City Concepts - Buildings

[Dram]

do you mean the specific interiors for that mansion floorlpan? Or interiors for these tudor buildings?

 

Yeah it would be ULTRA appreciated if you could draw some mood scenes for the alpha map mansion. It's in the Team 2 section.

[kfmccall]

Here are some more possible city buildings. They're a little more extravagant and don't strictly follow the tudor style, but i thought i'd post them anyway, maybe some ideas can be drawn from them. Let me know if you want changes, i don't believe we have a tower modelled yet, so i can modify this one if it doesn't fit the existing architecture.

also: that tower is octagonal in plan.

 

 

 

And a gatehouse with open rooms on the opposing towers.

[Dram]

Nice! These should help actually

[kfmccall]

Here are two more. I did some base coloring on the tower posted above, and did another tudor-style building.

 

 

 

[Ishtvan]

Cool! I really like the style of that last one.

 

By the way, just wanted to make sure: Squill can see these forums, right?

[Dram]

Fuggin beautiful man

[kfmccall]

Ok more or less these all look somewhat alike, but thats tudor for you i guess...

 

Do we need any destroyed buildings? Those would add a bit of interest to the city setting...

 

 

[squill]

the colored versions look great!

btw kfmccall do you draw on paper or with a tablet? looks like paper drawings but i'm not sure. Anyway keep them going

[kfmccall]

Here is a destroyed tudor house.

 

@ Squill: yeah i use pen and paper as well as a tablet. I layout the drawings with a blue pencil first. Then I ink them, and scan them onto the computer. Coloring is done in photoshop with a wacom.

 

[squill]

wow, awesome!!

 

makes me wanna model again

[sparhawk]

Awesome! I like your style! Really!

[Domarius]

Well we need a mapper who can actually do justice to this organic, haphazard style of architecture, instead of just using straight cubes for all the walls etc.

 

Though if a city street were to look like this, it'd have to be very carefully ocluded and visportaled, in the "tunnel street" style of T2.

[god_is_my_goldfish]

I just saw the destroyed building, and I went 'holy shits, that looks awesome.'

 

Dom- If a destroyed building was well planned out, you could make it using minimal extra polygons and use a lot of specially made normal mapped textures. It wouldn't be so taxing.

[squill]

indeed... look at the unreal engine 3, althought it will be using more polygons its also a clever way of using normal maps and static models. A house like this can be done with the current doom engine but it's still a lot of work.

[Domarius]

What I'm saying is - I haven't seen anything like this in any maps yet. The architecture in maps I've seen so far is all very "axis-aligned" for the most part, if you know what I mean.

 

The most dramatic difference to that is how the walls on kmfcall's buildings slope outward as they go upward.

The concave shape of the roof is another.

[Dram]

! That destroyed house looks bloody brilliant

[squill]

What I'm saying is - I haven't seen anything like this in any maps yet. The architecture in maps I've seen so far is all very "axis-aligned" for the most part, if you know what I mean.

 

The most dramatic difference to that is how the walls on kmfcall's buildings slope outward as they go upward.

The concave shape of the roof is another.

 

true, most mappers use brushes to build structures which gives you straight block models. This way it's easier to work along the XYZ axis because you can snap the brushes on the grid which could be difficult when everything is placed at another angle and you have to add more geometry.

 

Making round shapes with brushes is hard or you either have to use a lot of patches or make some static models yourself. That's why i prefer using a combination of brushes and static models to make things look more round and less straight.

[Domarius]

Yeah - also "axis aligned" designs optimise better in general. But still it would be cool to see...

[kfmccall]

hey if i do a couple more of these color pieces, do you think they could make it on the site? I think we should update the concept work page eventually.

[Springheel]

Yeah, I'll definitely add some more of your work on the next update. Long overdue.

[Gildoran]

Any chance I could get you to do a concept art of a massive clock-tower? I'd like to use one to demo an idea I have for cities...

[mikebart]

These are some great concepts , id realy like to model a construction set of this style of building for the mappers to use, Im still looking through the design forums, (what an amazing amount of info! ) so im still getting to grips with exactly where your at.

[New Horizon]

These are some great concepts , id realy like to model a construction set of this style of building for the mappers to use, Im still looking through the design forums, (what an amazing amount of info! ) so im still getting to grips with exactly where your at.

 

Let your creativity flow. Don't feel totally constrained by the artwork alone. We'll definitely need some castle set pieces as well...but do feel free to start working on whatever inspires you. Have fun.

[mikebart]

sounds great , before I start I probably should ask what sort of poly restriction's you have in place. I can imagine some of these buildings will be in open areas.

[New Horizon]

sounds great , before I start I probably should ask what sort of poly restriction's you have in place. I can imagine some of these buildings will be in open areas.

 

I'm no modeler myself, so I'm not the best person to be giving you an answer...but I'll try. Go nuts with the high poly version, make it as detailed as you see fit, but the low poly version for ingame use should be fairly light. I believe our general rule of thumb is to get the ingame version as low poly as possible, without making it look like crap. You are right about these pieces being in open areas. We'll want these set pieces to be as general purpose as possible. We will likely want to let the normal map do as much of the work as we can get away with. Hopefully one of our other modler/ mappers will chime in with some words of wisdom.

 

Edit:

 

It might be fastest if you send a PM to either Pinkdot or squill about poly limits, workflow..etc. They're usually around, but might not see your post.