I hope I’m in the right place here. I’m working on a simple game that’s based on a short story I’ve written. Nothing fancy seeing as this is my first full length project and all. I’m having a few issues moving forward though. See, I’m a writer. I have the dialogue, setting, story, characters, events atmosphere and all that worked out but I can’t seem to get a good picture of the environment in my head. It is set in a large house. Not quite as large as a mansion but big enough for multiple rooms and floors and maybe even some hidden paths. I haven’t settled on modern or Victorian style yet as the story will fit with either. My biggest issue is I just can’t seem to visualize the floor plan. I’ve tried graph paper but it ends up getting too messy and I have a few modular building kits from the marketplace but nothing I put together seems to be just what I want. How do you guys do it? Is there a certain program you use or do you base it off of existing houses or other games? What is your workflow like? Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated!
If what you want is to design a custom villa/mansion model then you would need to use some software to achieve that. Professional BIM (Building Information Modeling) software can be very expensive like the Autodesk Revit, Sketchup Pro and many others. If you can afford that rent it. Otherwise there are cheaper options.
Like for example Ashampoo Home Design 5, Ashampoo 3D Cad Professional 7 which are on sale right now.
Then there is the quite cheap Archipack 2.0 add-on for Blender 2.80
There is the FreeCAD software too that is free to use. Same goes for B-Processor.
Then you would need to UV optimize and paint the models you created. You can find UV optimization/packing add-ons for Blender at cheap prices. Then there is the RizomUV software which is quite affordable and it is a rent-to-own one.
For painting the cheapest is ArmorPaint. Blender 2.80 has PBR painting features for free but buying some cheap add-ons would still better to get enhanced features.
There is Adobe Substance software too which has been rent-to-own so far but Adobe is highly likely going to change that and a monthly fee to never own a perpetual license could remain the only option soon.