So, what are you working on right now?

[RPGista]

Lots of interesting, creative and detailed scenes there Pranqster, Im also really looking foward to this. I really liked the work you did on the furnace, the xaman model, and you gotta love the apples on the tree. A healthy diet indeed.

 

I must agree with Melan however, regarding the big hall - spans of more than 8 meters (lets say 10 for the sake of a game) are unreal and just kinda give you the feeling that something is not right, lacks "weight". You should always break those spans with columns, or you should make the ceiling not horizontal, but a vaulted one, like these:

 

 

 

Oh yeah, and do not rely on the ambient light to render your room, it dulls everything and I just hate how it looks! Fill that place with lights, let the player look for a place to hide if he can.

Edited May 2, 2012 by RPGista

[PranQster]

That forge and market stall are excellent, with a good attention to detail, but the hall in the second shot is not something you would ever see in a non-modern environment. Here are my issues with it:

• It is too spacious, posing both architectural and gameplay-related problems.
  
• The wooden arches are immersion-breaking. They have no discernible architectural function, and they would be very hard to construct with pre-modern technologies.
  
• Also, in an otherwise fairly bare rectangular space, the arches stand out like a sore thumb. They do not reduce the hall's bareness, they draw attention to it.
  
• The lamps do not illuminate the ground.
  
• Generally, the lighting is flat and uninteresting. There is no attention to navigation, since everything is in darkness.
  

I offer this criticism because the rest of your images show you can do much more advanced architectural work. I would just scrap the hall and reconstruct it in a smaller size, with more architectural variety and a better attention to visuals and gameplay.

Point taken. I'm going to be re-doing that room since I've never been completely happy with it. Thanks for the input.

 

the forge looks really cool, but from a practical standpoint, that thing would never be able to heat anything up enough for forging.

Thanks. I actually based that forge on a picture of one I found when doing a google search for 'medieval forge'. and re-constructed what I could see in the picture.

 

One point about those lamps, in 1.08 all chandelier entities have a 'taller' light source. They don't get wider but they reach the ground much better. Still, that room is very tall so they might not. (that setting can be adjusted though in the editor)

Yeah, the room is too tall. I think I'll convert it to two floors, with the upper floor at ground level most likely.

 

I love Pagan levels. I'm looking forward to seeing what you do with TDMs first one.

 

Does this mean that if you Dmap and close TDM down and then restart it and then Map that you get a better frame rate?

I'm going to try to make the pagan village cool. It's a bit rough yet and I'm still tinkering with ideas. The ground level huts still need a lot of work.

 

Usually I don't have to close tdm and can dmap quite a bit with no loss in performance. But I had been working in DR and TDM had been running for about an hour since my previous dmap. Chromium browser had a lot of processes running too. Sometimes I see a noticeable frame drop under those circumstances.

 

Thanks for the comments. This will help me to work on making a better map.

Edited May 3, 2012 by PranQster

[PranQster]

Lots of interesting, creative and detailed scenes there Pranqster, Im also really looking foward to this. I really liked the work you did on the furnace, the xaman model, and you gotta love the apples on the tree. A healthy diet indeed.

 

I must agree with Melan however, regarding the big hall - spans of more than 8 meters (lets say 10 for the sake of a game) are unreal and just kinda give you the feeling that something is not right, lacks "weight". You should always break those spans with columns, or you should make the ceiling not horizontal, but a vaulted one, like these:

 

 

 

Oh yeah, and do not rely on the ambient light to render your room, it dulls everything and I just hate how it looks! Fill that place with lights, let the player look for a place to hide if he can.

Thank you. Those pictures make for good inspiration. I agree, and had been hating my rectangular box room. I wanted it to be a large area, but it is ridiculous right now.

 

Edit: Ok. The huge room and pillars and arches are gone. It's two levels now, much easier to visportal, and now I have more flexible options to partition areas into smaller galleries.

Edited May 3, 2012 by PranQster

[ungoliant]

In the shadows, it looks a lot like the real deal now.

 

new AO + convexity map baked from xnormal, in ambient only lighting. (also playing with new diffuses)

 

 

yeah its not exactly overly detailed, because the normal map is MIA, but it doesn't look like a big lump of rock either.

Edited May 3, 2012 by ungoliant

[nbohr1more]

You need to increase the ambient level 'cause the low light level means that your hitting the noise-floor for the

dynamic range for JPEG (etc) and thus the banding and pixelization artifacts.

 

Looks good from what I can tell...

[Bikerdude]

Thank you. Those pictures make for good inspiration. I agree, and had been hating my rectangular box room. tal, and now I have more flexible options to partition areas into smaller galleries.

Hi Pranqs, would have though inspiration images are better suited the inspiration thread.

[ungoliant]

You need to increase the ambient level 'cause the low light level means that your hitting the noise-floor for the

dynamic range for JPEG (etc) and thus the banding and pixelization artifacts.

 

Looks good from what I can tell...

 

that shot has an ambient_world color of .05 .05 .05, so its less designed to show off the super awesomeness of the modelling, and more about the practical application of what you would expect to see in low light levels, (like, in a cave) just to clear up any doubts that perhaps the model might only look good in a lighted environment because of the normal map, and the previous screenshots that were rather bland.

Edited May 4, 2012 by ungoliant

[RPGista]

To me that looks fantastic as it is Ungoliant. Models generally look like crap in ambient light but this one kept an interesting appearance. I guess adapting (coloring) to the most likely to be used textures for caves is all that needs to be done now?

[ungoliant]

To me that looks fantastic as it is Ungoliant. Models generally look like crap in ambient light but this one kept an interesting appearance. I guess adapting (coloring) to the most likely to be used textures for caves is all that needs to be done now?

 

oh, no. i'm way too perfectionist for that. that AO image that give the model its depth in that shot can be further increased by rebaking with a heightmap involved. so further detail on the diffuse can be obtained. Theres a few other maps I can bake onto it to further divine perfection to it. also, that shot is using 512x512 maps, with only 1x antialiasing on the baking process. there is much more quality to be had

Edited May 4, 2012 by ungoliant

[RPGista]

Hahaha, I've been reading some of the process youve been going through with the stalagmite, and I must say that it's crazy work, it all seems pretty complicated. But I applaud your effort! One thought however regarding level of detail is that sometimes making too fine a texture might even make it look out of place, when compared to other models/assets/environment textures (its even clear on the screenshot, though a lot can be attributed to differences in scale between the model and the "background"). Im sure its going to be a great model though.

[Theothesnopp]

Im working on a "mansion" mission.

 

The mission takes place in your apartment, the neighbours have been partying all night and some are still at it.

 

A suspicious man just moved in on the third floor, he looks familiar, and thats bad news.

Your daughters birthday is tommorow, and you dont have a present.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[New Horizon]

Do you have an ambient_world light in those shots? The single ambient that encompasses the entire map? Everything looks pitch black. Can't see anything.

[Theothesnopp]

Do you have an ambient_world light in those shots? The single ambient that encompasses the entire map? Everything looks pitch black. Can't see anything.

hmm, thats very odd. i can see perfectly clear.

this was said about the picture for my other fm aswell.

 

http://imageshack.us/f/402/31533678.jpg/ can you see them here?

[pusianka]

There is something very appealing in this first screenshot Theo, nice!

[Theothesnopp]

Checked on another computer, seems my monitors is kickass, i can see almost every detail of the pictures.

[Komag]

almost pitch black to me too

[Sotha]

I see the scenes and I like what I see.

[demagogue]

When posting screenshots to a forum, everyone should always bump up the gamma a lot with photoshop or something if it's the least bit dark. Better to err on the side of too bright than too dark & some people can't see details IMO. Just a tip to make people happy.

[Bikerdude]

When posting screenshots to a forum, everyone should always bump up the gamma a lot with photoshop or something if it's the least bit dark.

+1 as I will have to correct the gamma to see what you have created etc.

[Baddcog]

^+1

I can usually see them fine on my personal comp, but at work they are black...

[Bikerdude]

Im working on a "mansion" mission.

here are those 3 images with tweaked gamma, the last one is my favourite!

 

[Theothesnopp]

thx biker

[Baddcog]

does look pretty nice!

[AluminumHaste]

Very nice

[ungoliant]

not sure if its the gamma bump, but I'm getting a TDS vibe from those shots.