The Official Phase Two City Contest: Amdeneir

[Nikodemus]

Talad,
I believe i'm quite good in the assempling part if there comes about the problems. Athough it's never possible to foresee an unknown problem, i believe the way i'm working minimalizes them and gives options for fixing. We are working with duplicate linked objects since the beginning (that's instanced) and although i don't know exactly what rules should the names follow, i'm quite certain there is a python script which allows for name change for selected objects. There aren't really any isolated vertices and faces should fit together nicely, because i divide buildings into separate objects for each texture after i finish making the building or its vicinity.

And as about the doors, i think i need to be explained how should that work eaxactly. Although i have been following the hydlaa texture door design in some sense there are some differences and i have probably reached some compromise with triangles count.
But i think i need to know better what is this about doors eaxctly, not necessary from you.

[Xordan]

I don't know what the doors issue is either. However most (portal related issues are an exception) geometry issues are specific to the individual components (the mesh factories) and are unrelated to the scene. If they're not then we're doing something wrong.

Lighting might be a bit of a problem, as we will want to export day/night cycle stuff... but we can worry about that later. Assemble everything and just use ambient lighting for now. Once things are assembled and viewable in CS with ambient, we can look at adding lights.

Edit: Ah, I did just think of one thing which would be good... please try and make the mesh factories off-centre, so that 0,0,0 is in the middle-bottom of the mesh. The reason for this is because of visual world editing tools (like item placement) that are being worked on, where we want to place a mesh where you click. If the center of the mesh is 0,0,0 then half the mesh will go underground Perhaps we could compensate for this somehow (place the mesh at an offset..) but it'd be nice to not need to do that.

[Talad]

Hi,
it's pretty hard to guess potential problems without seeing a model, what I suggest is that as soon as you assembled a road you send it to me, so I can review it and check all potential problems. When one road will be ok, then you can move on to assemble the others.

[LigH]

If the center of the mesh is 0,0,0 then half the mesh will go underground

You will remember that from many small items like mugs and books. (Bugtracker task exists.)

[Xillix Queen of Fools]

another year or two?

We want this!

[Drelborn]

Wow, this is really cool. I am interested in contributing somewhat, but need some more info. Like, can I use Google SketchUp, or do I need to figure out Blender? Offering my services, Rogart, aka Drelborn

[botanic]

Drelborn come by #planeshift-citycontest shure we can work with whatever program you know, just say my name in channel. I am around almost 24-7.

[Drelborn]

Hmm, I don't have much time for chatting, so is there someplace the info is written down? I'd also like to know more before I commit to something. I believe you guys are working from concept art, so is there a way I can get my hands on that? Or would it be best for me to just read through the thread?

[botanic]

using the plugin at http://sketchuptips.blogspot.com/2007/01/wavefront-obj-exporter.html you should be able to export anything you make to obj, then we can import the obj into blender or 3ds max. As for concept art there are some things that have a concept and some that do not, if you need a concept to work off of then just let me know and ill get you one, in the case that you can work without it then I will find you a piece to work on. Basically you would just have to be sure that you keep to the general style of the city. Let me know what kind of thing you are intrested in working on and ill get you a concept if you need it and if not I will get you a writeup of some sort that will help you understand what the object should look like.

[XF25]

alright--some how out of subject but when will the city be out? give a rough estimate or exact if you know it. thanks

[Drelborn]

I don't need concept art, and thanks for the plugin! I just need an idea of the overall motif, (style, look, etc.) I prefer buildings, but I can probably do small objects as well. Not quite sure how to post a picture, or I would show you one of my latest models, so you can get an idea of how I model. I look back through the thread and see what I can learn

[Drelborn]

I don't need concept art, and thanks for the plugin! I just need an idea of the overall motif, (style, look, etc.) I prefer buildings, but I can probably do small objects as well. Not quite sure how to post a picture, or I would show you one of my latest models, so you can get an idea of how I model. I look back through the thread and see what I can learn

All right, read through the thread, and got an idea of how far this has gone, and some idea of the plan behind it all. As I said above, I can do buildings fairly well, though curves are still above me. Texturing is out of my reach at the moment, but I hope working on this will progress my skills. Any small items or furniture I'd love to do.

[confused]

rough estimate or exact: when it is done. 

[Nikodemus]

Yup, you should look through the topic
phase 1 and
phase 2

probably especially the images - that is called concept art IMO btw ;p But i tend to tweak terms to my liking.

http://city.xordan.com/phase_2.pdf read the official settings description.

We do have the buildings done already. The only thing I do with buildings now is tweaking what we did to match the streets, other buildings and so on. That is done directly in the main city 3d file. Meaning one has to know blender to do it.

I think you should get yourself involved, mainly to develop your skills.
The question is what you can model right now. IMO there is only a need for a specific purpose buildings right now. Such a buildings are for instance a public bath, for the Klyros who like water. there may be a bakery-identified by the big chimney. And there it is important to remember that buildings are more that a rectangular base, walls up from it and a simple roof. Buildings use round shapes or/and complex of smaller rectangular bases connected in a various ways. It's walls don't have to form only 90^o angles.
And of course noone is forbidding about being crative and do something else needed in the city.

And as for developing your skills, you should try yourself with textures at some point, because as someone who does both i can tell you that one is modelling a mesh thinking about how to texture it and not every object can be textured as optimal as expected. This means that someone may have a big difficulties texturing a mesh you do. But you can for instance texture it all with a dummy texture (this means you don't have to make a beautiful texture, but a texture which you use for UV mapping [thats texturing], meaning you UV map by yourself)

Real time talking lke irc, helps to answer questions and advice. I hope you aren't giving up


And thank you Confused

[Zweitholou]

I second the reading materials.

As far as something for you to model, a big part of the city that isn't done is interiors.  This may be the best thing for you to work on.  If we finish exteriors before all the interiors are done, then what's done can be put in an update and the interiors can be added in later.  The first interior that comes to mind is that of the chapel to talad.  Also a possible guild house interior will eventually be needed.

Also, try to set them up for textures like Niko said. I started in on this contest knowing nothing about textures in my modeling and since I've come to better understand them, my models have become better and easier to make well.

We'd love to see some pics of your progress. You can upload with imageshack <http://imageshack.us/> and then post the pics on the forums by pasting the image url into the command created when you press the 'insert image' icon.

Glad you're interested,
-Zweitholou