Whether on commission, or being made for personal enjoyment or as a gift, I follow this general creation process in my work.
(These steps are not set in stone, and I may jump back and forth between them during the creation process.)
First, I gather the information I need to start planning the building, custom or based on a RL floorplan. This includes reference images which can be provided by you if you would like a specific feature from it, or an overall replication. I will sketch out loose doodles of the plans, then move on to more refined designing. If it’s part of a commission, I will present these plans to you and we can discuss any design changes or alterations. Commission Payment is made after the designs are initially finalized.
(I may sometimes skip drawing out detailed plans in favor of roughing the design out in my 3D program.)
I then start blocking out the design very simply, getting the overall structure down before adding any detail. I will provide an update to you when the initial blocking out is around completion. This may include an in-world Preview on the Beta Grid, because it can be hard to tell if size feels right until you’re actually walking around in it. You can make revision requests at this time also.
If major revisions are requested after this point, I will have to add a small fee onto the final payment per major revision. I will determine this fee depending on how difficult it will be to apply the revision.
I start to add finer details to the build such as framing, accents, and/or minor structures like stairs. I will provide updates to you throughout this step for fine tuning revisions.
I will reduce the poly count in the building as much as I can without sacrificing detail. This is generally done by removing faces that will never be seen, or not normally seen, and reducing poly-count of things that will not be viewed up close. Updates on this will be provided on request, but I would prefer not to expose you to this step. This is because when you first view the build after optimization, I want you to view it as anyone else would and not be looking for the optimizations. This helps spot obviously optimized spots that need detail added back to them.
UV Mapping, Texturing, and Shadow Baking
Once the model is in it’s final state, I will start UV mapping and Texturing it if I haven’t already throughout the building process. I will either make the build retextureable/tileable with transparent AO Shadow baked layers(preferred), or make consolidated textures with AO Shadows baked directly into them depending on what’s needed. Some things will be left retextureable without AO Shadow bake layers because they don’t really need them. You will be provided updates when this is done. A Beta Grid preview is highly encouraged, and minor revisions and issues spotted will be resolved.
This step will usually be the quickest and is usually done by the time you preview the build on the Beta Grid from the previous step. Any issues in the Physics Shape will be resolved and tweaked.
Main Grid Upload (Full Perms Projects skip this.)
The model in it’s entirety will be uploaded to the main grid, and all necessary textures will be applied. The build will be packaged with it’s model specific textures(AO Shadow Bakes, Illumination Bakes, Supplied textures, UV Maps, etc...). Upon final payment, the Creation will be transferred to you. It will usually be Mod/Copy/NoTrans.
Upon completion of the project, successful Beta Grid test, and final payment, all files specific to the project will be packaged in a zip folder and sent to the Client through any free preferred means(Email, Dropbox, File sharing sites, etc...). If preferred, the build can be uploaded by me and given to you Full Perm instead if you don’t mind who the Creator shows up as on the object information.
Minor Revision Coverage will be provided free for one month at least in case any issues crop up that didn’t get caught throughout the previous steps.
Major Revisions can be done for a small fee depending on how complex what needs to be changed is.
I will determine whether the proposed revision is minor or major, but common sense often applies.
For Full Perms customers, this will cover if there’s any issues with uploading the file on their end, or missing/corrupt/incorrect extension files.
