I’ve been spending a lot on my Modular dungeon final project - WIP/Diary
Here is my latest doorway:
As I want to make a big asset pack out of it I am searching for ways of speeding up my workflow. It’s very fast and easy to make it with boolean. I created my first 
blender tutorial of how to do it very quickly with BoxCutter (which is paid addon, but well worth it price in my opinion, esp. for hard surface work):
What do you think?
You’ve made it look nice and easy. I don’t have that add-on, so I’m going to have to check it out for sure. 
Ooo I Love it!! Looks Great!!
Your door way looks cool!Love the placement and shape of bricks in the wall and their different colors.
Nice add on.Looks very useful and easy to use.I was using the knife tool as of now for those kind of cutting.That tool is really annoying as it won’t turn Green or red on edges and vertices sometimes.So I had to use the "K " shortcut for it every time. I haven’t reached the modular assets section yet.I am currently at the animated lamp section.So I will defenitly check out this add on.And thank you for the tip.
Your wall seems very thin. A lot of the arch brickwork must stick out of the back?
Is there a reason to bother Booleaning them together? I thought Grant leaves things all separate, simpler.
Would have helped to see the wireframe of what that ngon thing actually did.
Thanks! Those are not cheap addons, but I highly recommend them. I bought them not so long ago, and I’m already regretting that I didn’t do it earlier. Mostly they don’t add features to Blender, but make use of what’s already there way faster and simpler. Especially for hard-surface type work.
In modular assets Grant is also using knife tool for cutting hole in the wall for the door. It does the job but it’s slow. Good to learn that workflow, but for such work Booleans are much faster. Grant even mentions it in the passing.
As BoxCutter is paid addon… I made a version of the tutorial that doesn’t require any addon. It’s still faster than using knife tool:
I would say they are actually quite chunky:
Archway is even more chunky - made in such a way to encompass both sides of the wall.
I’m not booleaning them together, just cutting a hole in the wall with booleans. Grant does similar thing, but with knife tool. I join the object by simply… joining objects (ctrl+j). Similar to what Grant does. Grant fuses archway with wall… and with pillar.
And actually there are reasons for joining them. The primary one is convivence (moving one object at the time). But also (on a game engine side) it’s efficiency. Each mesh is a draw call, each material is a draw call. So without joining objects together the archway + wall would be 4 draw calls. Draw calls are expensive (as they are done on CPU)
Ah, if I only read this earlier I would include this in the 2nd tutorial. But here it is:
Actually, best way would be to remove those internal ngons. Though, as this is inside other geometry it will not cause any issues.
Interesting and different way to cut a wall!!Same way as the notch in the chess model .I like it!
Also did you use mirror modifier for the wall?
Yes, this is the same principle as making the notch! 
(a side note - BoxCutter is doing exactly the same - creates a an object that is used as boolean - just the UX is different / more efficient).
Yeah, at the beginning I used to do it… but there is another cool trick in HardOps (it’s supplementary addon to BoxCutter, I think those 2 should be used together) has mirroring gizmo that can work in many ways. Basically I press alt+x and I get this gizmo:
It can work exactly like simply adding mirror modifier, but also in a few different ways (like adding the mirror and immediately applying it). And the gizmo alone is very helpful as I don’t even have to think which axis I have to use (and I can mirror via object, cursor, etc… even mirror by other objects and when it’s needed - it creates empty to mirror for me). Again, nothing vanilla Blender can’t do… just more convenient and faster.
Hehehe!!Looks cool! And thank you.It all comes down to the less time consuming it is to make something the better and the quality of the model it makes.I am a newbie right now! But I will defenitly try this out after I learn a few things or get the lay of the land so to speak.Otherwise it will be like giving a necklace to a monkey!!
Thank you for that. I watched it, and then I bookmarked it. I happen to like hard surface modeling, though in recent years I’ve done other work such as clothing, and I’m still working on the Particles hair, so I like appropriate add-ons, but will try your tutorial in any case.
