(COMMERCIAL) Traditional Chinese Courtyard house

[Papierschnitzel]

I have started the New Year with a new project! I am trying to make a modular Chinese Courthouse set. Here is a first concept sketch of what one possible assembly would look like.



The set will consist of a variety (in lengths) of the larger main buildings, the smaller extension buildings, walls/walkways and gates. With these I intend to offer different possible layouts, ranging from a smaller single court, the medium court shown in the sketch and a large double court layout!

In theory you could then build large housing sections of a city and send your assassins into the maze!

Chris

[lethallee61]

Ooh lovely - colour me interested. 

[commissarmoody]

Cool, what era should that work for?

[WuZhuiQiu]

It looks good. What are the spaces at the front corners of the inner walls and beside the side buildings for, though? Likewise re. the space behind the main building.

[Arrigo]

Interesting... big question... it is possible to print your building in 15mm size? (Brain starting to work on a plan...)

[Papierschnitzel]

Regarding era ... I have read that the courtyard houses started in the Yuan era and became prominent in the Ming dynasty. But I would suppose they should work up to modern era, maybe for some special living areas (rich, diplomats etc)

I am working on the final dimensions grid and will show that soon once it's done. The smaller spaces are private garden areas. The basic idea of this type of building was to separate different levels of privacy. For larger courtyard compounds you would sections ranging from more public guest areas up to the private living quarters.

All my sets when printed at 100% are for 28-30mm. So for 15mm you would print them at 50% (and use two pages per print page layout to save paper!). Sometimes smaller details would require advanced skills in paper crafting. For this set I only see the columns as challenging. I would probably wrap them around toothpicks for stability at that size.

Chris

[Shipka]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siheyuan




https://oldchinabooks.com/YangShen_eBook_Blog/2013/01/10/chinese-courtyard-houses-四合院/

[Papierschnitzel]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siheyuan




https://oldchinabooks.com/YangShen_eBook_Blog/2013/01/10/chinese-courtyard-houses-四合院/

I didn't know the latter, a great read! Thank you 

[Shipka]

http://www.absolutechinatours.com/china-gallery/gallery-tuanshan-village-jianshui.html

[Papierschnitzel]

Here's some WIP progress.

First I a made a more detailed sketch of the main buildings. I wanted to get a grip on the layers of ornaments. I plan to make a "plain" texture layer with maybe just wood or colored wood and then one more detailed one like this pic.


Next I tried to make a rough build so I get a better feeling how all the parts could come together, esp considering the fold-flat approach, where you are able to assemble and disassemble for safe and easy storage.


With that out of the way, I will work on the details of the fold flat parts before I continue with texturing. You never know which surprises come up and you have to change parts of the geometry 

Chris

[Papierschnitzel]

Hi guys,

here's a first textured WIP for one of the main buildings.


For now I have focused on the "poorer" inhabitants version. Just brick walls and simple wood column front. The columns btw are just flat ones now. Will make round slide-over ones too, for the real 3D columns.

For the "richer" version I will add the decorative wood panel front and the ornaments on the horizontal column bars like in the sketch. And for officials I read that red is the way to go. So that will be one color option.

For customization I will add optional things like these windows.


I will also make some door on the sides for the possible smaller "extension" houses and walkways.

Here's a better look at the front veranda without the roof and column plane ...


Next I will tackle the roof!

Chris

[Papierschnitzel]

Time for another WIP. I have added the column plane and was about to create the roof, when my girl friend pointed out the the roof shape was wrong. After some discussion and checking I had to agree  , so I went back to work on the roof geometry. I also reworked the column plane texturing, to get it better to scale with the minis. Some details I had to enlarge and other I needed to make smaller.

Here is the current status. The columns here are tubes slid over the plane column.


Here is a comparison of my old and new corrected roof shape curve.


And finally, when I was ready to get back to the roof texturing, I first tried to reuse the old Japanese Castle roof but found it too dark and uniform. This time I wanted to add more variety in the shingles. So with everything I have learnt in the past months and years I made the new tile texture from scratch and wound up with this!


Now it's time to start working on the interior of the room! 

Chris

[Papierschnitzel]

Finally got the wooden framework texture done. Here it's only on the interior walls, but can also be used for the front wall!

[Papierschnitzel]

Today I completed the final regular build for making building instructions pics. Using the new wooden framework texture!



Also alternate back wall ...


Now I need to make the fold flat version and the 12" large version of the house for the end-of-month release!

*woooosh* <- me getting back to work 

Chris

[Papierschnitzel]

Finished the "fold-flat" conversion today. This is what the parts look like when disassembled.



It's an option for better storage and safe transport of terrain buildings. Also the double or triple layers for this build make the parts really sturdy!

In the above pic I have spread out the parts, so you can better see them. When you put them into a box you can squeeze them to about this size 


Chris