I'm so sick of my box houses, full build tutorials?

[vinnland]

I want to learn how to build houses and structures better. I know I know I can experiment and play around with it but... honestly I am not creative at all (I work in finance, trust me!).

Anyway, on Youtube there are tonnes of build "show cases", but I cannot find a tutorial of which blocks and shapes go well together, how roofs really work and how to make sensible and nice structures.

Can anyone point me to a good video that shows me step by step, in detail, how to build stuff?

[Jacsmac]

Honestly, building tutorials from TOBG apply here as well - you can just add more details. A lot of the voxel building basics are well established by Minecraft and you can use those tutorials to help you get started in Vintage Story. Once you're done with your coarse details, you can whittle it down to the fine stuff by chiseling and adding clutter and support beams.

I like this Minecraft video's message about starting with simple shapes when building:
ULTIMATE GUIDE To BUILDING in Minecraft - YouTube

As for Vintage Story's exclusive chiseling, there are a multitude of chiseling tutorials if you search "Vintage Story chiseling" on YouTube. Installing mods like QP's Chisel Tools also makes chiseling large-scale details way easier, if that's something you're into. This roof tutorial helped me a lot at the start of my chiseling journey:
Vintage Story - Improve Your Roof!

 

[vinnland]

Erm... I have no idea how I never thought to watch a Minecraft tutorial haha. Thanks for the link too!

[Blaiyze]

Honestly, it also helps to study architecture that you actually like IRL. Once you have a good understanding of what things are characteristic of say, Tudor, then it makes it a lot easier to free-flow build.

I like to scale things in 5's or 7's for balance and ofsetting but play around with it as well. 

Look up styles you have a preference for and get to know what features set that style apart from others, then flip through images of that style so you can get a feel for what others have done with it. When it comes to colours and such, really basic colour theory applies here. A good rule is contrasts. If you are using a couple blocks that have say a greyish-blue undertone, then you're going to want to work in some orange or reds to really pop. Too much of the same or similar colours will wash the entire build out.

 

And yes, loooooooads of Minecraft tutorials can easily be adapted for VS and with VS you can have a lot of fun adding extra intricate details that TOBG can't inherently do without extra mods. Happy building!

[Rezerkity]

My biggest advice is to not use things for what they are, but for what they look like. For example Strewn Straw makes a great carpet flooring, and Rammed Earth looks like concrete for pathing or buildings as a whole. You can look up real life buildings too and try to recreate them in creative mode, it'll let you browse materials at your leisure as you figure out what fits and learn the blocks. Learning what's in the game for each colour/texture is a skill you'll build over time through experience

[HalfAxd]

Go look at Czarls YouTube channel.  

Specific builds laid out with how to build them.

There was one posted yesterday titled:  Vintage Story Italian Trattoria Build Ideas... amazing looking 

I hope this is what you were looking for.

Enjoy!

[vinnland]

9 minutes ago, HalfAxd said:

Go look at Czarls YouTube channel.  

Specific builds laid out with how to build them.

There was one posted yesterday titled:  Vintage Story Italian Trattoria Build Ideas... amazing looking 

I hope this is what you were looking for.

Enjoy!

YES! this is exactly what I wanted to see. Thanks.

[Helst_navngivet]

wikipedia has some amazing reference fotos for architecture, most pages on building "styles" have hundreds of photos. Most of the architecture in my world is inspired from that. Of course, they arent tutorials in the traditional sense, but still, thought it might help.

[dyrran]

Something I used to do is grab a set of dice and roll a 2d20 for base width and length, roll 1d6 for height, and then roll 1d12 per wall to see where additional rooms would go. If I had rooms I wanted to have before building, I'd write them down on a sheet of paper and use the closest sided die to assign the placement of the rooms. Could be forge-centric if you walk into the house and there's a forge immediately or a relaxed den if it's just a common area. 

This mostly assumes you have dice, but thankfully the web has you covered with digital tool!

[SnapJelly]

Well if the hurdle for learning how to build properly is too long for your tastes a very simple way to make house designs more interesting is simply going for odd shapes. Make an L shape or a U shape, make one side longer than the other, stuff like that will easily make your build look more natural.

Though I will say this works best with relatively humble buildings, if you want a very large house then this won't be enough to add visual diversity

[Zaph42nd]

Even with boxy designs I find chiseling can go a very long-way in improving the aesthetics of builds, same goes for support beams... Generally what I do for boxy homes is smooth out the corners, add some flare-outs to the roofing (VS Roofing mod helps a lot), add internal support pillars, and chisel framings for any windows, that works well when you are modifying a rough shape/frame. Sketching out your builds also works well, dimensions also don't need to be geometrically perfect, I'd argue some roughness adds a bit of charm but some would disagree on that

[greatorder]

Look online for building floorplans and copy them, thanks to the wonders of chisels you can make thin, if uninsulating, walls.

As for colours, make a palette. Literally take blocks, shove them all together into a rectangle, pick out the ones that work together, group them together, see how well they work, add, subtract etc. blocks. I'm awful with colours, and if needs be it's what I do.

Importantly, you need conformity and contrast. Enough contrast to break up the build, enough conformity it doesn't look like Barney the Dinosaur vomited out a house.

EDIT: Or you can just copy actual building materials as closely as possible in game. I've got a house on TOPS that's literally got Japanese shoji walls. I didn't come up with the idea of white paper and brown wood, I just took the closest I had - plaster and debarked oak logs - and worked with that.

Edited September 1 by greatorder