Castle; Model's And Texture's

[Springheel]

unlike some subdued colour set which would create some mood. But, well, it might be just my personal opinion...

 

Well, the mansion textures aren't supposed to be subdued, for the most part. They're intentionally more saturated than other environments would be, creating a bright, warm, mood. Our other textures, like the city ones, are much more subdued.

[SneaksieDave]

Nobody likes mansions so why have you started with this theme?

 

Personaly, I don't like them neither and I think that our current set is too sweet: colours are too saturate and textiures are too clean. I think that we might consider making some subtle corrections before we release the mod... Or we can make another, more interesting mansion textures.

I could not agree more on everything you just said. Well, except for not liking mansions. But yes, I wish we'd started with stone instead, and yes, our wood textures (apologies to the artists) need work. They're generally rather artificial looking, and have (had? some have improved) really poor normals and speculars.

[Dram]

In this sense fog is very underestimated effect.

 

Speaking of which, I should add a fog into the mansion, just a light one.

[mikebart]

Thanks for the replys , I fixed the shiny mortar problem and dropped the size down to 1024, which ill stick with.

I havent seen much of the mansion textures but wouldnt we use them to fit out the interior of the castle?

 

here's the updated version of the final base texture, if theres anything you guys think needs changing, now would be a good time to say something, then I can start making more variants and continue further.

 

[Crispy]

If I was going to nitpick I'd say the mortar is still a bit bumpy/shiny... whatever it is that's making it have really light dots mixed in with dark ones. All the mortar I've seen has been quite smooth.

 

It does look good though.

[Dram]

Now THAT'S that stuff

[OrbWeaver]

Speaking of which, I should add a fog into the mansion, just a light one.

 

Try a very faint yellow/brown fog, to simulate the building up of smoke from all of the candles and torches.

[PinkDot]

Stones look great and the mortar takes a bit too much attention, which I think stones deserve for... Smoothing the mortat would do it - but even if you leave it like it is it looks very good!

Stones were modeles, weren't they?

[mikebart]

yeah the stones are models and the mortar wich overlaps the stones are modeled too, basicaly lots of tiny octogons of different sizes, ill lower the bump, smooth it out a bit more. Im glad you guys are happy with the stones though ,

thanks for the feedback, it'll be good to get it all sorted out early

 

I sort of imagined the mortar being quite coarse like river sand mixed with small pebbles, rather than the smooth sand and cement mortar we see today thats why I made it look bumpy, but I agree, it needs to be toned down a bit

[Dram]

Try a very faint yellow/brown fog, to simulate the building up of smoke from all of the candles and torches.

 

Yep, that's what I was thinking too

[mikebart]

Another update; Ive started working again so I havent had a lot of time but im still chipping away at it, I dug up an old skull model I made a couple of years ago and made a low poly version of it I know its not very 'castle' but I think It would look good on a round coulumn, it can be used by mappers to place anywhere its stone so it blends in nicely with stone, ive also been working on some Ivy, its nice to see some colour on the stone

 

 

 

 

The skybox was made in max using the projection modifior, I took the photos myself from a lookout in the country side of Victoria joined them all together and removed all signs of modern civilisation, it reminds me a bit of the background of 'tower af babel be peiter brueghel http://www.postmodern.com/~fi/pattimisc/ba...by_brueghel.jpg

[Springheel]

That ivy is fantastic, and would work quite well for our vine arrow. Any chance you could make a decal version of that?

[mikebart]

That ivy is fantastic, and would work quite well for our vine arrow. Any chance you could make a decal version of that?

 

that is a the decal version, do you mean a sprite? I still need to get it tiling though I realy just rendered that off as a test

[mikebart]

you've given me an idea springheel, ill have a go at animating the ivy forming from a green gas cloud into a sprite of full blown Ivy for use with the vine arrow. I could put it into an animation strip for use as a particle effect. How does that sound?

[mikebart]

Ive just been working on the ivy, its very low poly and its very easy to wrap around stuff while still looking quite volumetric. Im looking forward to seeing it tangled up in some trees, it should work well in a forest scene too

 

[PinkDot]

Looks beautiful! I was going to make some ivy sooner or later but I don't think mine would be as good as yours...

[Springheel]

Looks excellent.

 

As far as the ivy arrow goes, how difficult would it be to simulate the ivy 'growing', like they did with moss in TDS?

[mikebart]

Looks excellent.

 

As far as the ivy arrow goes, how difficult would it be to simulate the ivy 'growing', like they did with moss in TDS?

 

Im not sure, its not really something ive done before, Ive got a few ideas on how to animate it and then convert the animation to a strip for a particle effect, but I think it would look better as an animated mesh. Now that I think about it id be quite happy to pass it on to someone else with more animation experience, then I can carry on with the castle models/textures.

I can make extra models or textures for use with the animation on request if someone else has a go at it

[Springheel]

I've added a link to this thread in the design docs for the vine arrow.

[mikebart]

would it be too much of a problem if I show some of my castle models and textures at polycount.com? I just posted some of my earlier work there and got some great criticism, I think it would benefit my work alot

Just thought id ask first

[New Horizon]

would it be too much of a problem if I show some of my castle models and textures at polycount.com? I just posted some of my earlier work there and got some great criticism, I think it would benefit my work alot

Just thought id ask first

 

Go for it dude.

[mikebart]

awsome thanks

[mikebart]

just uploading the castle assets to the ftp now, so they should apear pretty soon, i've also included some mossy rock terrain textures, and the tree model too.

 

just a quick note on the Ivy material, as you can see below ive laid all the ivy out into 11 sectors so that you can just put it onto a 1024x1024 plane in a modeling app and then slice it up into seperate peices then just move and rotate them into however you want them to go.

 

 

I realy enjoy building the Ivy onto models its very easy and if you use the right peices it can be very effective,

 

 

Ill upload the high poly models too as soon as I get a chance, although they are quite large. I think it would be best if I try to downsize them before I upload them but still, they will be quite large.

Theres enough building blocks and objects included in the .max files to make some realy nice props.

 

Sorry I took so long to upload them all, thanks for all your help with the ftp NewHorizon, you guys should give him a pay rise (in kudos or something)

 

i realy look forward to seeing what you guys do with them, I know its not much but im definitly keen to make more stuff for you guys in the future . Im going to spend some time on my own port folio project for a while but anything I make that I think could fit into the darkmod ill upload to the ftp.

[New Horizon]

Thanks for all the work you've done Mike. We appreciate it, and do hope you'll continue to be part of the mod. It would be a shame not to have you're artistic influence. Hopefully the work you have done will be useful in your portfolio.

[SneaksieDave]

Looks quite damn good.