Amisfield Tower - a recreation in Dark Radiant

[Komag]

DarthsLair over at TTLG was recently very generous and sent me in the mail an excellent book on Castles ("Castles of Britain and Ireland") which has greatly inspired me. So I've spent that last week slaving away at recreating one of my favourite castles I found in the book - Amisfield Tower in Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland.

 

Below are two shots, the first a scan from the book, the second is my Dark Radiant rendition:

 

 

 

 

 

 

It's all brushes and patches, no models in sight! I had to make a lot of brushes func_statics to make it work, as it started really bogging down otherwise.

 

The way it's currently constructed doesn't really allow for the interior to be built, but I think it's possible to re-do certain parts to accommodate that if I ever decided to.

 

Anyway, I've been in love with Dark Radiant for a long time, but seeing this (somewhat) finished product just reaffirms to me how powerful this editor really is right off the shelf, so easy to work with and so capable. It didn't actually take much talent to build this, I think anyone could do it. It bodes well for the future of the Thief fan mission community!

[Pat AfterMoon]

Whao!

 

I have opened two browser windows with your message for being able to look at the two pictures side by side. Really nice!

 

But now, all people will want to enter it, I'm sure there is an hidden treasure in the highest room, on the top right

[LordSavage]

Amazing! Very very nice!

 

You can see how good it fits if you view it side by side:

Edited September 17, 2008 by LordSavage

[Arcturus]

Bravo!

[Baal]

Which one is the original?

[New Horizon]

Fantastic Komag. I'm going to share this over at TTLG. Great work.

[Springheel]

Wowza!

[sparhawk]

That's absolutely awesome!

[Tels]

Holy shit, batman! That's awesome!

 

*goes and deletes his old mill map*

[Baddcog]

That's awesome. Wondering why you have all windows on front lit and all on one side dark though.

 

I think the large stones in the original look better too, from the screens I can't tell what you used, seems like really really small bricks? an I can see the tiling in them.

 

But it is cool and you should deffinately make it entrable

[Komag]

Thanks for the kind words all!

 

My attempt with the windows was to make the front one reflecting evening sunlight in the west with the side ones reflecting evening blue sky in the east, but I was never quite satisfied with it.

 

And yeah, larger stones would be preferable - the texture is the best match I could find but was already scaled up a lot, though probably could stand to be scaled up further.

 

(Wait, unless you mean the house and turrets textures, in which case I could probably scale that up a bit too - other textures with larger bricks also had very strong normals instead of being more smooth, so this texture was the best match overall)

[HappyCheeze]

HOT DAMN Komag!

[Ishtvan]

Wow, that is amazing! Is the DarkRadiant shot a shot from ingame with the lightgem cropped out?

[SneaksieDave]

Holy fu......

 

Komag that's awesome!

 

Every time I see a pic that's really good, I always wonder... how closely could that be copied in game? I generally have lower and lower expectation of it as time goes on, eventually settling, thinking, "I guess it could look okay. You know, in a game-limited sense."

 

Well this creation should serve as an example to never embrace that line of thought. It's damn near picture perfect! It can be done, whatever it is.

[Komag]

Wow, that is amazing! Is the DarkRadiant shot a shot from ingame with the lightgem cropped out?

 

 

It is, but probably not how you think! I could see in the photograph that the real image is actually take from very far away with a narrow field of view and cropped itself, so that's the approach I had to take to get the perspective and angles to closely match and to avoid fisheye.

 

I used the giant twelve megapixel shots Doom 3 is capable of ("screenshot 4000 3000") and then cropped the tiny tower from the center of it.

 

Here is the large shot, originally 4000x3000, shrunk down to 640x480:

 

 

 

@SneaksieDave - thanks! I think the largest part of making have a more realistic "photo" look is the lighting. I have the low sharp parallel sunlight coming in from the left, a dim parallel blue light from the upper right (as the general light of the eastern sky) and a somewhat bright ambient all around so the shadows aren't too stark.

[demagogue]

Saw this on TTLG, but wanted to give my applause at the source ... Good work, man. (")-b

Makes me excited about what DR will be capable of when the FMs start rolling in.

Edited September 17, 2008 by demagogue

[SneaksieDave]

@Komag: also, if you seek a method for how to do the window on the round tower, see the Other References section at the bottom of the Patches page on the wiki. The first link is to a cool tutorial which simulates patch splitting.

[Komag]

Yes I had avoided that window just because of that. I figured there was probably a way to use multiple patches to curve around and make them line up good, but I got a headache just thinking about making the attempt! But I'll look into it, looks like it might work out not so bad after all

[LordSavage]

More of these awesome screenshots please .

[Fidcal]

Nice work Komag. Outstanding actually. I've been wondering for a long time about working directly from a photo or similar instead of out of my head. This confirms what is possible. I'm poor at architecture - maybe just copying is the way to go.

 

PS what's the back view like? Caulk?

[Mr Mike]

@ Fidcal; You know you can work directly from a photo using DR's 'Background image' tool, right? It's at the bottom of the view menu.

 

Very nice work Komag, particularly the sense of scale and proportions. I also like how you've worked the lights in the scene to really set a nic emood to it. Bravo!

 

 

I've always pondered on creating a library of buildings such as these that mappers could use to quickly build convincing city areas. It might seem odd to see distinct buildings repeated across varying maps but I think the different lighting conditions, orientation and individual touches the mapper makes would aleviate that problem.

[Fidcal]

@ Fidcal; You know you can work directly from a photo using DR's 'Background image' tool, right? It's at the bottom of the view menu.

Erm... no. I've seen that in the prefs but assumed it was something like wallpaper in the back of DR behind the child windows!! So I never even tried it. So that goes in orthoview?

 

I've always pondered on creating a library of buildings such as these that mappers could use to quickly build convincing city areas.

I exactly agree and though I've made many internal prefabs like spiral stairs, and even some basic rooms and corridors, and even snaffled some buildings - I've never had time to really make up a set of such buildings.

 

Sorry - gotta go!

 

PS I do have a folderful of images I've downloaded of different buildings and other stuff for inspiration I've used for small stuff but not had time to really do it justice.

[Dram]

That is one damn nice piece of work!

 

Overlaying the two shots by going cross-eyed you've matched it almost perfectly! Not to mention the angle is EXACTLY the same! Nice

 

It is, but probably not how you think! I could see in the photograph that the real image is actually take from very far away with a narrow field of view and cropped itself, so that's the approach I had to take to get the perspective and angles to closely match and to avoid fisheye.

 

I used the giant twelve megapixel shots Doom 3 is capable of ("screenshot 4000 3000") and then cropped the tiny tower from the center of it.

 

Here is the large shot, originally 4000x3000, shrunk down to 640x480:

 

@SneaksieDave - thanks! I think the largest part of making have a more realistic "photo" look is the lighting. I have the low sharp parallel sunlight coming in from the left, a dim parallel blue light from the upper right (as the general light of the eastern sky) and a somewhat bright ambient all around so the shadows aren't too stark.

 

Hehe, seems like an excessive process to take a screenie, but you've proved that it is more then worth it

[Jesps]

That is an impressive piece of work Komag.

[Komag]

PS what's the back view like? Caulk?

 

It's all there, but the back is mostly boring. I scoured the internet for other photos of the castle and the few I could find mostly show the same front sides, and a couple that show the back sides show only a couple windows and mostly just big boring flat walls.

 

Each of the three turrets has a couple windows which I'll need to build in with multiple patches on those curves, but other than that and a couple other windows it's nearly all complete on the outside