The Official Phase Two City Contest: Amdeneir

[Nikodemus]

There are many quarries around the city, what do you think about such a wall: ?
 



learned some new stuf making it, like bakind AO maps and textures out of blender. Because that's right, that texture is fully computer generated

[Dracaeon]

It looks good, but a little bit... regular, maybe.  Seems like the same thing over and over.  A little more variation might help.

[Gilrond]

There is a huge chasm in the area outside Amdeneir, it would be interesting if it would have such kind of structure, so it'd be possible to climb down!

[Nikodemus]

Drac, is it repetitive coz all stones are grey or is it because you can say exactly where another same stone repeats? Can you tell how many times?

[Earowo]

I can add to his 'too repetative' comment, its kinda nothing but short, [leng and width-wise] ledges, I figure it would look a bit better, if there were a smooth version of the texture, and a mix of smooth and that..rocky texture. for different situations, the texture could be pretty useful in many of the large cliffs around yliakum, as most if not all hills and cliffs are green right now, and you generally dont see grass growing out of the side of a cliff.

[Nikodemus]

its silent lately in fanart

the cliff was supposed to be a wall of  quarries, but since noone has enough time to do anything, gues such a wall will have do for sort of natural cliffs too ;p
But the texture needs a bit of improvements, mainly being its color. But also more erosion. And a normal map may give cool results. Blender can render it very nicely. PS  CS may do a bit worse, but i wont know untill its actually in game.

Here is what it was for in the first place:
before

after

..

[Chucki]

You kids have obviously never seen a quarry. The stone IS repetitive at a quarry, the idea being that it is a place that you can draw ALOT of the same stone from.

[LigH]

Interesting technique.

But I fear - if you do it that way, the walls won't be protective, the enemy could climb it easily.
__

BTW, never trust a heightfield map to blend with polygon based meshes, especially not at steep parts. It renders differently depending on the drivers or compiler optimizations, the Windows client usually shows it one LoD step too coarse (I heard the Linux client does it as fine as expected), and on top there are issues with the LoD system after traveling several heightfield maps that it gets even more coarse. The most obvious place where you can see differences is the road that leads down to the left village below Gugrontid, where Malco guards - that goes through thin air for me.

[Mekora]

You kids have obviously never seen a quarry. The stone IS repetitive at a quarry, the idea being that it is a place that you can draw ALOT of the same stone from.

They are not completely wrong whatsoever. This is a quarry today:

http://www.canadiangeographic.ca/atlas/Images/Glossary/Quarry.jpg

@AmdeneirTeam Perhaps a little bit more repetition, but great job! I could imagine how it must be harder then first glance because I really have never heard much about medieval quarries and therefore do not know exactly how to make it out as.

[Nikodemus]

It has a bit from quarry and a bit of simplicity of being easy to make and manipulate and a bit from naturally formed cliffs, deterioration. Take a look at this segment:


Thats is the bit which is repeated

This could look whole a lot better, but i dont have that much time... Only the texture will improve and it might have a normalmap ultimatelly.
Most of all, there should be more segments and the segments should have shelves, also with grass.  How you can observer here a bit:
http://lh3.ggpht.com/_lbAZgKg4cLc/Sq_vE9Ec9BI/AAAAAAAAHv0/8ZJx3A5hwoo/IMG_0200.jpg
Probably also have the thing i got now, scalled up and in that have all extra details madelled a bit like in this very nice example:
http://www.spreadartculture.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/RockofAges-7-ActiveGranite-Section-Wells-LamsonQuarry-Barre-Vermont-1991.jpg

I'd have to spend many many more hours to make all the variations and details.

And the, remember that the wall you look at is not really a quarry wall, so like i said before, I'd have to make a special naturally looking cliff, again with shelves, few segment variations and stuff ;p

Ligh, yea, the heightmap is evilness and coz of that the cliff will have more face count so it actually sinks into the terrain at all platforms. And yea, invaders might want to climb it, but i bet they would do better climbing a wall where it doesnt have a cliff at all . And sometimes you just get what you have. It's important to remember that one might model anything, but maybe one should do it more as it is likely to accure, rather than make it perfect in every aspect.

cool modern quarry
http://www.uvm.edu/~envprog/formslinks/Vermont%20Mining/Granite.html

[Nikodemus]

Addentum

A few more images found online for similiar looking natural cliffs:
http://www.stockphotopro.com/photo-thumbs-2/AY8YD0.jpg
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/106/277376260_f27bbf9fe8.jpg?v=0
http://image.shutterstock.com/display_pic_with_logo/243889/243889,1255027421,1/stock-photo-limestone-bedding-plains-showing-level-blocky-strata-on-a-coastal-cliff-face-38478469.jpg

This is how blender renders normalmaps for it:


I'd like to have a lot of horizontal cracks, but I can't figure it out. If there is anyone out there who can, I can handle the blend.

[confused]

This is really good work, should be used in the quarries around Amdeneir. Nice work Niko, as usual. 

[Caraick]

Lookin' very good, Niko 

[Mindari]

bump! also i thought i would share the process of making a new texture from scratch in a brief guide.
i started with a blank square filled with the colour i wanted to use, and shaded it very roughly

i next smudged out the borders or they would have remained visible throughout the later stages. would have been easier to just use a gaussian blur in retrospect.

started to progressively fill in the detail, starting with broad brush strokes and ending in lines 1px across. i also made the image seamless at this point, and then airbrushed in some shadows & highlights

...

...

next i used another wood texture as a colour overlay - makes it look less monochromatic and more consistent with other textures in the scene
to make the image stand out even more i used the GIMP to mimic a bump map effect

enough work for one day! but still not finished! 

[Crj]

Hi, some wonderful stuff here, you definitely have come a long way. Love the design of the wall and guard towers.

On cracks - horizontal cracks occur in rocks where the layering of the rock is horizontal, yours mostly diagonal, and in the most recent image - going in all possible directions. If the layering(or whatever the actual geological term is) was horizontal, the crack might work out too. http://www.watersheds.org/earth/layers.htm

On the wood texture - You have done a great job on the details! A couple of things though...
If you plan to tile it, then some of the detail might be too specific and that will stand out a lot if the texture is repeated several times over.
The underlaying shading looks a bit indecisive. For natural form it looks much too straight and for man-made curvature its too blurred out.
For a more natural look you might want to increase the saturation for mid-tones and shadows and turn it down for highlights. The bump map effect does exactly the opposite.