The Official Phase Two City Contest: Amdeneir

[Baldur]

Greetings everyone,

I would like to thank everyone for their participation and cooperation in the last phase. It appears Amdeneir won and should therefore further be planned upon with a enhanced team now able to host 10 participants.

As we all know, 4 months is the remainder of our journey and it is best we start working for our goal

My old team(Team Adraax) will hopefully be in full career to take on this task and I do hope others on other teams will join them. If you have any interest in joining and want to take on this challenge then just send us a post on this topic. 3D modelers with good 3D modeling skills are preferred, of course. The participation of the entire community is essential to find the best modelers. If you've got a passion for modeling then why not take the chance and show your talents, right now

Deadline date for Phase Two
September 30th 11:59 EST

Current team members
Nikodemus, Zweitholou, Baldur, Rast, crj, Mindari, Illysia, Homik, Kougaro

Supplied Design Package(guide to what should be modeled before deadline)
http://viscosa.dyndns.org/phase_2.pdf

Awaiting new arrivals...

[Nikodemus]

Phase 1

settings descr.

I was wondering on few things. The design .pdf package has only some of concept art we made, i'm assuming its because if all were pasted, the descriptions would become too sparse ;P
There was no city walls and i'm wondering how do we imagine these?
- two flored with hese spikes as I assume? I'm positive on modelling these (maybe i'm just lazy and like simple shapes ;P) I was thinking to make it in many different segments, so they can be later put together and create more round shapes than we have in Hydlaa for instance.

On landscape. Its a very good idea to make it "terrain" type everywhere. Also where the city is. Outside the city grassy textures will be used and inide a single(or few) pavement textures would be used (grassy for parks and alike). This will allow for very nice round shapes without using faces (and terrain PS maps loads quite fast and nice i think), smooth transitions between the terrain textures, buildings would be modeled so that their bottom part sink into the terrain.

On final work format: Who knows if exporting from .blend to .3ds format we save CS properties? If not people who will put everything together will have a headache with reassigning all cs properties as they should be.
I know we wil have to use min and max rendering a lot for increased performance.
But also "smooth" (something what i think has been forgotten in the Kran city)
"two sided" Does the 3ds>cs exporter treat the property as performing duplicate and flipping normals on all faces with this property? because there are no twosided faces in CS and the goal is reached manually/automatically this way.
properties for different kinds of transparency, mostly binary, because it has no bugs.
And loads of other properties.

++ also, will the exporter from .blend to .3ds save the duplicate linked objects? Because these are supposed to be randered more efficient by CS, so i would like to use these where possible, but if it become lost while exporting, then whats the point.
We will need to find out. Maybe someone from devs can tell?

Also, i started a work on a bulding. When I finish it, i mark on the map all building fiting its shape. Can we all work this way? We will slowly fill the map and see how much is left that way.
I have also a very nice pavement texture.

Where do we put all the textures and other files? Should they be available publicly? Maybe we should set a password protected directory on some host and install some software for editing/deleting/uploading/vieving stuff? We will need like 200MB of space for that for all kind fo stuff i think.

[Nikodemus]

As promised, i marked with color all similiar buildings. We gonna have problems with keeping the streets exactly as on the map, also because of proper scaling, so we will figure out in the meanwhile if we need another buildings with similiar base.
The textures style are in great part by crj.

The building is 620 faces from which 232 form duplicate linked objects.

[Zweitholou]

Looks terrific! I like the building shape, the colors, and the window style.

[Nikodemus]

thx Zwei!

I'm worried about face count. I would really like a dev, someone with knowledge to tell whats expected in PS and maybe answer the other questions.

[Illysia]

Be sure to pay attention to your triangle count, not polygon count when you are modeling. To get an accurate poly count for models intended to be used in games in 3ds Max, for example, you must convert the model to an editable mesh before using the polygon counter. This is because the game engine will view the model in the same way, ie. with triangular faces. The general guidelines for triangle limits are:

100-400 for simple objects (items, weapons) (64x64 - 256x256 texture size)
500-800 for complex objects or simple creatures (256x256 - 512x512 texture size)
800-1.3k for complex creatures (512x512 - 1024x1024 texture size)
1.5k-2k for characters (512x512 - 1024x1024 texture size; body parts split into separate meshes for texturing - left/right arms, left/right hands, torso, legs, left/right boots, head, hair)

As for what models are currently in demand, character models are always welcome until all the races are completed. Several things to keep in mind:

1) the geometry may look clean, but you have to keep in mind that the mesh needs to be animated and bend at certain locations
2) the character model has to follow the 2D image we have on the Races page fairly closely
3) don't UV map, rig, or animate the model until you have the base geometry approved - if you have moved on to further steps but are then told that you need to make fixes to the mesh, you'll be making more work for yourself
4) character hair is a separate mesh and needs to be interchangeable - so model it in a way that will allow a clean detachment from the head, and so that another different hair mesh can fit onto the head cleanly
5) the mouth needs to be able to open and close for animations, so make sure to have a small slit for the lips
6) remember that the majority of detail is created through the texture, so don't try to create everything through the geometry.

Modeling items is a lot simpler, and little things should be welcome at any time - weapons, foods, anything that you feel can add to RP (musical instruments, for example). However, we definitely don't want people to make quick and easy swords and think that they'll be accepted. If you're making an item model, try to make it unusual. I don't think we need any more generic weapons, so push yourself to create some unique concepts.

Character armor meshes are created by modifying the original character meshes, and these are not going to be given out to anyone who isn't on the team, or applying. Certain resources are kept to the dev team alone, understandably. If you have an interesting armor concept, it's going to be easier to have it made if you have a drawing. You yourself may not be able to model if it you're an art contributor instead of art team member, but you may see your concept get used Right now only the torso mesh is changing, but some time in the future I think we will have arms and legs follow as well.

I'm not familiar with environmental modeling yet, and this is not something you should attempt without prior discussion with Talad. So stick to items/NPCs/characters. Hope this helps some, and feel free to ask more questions.

Hope this helps some.

[Baldur]

Illysia, are you joining the team as well?

[Illysia]

I've considered but at the moment I'm pretty busy. Not to mention I had some model ideas that I started to work on already for something else. I have to admit that I really like the concept art for the city and I wish I could be of more help. Over the summer I might be able to make some small stuff to contribute.

[Xillix Queen of Fools]

How is this doing, are you meeting recruitment goals?

How is progress?

Also please consider modeling some interior space in your building of the city.

Great work Nikodemus!

[Zweitholou]

I'm working on a concept building and the smithy in my free time right now. As I am fairly inexperienced in the area of modeling, I'm not going to try any of the more significant buildings until my skills have progressed. I will finish final exams this Friday, after which my output should increase dramatically.

:EDIT: Added images.

This is what I've done so far. It has 247 faces. I have not created the textures yet.


The building will go in the spaces filled in with lime green.

Does anyone have suggestions on how to improve the model?

[Nikodemus]

Xillix, there are some unanswered questions in this thread from technical side, but from setting side we are following along the guideline. I'm and was wondering why not all images are in the .pdf and we assume there was no room. Hopefully not wrong assumption. It is the right moment to tell if we are wrong.

My building is half textured (these won't have interior, unless the system for entering a common building will be in place in 4 months. )
There is warehouse in works with interior like in Oja.
there is another building as you se above.
And that's it for now.

Zwei.
when you render, you may add a lamp near the black areas, to show how faces layout there.
Nice work with the ramp. I'm assuming it has a ladder inside. Make sure the exit is high enough for a Klyros, unless you think they should crawl each time
The collumns are bad.
Make something like this

1. its a collumn with a pentagon base (a 5 edged "circle" extruded on z axis)
2. rotate one base 36^o
3. select all and covert to triangles. The triangles, which will be drawn inwards can be all selected and will draw the other way uppon pressing ctrl+F
4. select top and extrude on z axis.
5. select the 5 quads and extrude > individual faces
6. select vertices as in (5.) (25 of them) and scales z-axis to 0. Then select all space > edit > vertices > remove doubles (10 will be removed, it is merged with the other )

40 triangles vs your 8. More but much better looking IMO

Did you know all these operations? If not, I hope this was helpful.

The idea is such a collumn can be used in your building 4-6 times by duplicate linked (you select separate object and alt+D instea dof normal duplicated shift+D) And then we can use this collumn all around the city also in other buildings.
This is helpfull also in texturing, coz you do it only once and any changes are applying to all eg in edit or UV mode. In Object mode you can rotate a separate duplicate linked object.

Also, i think the building is too cheap for upper quarter ;>

EDIT: I think the roof is not steep enough, make it exactly as on your concept art maybe?

[rast]

Hey all =]

long time no speak eh?

Even after saying I probably wouldn't be able to help, I couldn't resist attempting a small model for the city. Tell me what you think and whether you wanna use it or not (even if it means you edit half of it):

(the base has a seperate texture - it's reasonably basic though so I haven't posted it)

This must be the first model i've made in months so go easy on it

Let me know if you want the model

laters guys,
Rast

[Nikodemus]

Hey, I assume you are short with time.
But thanx for this statue, maybe you will manage to do some other small elements for the city? we have ~3 months left, so don't say no ;P
Would you manage to work a bit more on it? The head needs work i think. And you could ad some more detail to the texture.
Then it would be great for using somewhere. It already is!
So of course we want it.

The contest really needs community help, because sadl nothing is working itself :s

I have a building closer to being finished, than the other way, so i will post it to give some inspiration to those who aren't on IRC.

[rast]

Hey, I assume you are short with time.
But thanx for this statue, maybe you will manage to do some other small elements for the city? we have ~3 months left, so don't say no ;P
Would you manage to work a bit more on it? The head needs work i think. And you could ad some more detail to the texture.
Then it would be great for using somewhere. It already is!
So of course we want it.

Thanks =]

Yer I'm reasonably short of time with exams and stuff coming up soon.
Small stuff is fine cos i can fit it in and not get too engrosed in doing it. Road signs, benches, fences or other "filler" stuff is fine - just let me know if you want it

I will try to get a bit more done on the statue over the next few days cos I'm on holiday =] Yeah - I did the head reasonably quickly. It's supposed to be a helmet.

We got any basic textures which we can post here? like the roof you've used on your model. Otherwise this city might look like it's made up of patchwork...

Cheers,
Rast

[Zweitholou]

I've been working on improving my modeling.
The building is represented by the green.

The smithy.

Lower quarter building design.

rast, I'm glad you have some time to spare. I like your statue!

Niko, the texture looks great. It's coming along very nicely! I used your column style on all my buildings and followed your other suggestions as well.