and think about different ideas, making it a big mess of many different ideas thrown together with no relation.

It’s also a lot easier to try different layouts and change your mind on paper since it’s so much quicker to erase a light sketch and redraw your new idea. If you were to dive right in, any time you change your mind, you’d have to change a lot more as you would be changing the bigger things such as where a house goes, as well as smaller things like the rotation and position of the chair on the front porch.

Secondly, after your final sketch, expect to still change your mind a lot when you enter the 3D world, so don’t dive straight in from their either. Your second step should be to “Block Out” your sketch. In other words, nothing is detailed, everything is made of up blocks just to get a 3D visual of your design allowing for perspective and size relativity.

For your Third step, you replace your blocks with the Bigger objects like houses, roads, trees etc.

Finally, you will end with the details like the chair on the front porch, and where cars are parked etc.
Optionally if you decorate the interior, that should be very last.

Summary:

  1. Simple Sketches
  2. Block Out
  3. Bigger Details
  4. Smaller Details

If you have already jumped in, it’s ok to backtrack and get some sketches down. The point of this process is to allow for creativity and keeping an open mind as you work.

Hope this helped, Good Luck on your project.

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#5

This is actually a great topic for me as to give my opinion on it since I’m doing a city build at the moment. So, what I do is, I first plan my map type, what kind of style I want it, theme and other good stuff about the map. Secondly what I do is make the Roads first as that’s the main part of the city build. Thirdly, I place the roads line, sidewalk, street light, street signal and road stuff. Lastly, I then start with the building, the buildings, houses, terrain, grass, tree etc.

Hope this helps! :slight_smile:

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#6

Indeed it does thank you. All of this helps.

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#7
  1. Street
  2. Spam box across the town. Deal with the detail later
  3. Give each “box” its own fashion style. Depend on how you want it to look like
  4. Add city stuff. Like street lamp and trash
  5. Tweak
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#8

Depends everyone has different selection and choices normally when building a town or city you always want to build the structure of the road so you’ll know where the buildings will fit or where you want them placed for example:

If you start making a square road with different intersection. You’ll see where your buildings will take place at what type of town you’re making; It could be small with different roads and buildings.

Start with a single road, then start placing your buildings put all important things on your street or whatever layout comes to your mind start sketching on how your layout will look like. If you plan on expanding it or wanting to keep it decent and small put things like (post offices, small structure buildings, stores, ect).

How many intersections will be placed within your layout, will they feature like traffic signs or crossing areas? If you’re wanting to create a city you could see how your roundabout will look. When you have an idea on how the town will look like go from there see whatever is comfortable to you.

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