Vario's Bat Shed- Current Project: Apartment block

[Vario80]

Replying to your comments:

Q-Tips: Thanks a lot it took me a few attempts, until i was satisfied with the result.
bat: Thank you!

Update
I have finished now finished most of the nave and the main roof.
For the roof i use a greyish texture, since i think it fits good with the real one.


For comparison here's a picture with the roof


As for my next step, i'm going to finish the texturing for the remaining walls and the roofs of the sideportal
After that i will start (re)doing the missing details and look for a more suitable for the steeple.

Looking forward for your comments,

Best regards

Vario

[Vario80]

No replies? 
Okay maybe i'm updating a little too fast..

During the weekend i have drawn and textured the remaining parts of the church, so about 90% of the work should be done. Here is a preview of how the church looks right now.





The next planned steps will be:
- fixing some minor errors and texture glitches
- adding the still missing details (like the crosses on the portal and bottom fillets)
- adding the missing window glasses
- looking for a better texture of the steeple.
- adding nightlighting

As for the roof texture i woul like to use an original photo of the steeple roof, so it would be very nice, if
Q-Tips or someone else could help me out with a frontal picture of the steeple.

I'm going to take a short break now from Batting and will continue with my work by the end of this week.

Best regards

Vario aka Georg.

[Q-Tips]

Hi, Vario.

This is starting to look great.
At the moment i am in Finland, and will not be back before next weekend. But willbe happy to help you out with picture when i'm back, if you havent found any picture on your own.

[cammo2003]

First off, I'm assuming that this isn't intended to be an exact recreation. If it is, you haven't modeled the panelling detail down the bottom of the building.

I do have a few criticisms, though:

The wood looks far too large for the scale of the structure. It makes the church look a lot smaller than I'm sure it actually is. I'm not 100% sure if it looks painted... It does when I sit back from the monitor a little, so I suspect that following the suggestion of making the wood look narrower will fix that issue also.

Also, I'd strongly suggest desaturating and adding lines to the copper roof section (at least it looks like copper in the photos). The only criticism I have of the main roof (the grey roof section) is that it doesn't look aged enough. If you're going for a "freshly reconstructed roof" look, though, it's fine.

I know I'm being a little harsh, but I see a lot of potential in this BAT if the textures are done right.

[bat]

another fantastic picture of that church! 

[Vario80]

First off, I'm assuming that this isn't intended to be an exact recreation. If it is, you haven't modeled the panelling detail down the bottom of the building.

I do have a few criticisms, though:

The wood looks far too large for the scale of the structure. It makes the church look a lot smaller than I'm sure it actually is. I'm not 100% sure if it looks painted... It does when I sit back from the monitor a little, so I suspect that following the suggestion of making the wood look narrower will fix that issue also.

Also, I'd strongly suggest desaturating and adding lines to the copper roof section (at least it looks like copper in the photos). The only criticism I have of the main roof (the grey roof section) is that it doesn't look aged enough. If you're going for a "freshly reconstructed roof" look, though, it's fine.

I know I'm being a little harsh, but I see a lot of potential in this BAT if the textures are done right.

First of all thanks a lot for these helpfull constructive advices, i don't this comment is harsh btw, every constructive criticism is welcome as it helps me a lot to get better in batting.

No, actually i didn't intend to create an exact replica of the church, however if there isn't a lot too change, i could still try to work in the panelling into the walls.

As for the wood, beforehand i had set the tiling to a minor value (1.0) but this resulted in having a rather blurry look, so something in the middle should be the key.

Copper roof: Yes, will do.

Main roof: The church was build in the 1860's so an aged weathered look of the roof, would make it more realisitic i think. But i don't have an idea how to do this.

@Q-Tipps: Thanks again mate, would be glad if you can help me out again, with some pics of the steeple roof.

@bat: Thanks for that nice comment.

[vester]

Great work, but the textures need a little more work.

The wall texture (if there is any) is way to clean.
The roof texture is to saturated.

[mattb325]

Main roof: The church was build in the 1860's so an aged weathered look of the roof, would make it more realisitic i think. But i don't have an idea how to do this.

Vario, what image editing program are you using?

If you have photoshop or it's free cousin, the Gimp, you can use a dodge and burn technique that Gascooker outlined over at ST for getting the dirt on the roof.

While you are at it, de-saturate the colours (as Vester suggested) and possibly add a bit more of a gradient. The render will also brighten and wash out the grey of these tiles in game, so you will need to take that into consideration.

Now, if you don't have either of these programs (windows comes with basic personal photo editing programs these days which do the trick) you can find a picture of dirt or moss or lichen or similar and overlay it on your roof texture and then fade this overlay texture considerably - this will in effect 'dirty-up' the roof, but you may have to darken the texture somewhat after using this method.

Also, the tiles on the smaller roof parts are tiny compared to the main roof; set the UV map to 0.X (rather than 1.0 or 2.0) - just experiment until the two match up.

Hope this makes some sense, as when you have a large expanse of plain roof as this church does, it is important to get it right...

[kwakelaar]

I like how this is starting to look, some nice details on those large windows and the tower.

I notice quite a few places where you could consider spending some more time on the modelling.
The roof of the tower would probably look better if you make it overhang the walls. The roof of the small extension on the back looks not quite right with the soft edges. Some of the details on the walls seem to be extended to far from the wall, and the main roof looks like it needs to be extended futher out to cover the cornerpieces. Also the roof of the apsis looks a bit small.

And I see Matt gave you a reference to the Gascooker tutorial.

[Vario80]

Thank you very much for your advices kwakelaar and mattb for pointing me to these very useful tutorial.
I have the Gimp installed on my machine btw, so i should get it that done by using this tuto.
There are indeed lot of things that need to be done first, before i can further progress so i'm going to fix all these things now and will then post an update preview later on.
Once again, thanks for your continous support. 

Vario

[Vario80]

Update
I went through Gascookers tutorial and make the main roof like suggested, i'm not very satisfied how it looks right now, actually i think the transition seems to be a bit too strong, but i suppose it looks better now than before.
Also extended it a bit over the walls.

I have also darkened the wood texture and set the tiling narrower so that it could come closer to the real measurements. Then i found a better steeple roof texture and have also dirtied a bit so that it should have now a old and weathered look.

As for the roof of the extension, i removed it for now and also make the walls shorter, since it doesn't seemed to be that long as thought before. The roof is also flatter and stretches only at the level of the smaller window.

Preview:


Furthermore i also added more details, like the golden crosses on the roof. As i'm writing a math exam on the 7th i'm doing a short break from Batting again until Thursday.

Vario

[Q-Tips]

Hi, Vario.
I'm going to centre tomorrow, and can take some pictures of the steeple roof for you. I'm not shure how good the pictures will be since it is so high up. But i will do my best. Do you need anything else?
I can take some photos of the roof tiles, so you have more to choose from.

[Vario80]

Hi Q-Tips, yes pictures of the rooftiles would be quite useful too.

[mattb325]

Hi Vario. The new copper texture is looking good and should allow the little ladder to stand out in game.

The gradient that you added to the roof is too broken. The net effect of a gradient in game is to fool the eye into believing that your model is more 3D than what it really is.
A gradient, whether severe or subtle, should be a gentle transition from shade to light.

(I grabbed this image from the web to illustrate)

Also, the size of the tiles on the main roof were better in the first image. It is the smaller roof sections that should be brought in line with this.

The changes that you've made to the wall texture are a great improvement and I see that there are many more details that you're adding which are making this model come to life. If you fix the roof, you'll be more than half-way there!

[cammo2003]

First off, the new copper roof texture looks much better.

Second, I basically second what MattB said. 

[nova vesfalo]

that's a really great church ! Amazing bat-ing

[Vario80]

Thanks everyone. I tried a second attempt to make the gradient more subtle, does it look better now?


It's not easy to make with the GIMP and the trial version of PhotoShop doesn't run on my PC, since i'm using Windows 2000. 

[Andreas]

It's not easy to make with the GIMP and the trial version of PhotoShop doesn't run on my PC, since i'm using Windows 2000. 

I haven't tried it personally so far, but I heard that Paint.NET has quite a lot of features. It's free, like GIMP, and it should run on every PC where Microsoft's .NET Framework is installed.

[Vario80]

Thanks Andreas, have downloaded the latest version but unfortunality it skips installation under Windows 2000, so it looks like i have to stick with the GIMP or i have to look for other graphic programs that run under Windows 2K.

[mattb325]

Hi Vario, you look like you are using the wrong gradient type to end up with these results.

You are using one of Odds roof textures correct?

1) Open your roof texture.

2) On your main control panel, halfway down to the left you have three icons, your active brush (default is a circle), your active pattern (default is wood grain) and your active gradient (default is FG to BG and solid black to grey).

3) Double click on the active gradient. It brings up a list of many gradient options.

4) Select FG to transparent and close the dialogue box.

5) Select the gradient tool on the main panel (the green square in between the bucket and the pencil)

6) Check the settings in the control panel - opacity should be less than 50.0 (you'll see slider bars and check boxes) - leave everything else as it is (I'm assuming they are default on your version).

7) On your texture, place the cursor at the base of the texture in the middle and draw a straight line up to the top of the texture.

8 ) The gimp then fills your texture with a nice gradient.

Save this texture and then use the dodge and burn feature - to the right of the hand symbol - to lightly add some areas of dirt. Experiment here with the brush type and colour - you can simulate moss, dirt or smudges.

Hope this helps, let me know if it doesn't.