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ÆRDEN ~ new streets!

Started by vortext, May 31, 2013, 11:31:03 PM

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Gugu3


vortext

#481


Quote from: compdude787 on June 15, 2016, 03:09:06 PM
Nice little update; I like the night shots! Hopefully that fire doesn't get so big that it starts burning surrounding buildings. :P

Thank you! If you were referring to the never-ending fire of the waste incinerator, a good point: I moved it to a saver location!  :thumbsup:


Quote from: romualdillo on June 15, 2016, 04:03:58 PM
Nice update!! I didn't comment in the previous one, but your progress with BAT is awesome!! I'd really like to see that wooden church textured.
Looking forward to your great mosaic!  :thumbsup:

Thanks! Struggling a bit with the church atm, lots of new things to tackle and not sure how to do the texturing: either composite them in 3DS or bake the UV maps and work in PS.  &Thk/(


Quote from: FrankU on June 16, 2016, 12:14:12 AM
Hi Vortext,

Who cares if you change plans halfways? I do it all the time... I enjoy whatever you show us here, so please continue.

Thanks for the kind words Frank, greatly appreciated!  :thumbsup:


Quote from: APSMS on June 16, 2016, 01:23:45 AM
:-[ I always forget to comment on your updates.

I hate post-processing as well for anything besides mosaics, but maybe it's just a reminder that I need to get more familiar with GIMP...Glad you were able to share what you had, and hopefully the degeneration of the story aspect of your MD doesn't detract from you building the region as a whole anyways.

Also, good luck with the BAT. I'm testing the waters with it to figure out automata modeling (I imagine Milkshape 3D is better suited--it's what Arne uses--but I can get 3DS Max for free), but it's slow going, and I'm not particularly talented in that area (or with texturing--that's gonna be a booger).

Look forward to what you come up with next time.

Thanks. Actually the storyline got a bit in the way of the larger scheme of things, which is another reason to get rid of it. That said I'm still not sure how to go about presenting the regional developments as there're quite a few villages which I haven't shown yet.

Also, if you decide to get 3DSMax I'd recommend checking out Arrimus3D on youtube - this goes for every one interested in modelling I guess. While he does a lot of scifi stuff his videos has helped me immensely to establish a workflow, notably customizing the UI and hotkeys, working with symmetry, getting good topology and all sorts of neat little tips and tricks. And imho he's very thorough in explaining, yet relaxing to watch and listen to. Sometimes I just put one of his vids on while making dinner.  :D


Quote from: Gugu3 on June 17, 2016, 11:20:46 AM
Very nice!

Thank you!




Waiting for the last farm fields to grow. . .  &sly   :D



See you soon!  :)
time flies like a bird
fruit flies like a banana

art128

Very nice. It reminds me of the setting of several Assassin's Creed franchise, nice work. :)
I'll take a quiet life... A handshake of carbon monoxide.

Props & Texture Catalog

Akallan

It is very beautiful! I would just give you a tip: You seem to control the modding, I see you've changed the textures road, but you should remove textures that go around these roads so that it sounds less square. To the fields this seems a little square. This is only a small point, to comparison of this magnificent work! :thumbsup:
My CJ :


My european road textures project : S N T - v.2.1

vester

#484
Some great updates.  :thumbsup:

My guess is that this, linkie, is done with a bump map or it might even be a normal map ?


One thing that was very different from today at that time was, the animal was not fenced in, but rather fenced out,
out of the fields.

Vizoria

That is so cool! Simcity Medieval FTW!

Kergelen



                                    Links to SC4 websites

compdude787

Looks pretty awesome so far!! All that work that it takes to make a medieval town sure takes a heck of a lot of dedication. :thumbsup:
Check out my MD, United States of Simerica!
Last updated: March 5, 2017

My YouTube Channel

Simmer2

________________________________________________________________________________

korver

#489
Looking fantastic as always, keep it up  :)

The more I think about it, I think I actually may know what this mysterious "BalkanPropPack" thing is. I remember there being some download on ST a couple years ago with a big haystack in it that I think I downloaded - and as you mentioned, it wasn't very good quality, it was very low poly and overly saturated/bright yellow. I actually tried looking around for it a couple months ago just to see if there was anything else in there that I could salvage but came up empty. I'm thinking he probably removed it from the STEX or either one of the server upgrades wiped it out..

FrankU


romualdillo

The city is shaping up fantastically! Good job!  &apls

Quote from: vortext on June 25, 2016, 07:32:50 AM
Thanks! Struggling a bit with the church atm, lots of new things to tackle and not sure how to do the texturing: either composite them in 3DS or bake the UV maps and work in PS.  &Thk/(

I'm sorry I can't help you with that. I always work my textures in PS.  :-[

Themistokles

The city is turning out very well! &apls You've also got a nice solution to the port inside or port outside city walls problem. It indeed looks very natural! :)
Come join me on a hike to St Edmea!

Latest update: 7

"In the end, our society will be defined not only by what we create, but by what we refuse to destroy." - John Sawhill

Gugu3


vester

#494
Quote from: vortext on June 25, 2016, 07:32:50 AM
Thanks! Struggling a bit with the church atm, lots of new things to tackle and not sure how to do the texturing: either composite them in 3DS or bake the UV maps and work in PS.  &Thk/(

You could do both. First set up the textures a composite texture, then add a Unwrap set to another map channel.
The you can use the render to texture function [ 0 ].

Then add the last details in Photoshop to the new rendered texture.

bombardiere

#495
I like how your medieval walled city is building up.  :thumbsup: And I think I can spot a familiar village well. :) That was my first model and oh boy I have learned a lot since then.

Quote from: vortext on June 25, 2016, 07:32:50 AM




Thanks! Struggling a bit with the church atm, lots of new things to tackle and not sure how to do the texturing: either composite them in 3DS or bake the UV maps and work in PS.  &Thk/(



My modelling is so clumsy, that I don't use UV maps. I do most modelling with boxes, rectangulars and lines, so if I would broke those into an UVmap, it would be very messy. So I paste a texture to an object in 3DS. However, I do rarely use the texture image as such and rework it with a paint program. I use the gimp as it is free. I edit, possibly resize, and add effects, grime, noise etc. in to the texture image. For this kind of base work I prefer the paint program.  I have learned to do some final editing with the 3DS using a color correction option. With that I can give final touch of desaturation or make the texture lighter or darker, if there is a need for that. Because the color correction option does not destruct the original texture map, it can be used in experimentation to see what looks the best.

The most difficult for me is to develop an eye for the texture. Because the SC4 BATs are viewed from "distance", it means that some methods used to create 3D game models, do not work well with the SC4 BATs.


vortext

#496


Quote from: art128 on June 25, 2016, 02:00:00 PM
Very nice. It reminds me of the setting of several Assassin's Creed franchise, nice work. :)

Thanks! I actually watch AC playthroughs from time-to-time for inspiration.   :)


Quote from: Akallan on June 25, 2016, 03:40:10 PM
It is very beautiful! I would just give you a tip: You seem to control the modding, I see you've changed the textures road, but you should remove textures that go around these roads so that it sounds less square. To the fields this seems a little square. This is only a small point, to comparison of this magnificent work! :thumbsup:

Thank you! Yeah I guess one of the downsides of doing all the modding is I sometimes forget to take the proper files ingame, in this case I had the wrong sidewalks in the plugins folder.  :D


Quote from: vester on June 25, 2016, 03:45:53 PM
Some great updates.  :thumbsup:

My guess is that this, linkie, is done with a bump map or it might even be a normal map ?


One thing that was very different from today at that time was, the animal was not fenced in, but rather fenced out,
out of the fields.

Thanks Arne! The stone wall was done with both normal & bump map, in addition to a very light displacement map. See below for an example setup. Also, that's the livestock part of the market you're seeing.  ;)


Quote from: Vizoria on June 26, 2016, 12:47:02 AM
That is so cool! Simcity Medieval FTW!

Thanks!


Quote from: Kergelen on June 26, 2016, 04:24:02 AM
Great progress &apls

Thank you!


Quote from: compdude787 on June 26, 2016, 04:22:08 PM
Looks pretty awesome so far!! All that work that it takes to make a medieval town sure takes a heck of a lot of dedication. :thumbsup:

Thanks! Yeah, it has only taken me, what, 5 years?!  ::) But I'm really pleased finally being able to build in such a historic fashion.  ()stsfd()


Quote from: Simmer2 on June 26, 2016, 06:14:40 PM
Loving the progress  &apls &apls

Thank you Nick!


Quote from: korver on June 26, 2016, 07:47:40 PM
Looking fantastic as always, keep it up  :)

The more I think about it, I think I actually may know what this mysterious "BalkanPropPack" thing is. I remember there being some download on ST a couple years ago with a big haystack in it that I think I downloaded - and as you mentioned, it wasn't very good quality, it was very low poly and overly saturated/bright yellow. I actually tried looking around for it a couple months ago just to see if there was anything else in there that I could salvage but came up empty. I'm thinking he probably removed it from the STEX or either one of the server upgrades wiped it out..

Thanks, will do!  :) Yeah I think we're talking about the same haystack, not sure what happened to it either.


Quote from: FrankU on June 27, 2016, 12:20:26 AM
Very nice again Erik!

Thank you Frank!


Quote from: romualdillo on June 28, 2016, 12:03:15 PM
The city is shaping up fantastically! Good job!  &apls

Quote from: vortext on June 25, 2016, 07:32:50 AM
Thanks! Struggling a bit with the church atm, lots of new things to tackle and not sure how to do the texturing: either composite them in 3DS or bake the UV maps and work in PS.  &Thk/(

I'm sorry I can't help you with that. I always work my textures in PS.  :-[

Thanks Daniel!


Quote from: Themistokles on June 30, 2016, 01:24:06 PM
The city is turning out very well! &apls You've also got a nice solution to the port inside or port outside city walls problem. It indeed looks very natural! :)

Thank you! The port area took some LE puzzle solving for sure so I'm pleased to hear that!  :)


Quote from: Gugu3 on July 01, 2016, 01:37:28 AM
Wow!!!! &apls &apls &apls :thumbsup:

Thanks!


Quote from: vester on July 01, 2016, 02:34:02 AM
Quote from: vortext on June 25, 2016, 07:32:50 AM
Thanks! Struggling a bit with the church atm, lots of new things to tackle and not sure how to do the texturing: either composite them in 3DS or bake the UV maps and work in PS.  &Thk/(

You could do both. First set up the textures a composite texture, then add a Unwrap set to another map channel.
The you can use the render to texture function [ 0 ].

Then add the last details in Photoshop to the new rendered texture.

Thanks for the link, already given me new ideas, more on that below.  :thumbsup:


Quote from: bombardiere on July 03, 2016, 04:40:28 AM
I like how your medieval walled city is building up.  :thumbsup: And I think I can spot a familiar village well. :) That was my first model and oh boy I have learned a lot since then.
Quote from: vortext on June 25, 2016, 07:32:50 AM
Thanks! Struggling a bit with the church atm, lots of new things to tackle and not sure how to do the texturing: either composite them in 3DS or bake the UV maps and work in PS.  &Thk/(

My modelling is so clumsy, that I don't use UV maps. I do most modelling with boxes, rectangulars and lines, so if I would broke those into an UVmap, it would be very messy. So I paste a texture to an object in 3DS. However, I do rarely use the texture image as such and rework it with a paint program. I use the gimp as it is free. I edit, possibly resize, and add effects, grime, noise etc. in to the texture image. For this kind of base work I prefer the paint program.  I have learned to do some final editing with the 3DS using a color correction option. With that I can give final touch of desaturation or make the texture lighter or darker, if there is a need for that. Because the color correction option does not destruct the original texture map, it can be used in experimentation to see what looks the best.

The most difficult for me is to develop an eye for the texture. Because the SC4 BATs are viewed from "distance", it means that some methods used to create 3D game models, do not work well with the SC4 BATs.

Thank you! Yeah your village pump is scattered throughout the city indeed as I turned it into a low capacity water supply, and at 1x1 size it comes in handy as a filler lot.  :)






So given the comments I decided to make a fancy new banner for BAT talk. And there's also the fact BATting has turned into quite the timesink lately, as if I needed another one. .  ::)

In that regard picking it up may have been a BAT idea. .  if only because it lends itself to all sorts of horrible puns.  ;D

At any rate. To start with an update on the Byre Dwellings, I think I've gotten the hang of unwrapping the roofs quite nicely, which is pretty important since it's basically all you see of these huts.


Click pic for full size. Also various models are still work in progress.

I start with simple x & y planar projection for all 4 sides and aligned with the roof angle to minimize distortion. Then I break the corners into individual strips and rotate them in the UV editor to align with the texture direction. Rinse and repeat for the intermediate strips. In that regard I'm particularly pleased with the large pyramidal dwelling, not only was it the fastest unwrapping to date but the compositing also came out quite nice imho. Still unsure about the very top though, the RL model has an awkward, semi-ornamental thingy on top.



I've tried to replicate it a couple of times but it hasn't come out right yet, mostly because it tends to cast weird shadows. Anyway, for those interested here's the UV mapping and texture setup.




UV unwrap on channel 1 is a bit chaotic but hopefully you get the idea: each strip is aligned with the direction of the texture.




UV unwrap on channel 2 is a simple z planar projection.




And the texture setup: maps #1, #3 & #4 are set to UV channel 1. The other maps, and the alpha masks, are set to UV channel 2.

The compositing works really well to combine various 'generic' textures, i.e. used on mutliple, small models and help bring some flavor to each. I plan to make a couple of roof variations for each model once the first batch is complete, as there are still around 5 larger models in the pipeline.



Working on these two now, the others are just bare roof shapes only.  :)


So on to the church. I always wanted a wooden church and initially set my eye on the Heddal Stave church. On second thought it looked way too intimidating to start with so I settled on the smaller Urnes Stave church. However, I may still have bitten of more than I can chew at the moment.  ::)  :D

The largest obstacle are the unique wooden roof and side panel tiles, which can be seen in detail here. They have a very distinct shape which turns out to be pretty hard to replicate as a texture. I found one wooden roof tile on textures.com, however, they're not quite the same. Thanks to Arne's link though I got another idea: what if I model the roof tiles separately and then bake out various textures? Well . .



Not quite either. . though I guess it could work, but the modelling needs to be more detailed. Aside the roof tiles, the church also features unique wood carvings on one side.



I found some pretty high resolution pictures of each carving, and planned to derive bump maps to replicate them. However, this too isn't as easy as I initially thought.

Now besides the issues mentioned, in addition to things like windows and night lighting, there's one final and major issue to complicate things further and you may have already noticed it: the overall color of the church. In some pictures it looks like, well, wood. In other pictures however it's almost completely black, I guess from a new protective coat of staining.



Honestly to me the black version looks so f-ing bad ass, it just perfectly reflects this weird mix of pagan Nordic mythology and Christianity which it is a product of. However, it's probably not quite representative of how it'd looked most of the time, i.e. with significant wear-and-tear. So all things considered I'm not sure which version to make (ideally both, obviously), nor how to tackle the roof tiles to begin with. Ideas, suggestions and comments otherwise are appreciated!  :)
time flies like a bird
fruit flies like a banana

Simmer2

Hi Erik
I see things are progressing at an increased pace and by the looks of it, seems like you are getting very good at BATs.

Regarding the leaf roof tiles conundrum, I could dabble with that if you like. When using a seamless tile I'm sure you know that you can adjust the tiling effect in order to control repetition and spacing in either vertical or horizontal format.
Looking at the church roof it looks like the roof sections are pretty flat albeit in an angled position.

If those sections are separate, you could the use the same seamless tile for each roof section and by adjusting the tiling effect you can achieve the look you wish.

I will manipulate that sample pic by creating several layers and mixing in some of my own effects to create a 3D look on a flat image.

Will report soon

Nick
________________________________________________________________________________

Simmer2

Here are a few examples. Some darker, some at 4 tile UV and some at 5....you can make it any size with Gmax.
All by using one single tile!
I made a simple roof section and angled it a bit just to show it in game. Keep in mind that some of the finer details will get lost due to the distance, such as the shadows of the leaves and of course the bump effect..
You can go darker and add some glossiness and reflection to simulate the tarring done on the leaves in order to seal against moisture.
There is a balance that must be kept in order to achieve (near) perfection.

Nick


1

2

3

4



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vortext

hi Nick, that's definitely looks promising!  :thumbsup:

However, I should elaborate a bit. The issue isn't necessarily with the flat diffuse map, rather with having decent normal & bump maps to adequately reflect the tiles - literally in this case as that's what normal & bump do. What's more, the tiles also wrap around the columns in the mid section, meaning that due to SC4 light right the light will sheer the edges of those columns and a flat map will look, well, flat. 

That said, I got a pretty decent looking normal map out of your texture. If you could rework the tiles without emulating a specific angle, but instead recreate the 3d profile of the tiles from a front perspective, I'd imagine it could work pretty well indeed.
time flies like a bird
fruit flies like a banana