Blockout is where cheap mistakes should happen. If a courtyard feels cramped or a landmark does not read from your hero cameras, you want to discover that with cubes and planes, not after a week of trim sheets. This lesson wires Lesson 1 into Blender with a scale anchor, composition-first masses, and collections that mirror how you will split a modular kit later.

Lesson Objective

By the end of this lesson you will have:

1. A Blender scene with real-world scale (1 Blender unit = 1 meter is the default habit here)
2. A blockout mesh (merged or instanced primitives) that fills the playable footprint from Lesson 1
3. Three camera objects parented or keyed to your hero angles from the brief, with safe clipping ranges
4. A collection hierarchy that separates terrain shell, primary architecture, hero props, and blockers

Step 1: New file hygiene and scale anchor

1. Start a fresh General template or duplicate your studio startup file.
2. Confirm Scene Properties → Units use Metric and Unit Scale 1 so 1 m in Blender = 1 m in typical engine import.
3. Add a scale anchor - a 2 m tall block or a 1.8 m capsule named SCALE_HumanStanding. Hide it in viewport when cluttering, but never delete until the kit ships.
4. Delete the default cube or move it into a TEMP collection so it does not become accidental kit geometry.

Pro tip: If your game uses a non-human camera (top-down, isometric), still keep a human block for door heights and railing readability.

Step 2: Import or match your reference board (optional but fast)

1. Image → Reference or Image as Plane for one orthographic layout if you sketched a plan.
2. Lower opacity and lock the layer so you model over it, not fight it.
3. If you have no drawing, place empties for landmark positions only - three is enough for v1.

Step 3: Composition-first primitives only

Rules for this pass:

• No bevels, no loop cuts for polish, no array modifiers you cannot explain in one sentence
• Boxes for buildings, planes for ground, cylinders for towers - if it needs subdivision to read, the silhouette is not clear enough yet
• One material (default grey or a flat viewport color) for everything

Order of operations

1. Ground plane or terrain slab sized to the play space from your brief
2. Largest readable masses - keep rooflines as simple extrusions you can boolean later if needed
3. Negative space - courtyards, paths, cover volumes the player actually uses
4. Hero prop placeholders - single cubes scaled to expected footprint with labels in the object name (PROP_Fountain_Block)

Mini challenge: Stand at each hero camera and toggle all PROP_ objects off. The scene should still read as the location.

Step 4: Collections that predict modular splits

Create collections now so Lesson 3’s kit plan is a rename exercise, not archaeology:

Naming: Use PREFIX_Description on objects. Avoid Cube.017 in anything you might export.

Step 5: Lock the three hero cameras

1. Add Camera objects and align them to the framing you wrote in Lesson 1 (FOV roughly matches your game if you know it).
2. Set clip start small enough for interiors (often 0.1 m) and clip end far enough for skylines without z-fighting on the far plane.
3. Use Viewport Shading → Wireframe or random object color to check overlap and floating slabs.
4. Save bookmark views (Ctrl+Numpad 0 is camera-to-view in older habits; in 4.x use View → Align View → Align Active Camera to View when framing).

Step 6: Quick scale sanity export (optional)

1. Export a single FBX or glTF with only SCALE_HumanStanding and one wall cube - import into Unity or Godot once.
2. Confirm height matches expectations (often 100x errors mean centimeters vs meters).
3. Fix in Blender before you model fifteen pieces wrong.

Cross-read our Blender to Unity and Godot export pipeline when you formalize this in Lesson 12.

Troubleshooting

• Everything feels tiny - Check Unit Scale and whether import used FBX scale options last time.
• Cameras clip geometry - Narrow clip end first; huge worlds need sectioning, not infinite clip.
• Cannot tell walls from props - Move props into PROP_Hero and give consistent maximum footprint sizes.
• Blockout is “done” but boring - Add one vertical break (tower, tree mass, cliff) before you add noise.

FAQ

Should blockout be one mesh or many objects?
Many objects in collections until you boolean or merge for specific export needs. Merged meshes too early hide iteration cost.

Do I texture the blockout?
No. Flat colors at most. Texture decisions start after kit planning and UV strategy lessons.

How long should this take?
One focused session. If you are past three hours, your scope from Lesson 1 is probably two environments.

Recap

• You anchored real scale and blocked composition before detail
• You organized collections for ground, shell, props, and cameras
• Your hero cameras prove the brief still works in 3D

Next Lesson Teaser

Lesson 3: Modular kit planning turns these masses into repeatable pieces - corners, straights, posts - with a grid and snap rules so trims from Lesson 4 sit on clean edges.

Bookmark this track if you are building a portfolio environment over several weekends, and share it with a teammate who keeps modeling before blocking.