Official Hammerfell Architecture Concepts

El Scumbago · Post by **El Scumbago** » Tue Apr 04, 2006 10:08 am

Eyeball: PM Morgoth and ask him to send you a small text doc I wrote. I've detailed the view I have for each building. And yes, I think that texture's great.

Jale: Good to see you're back too. About modular-ity: I'll give an example.

Let's assume we have a parallelogram mesh with textures. We place it on the terrain, add doors and windows from the CS and voila, here's a house. Now, take the same lame mesh, add the doors and windows and then add a balcony. There's another house. Add a different balcony, or more, and there's another different house. Select a dome from the CS, add it on the roof and there's another totally different house.

Imagine the endless capabilites of an exterior modder when he has some decorative elements to add to the basic building models. Now, if we keep this up and add archs and air-bridges to connect the houses, we've got a real arabian feeling. Dunno if making some extra models is okay by the modelers but it's a great solution for adding lots of variety and make HF cities less boring than Cyrodiil's. Got a bunch of such concepts coming up, plus 2 Dex hasn't uploaded yet. Let's hope Eyeball will be around to give a hand

Anonymous · Post by **Anonymous** » Tue Apr 04, 2006 11:11 am

Yay my idea was good...must be beginners luck

On the colours...well I think the poorer buildings should be bare stone only, and just off the top of my head I think that yellow/white for crowns, reddish/brown for Forebears and a good dark grey for Sentinel would be good. I say this because they are likely to be built out of the type of sedimentary rocks found in deserts: Sandstone, mudstone etc. Sentinel on the other hand is more likely to have imported stone, as it is a merchant city, and so could have pretty much any colour we want.

The only problem with this idea would be mountain regions, far above the deserts. Would we need another texture set for, say, Granite?

EDIT: I have solid lore for at least one city:

2920, Book 3 wrote: 29 First Seed, 2920
Hegathe, Hammerfel

...Corda took the letter to the garden to read it, her favorite place, an oasis in the monochromatic sand-colored world of the conservatorium...

Thus Hegathe must be sand coloured! Since this is a crown city, should we, for the moment at least, say that they are all sandy coloured?

Lud · Post by **Lud** » Tue Apr 04, 2006 1:03 pm

Uh Jale, look up to the top of the thread. I already suggested the same thing.

Anonymous · Post by **Anonymous** » Tue Apr 04, 2006 1:54 pm

Ludovic wrote:Uh Jale, look up to the top of the thread. I already suggested the same thing.

Ahh so you did.

I just ranted about it

Eyeball88 · Post by **Eyeball88** » Wed Apr 05, 2006 10:15 pm

Okay, I did up the bridge (because it seemed like the easiest one to start off with) and I've got it here. Simple enough to texture after this point, it's only the Normal mapping that I have to figure out.

Any thoughts?

Edit: I just reread the Oblivion Poly Count guide Sload posted and I realized I have a bit more room to manouver, going to spice up the supports a tiny bit.

Eyeball88 · Post by **Eyeball88** » Fri Apr 07, 2006 5:45 am

Okay, here's a progress shot of the texture I'm working on. It's been so long since I've used photoshop that this texture took me an entire day to do, and I'm not exactly sure how I'll convert the normal part of it, but I think it isn't turning out too bad.

Lady Nerevar · Post by **Lady Nerevar** » Fri Apr 07, 2006 6:49 pm

looking good there... the stones in the middle of the bridge look wierd though. they fit together to perfectly for such odd shaped rocks.

Macar · Post by **Macar** » Fri Apr 07, 2006 6:52 pm

Normal mapping may fix that. But a little burn around the seams couldnt hurt.

Lady Nerevar · Post by **Lady Nerevar** » Fri Apr 07, 2006 7:24 pm

i dont think so. the rocks are like puzzle pieces, fitting togethr perfectly. also, upon closer examination i noticed that some of your bricks over lap, again making it look wierd....

how did you UV map this thing (if thats what its caled) in otherwords, how des the texture tile?

red is is what i mean by a more natural stone arangement, and blue is what i mean by overlaping bricks.

[url=http://img444.imageshack.us/my.php?image=bridgeex0kr.png][img]http://img444.imageshack.us/img444/7797/bridgeex0kr.th.png[/img][/url]

Eyeball88 · Post by **Eyeball88** » Fri Apr 07, 2006 7:32 pm

Lady Nerevar wrote:i dont think so. the rocks are like puzzle pieces, fitting togethr perfectly. also, upon closer examination i noticed that some of your bricks over lap, again making it look wierd....

how did you UV map this thing (if thats what its caled) in otherwords, how des the texture tile?

red is is what i mean by a more natural stone arangement, and blue is what i mean by overlaping bricks.

[url=http://img444.imageshack.us/my.php?image=bridgeex0kr.png][img]http://img444.imageshack.us/img444/7797/bridgeex0kr.th.png[/img][/url]

I put it all together by hand after UVW Unwrapping the mesh. The bricks can be tweaked so that they don't appear to overlap as much; the problem with overlapping came while I was trying to rotate them all to fit a natural arch, which really was more difficult than I thought it would be.

I can try to make the rocks fit together like puzzle pieces; I placed them all by hand using six different rocks rotated so you wouldn't really see the same rock pattern repeated. None of those rocks fit together perfectly, so there would be small gaps in between that would have to be filled with mortar.

Edit: Here's a picture of the texture I drew. The extra bricks branching off of the first bunch aren't as important, they are just the seams of the supports underneath the bridge, but you can see how difficult it was to try to rotate bricks without having any overlap. If anyone knows an easy way to do this, please share it because I tried to fit all of those bricks along the arch by hand so that they would at least follow its curve.

The stones inbetween aren't a huge deal to fix.

Dexter · Post by **Dexter** » Fri Apr 07, 2006 7:45 pm

I've updated the first post again, with what I think are the last of the concepts El Scumbago sent me.

CleverClothe · Post by **CleverClothe** » Sun Apr 09, 2006 12:21 am

Will the bridge stay up if the arches aren't symetrical? I have never seen a bridge like that.

El Scumbago · Post by **El Scumbago** » Tue Apr 11, 2006 10:00 am

Believe it or not, there are plenty of these in the north side of my country. But indeed, I never understood what purpose does this shape serve! Anyway, I drew it because I thought this shape would fit HF.

Dex: Yes, that's all of the concepts I've sent you. Just one last thing. I've also sent you another pic of concept 8. That's the Hammerfell Inn concept. The difference is that the latest one is cleared in Photoshop, so if you still have it replace the one that's posted with the clean one, it will be much better I believe.

Eyeball88 · Post by **Eyeball88** » Tue Apr 11, 2006 9:21 pm

Here's a render of the Stable so far. Open for suggestions, it's like ~4000 triangles so I have a lot of room to add things.

Post by **Haplo** » Tue Apr 11, 2006 9:26 pm

I...can't see that latest render. Is it because I'm viewing it on Safari atm, or do other people have this problem as well?

Morden · Post by **Morden** » Tue Apr 11, 2006 9:27 pm

Very nice looking bridge.

Once again I seem to have missed another gem on these forums.

I don't think you're render of the stable uploaded right. Try hosting on imageshack instead of the forums, it's something we've moved to inorder to save Garfield bandwidth.

Eyeball88 · Post by **Eyeball88** » Tue Apr 11, 2006 9:28 pm

Haplo wrote:I...can't see that latest render. Is it because I'm viewing it on Safari atm, or do other people have this problem as well?

*Cough* It's uh ... yeah, Eyeball is a little trigger happy today. I hit submit before I even had the image uploaded to Imageshack.

Then Firefox crashed while I tried to edit my post.

[img]http://img141.imageshack.us/img141/8311/stable19bt.jpg[/img]
[img]http://img370.imageshack.us/img370/9536/stable10bo.jpg[/img]

Headless horse not included.

Macar · Post by **Macar** » Tue Apr 11, 2006 9:35 pm

That's looking quite nice. However, I think you could use a handfull more polygons on the top of the cylindrical section (the indent, where you can see the polys). I just love that skylight effect!

Eyeball88 · Post by **Eyeball88** » Tue Apr 11, 2006 10:02 pm

[img]http://img473.imageshack.us/img473/3129/stablesilo8wc.jpg[/img]

All thrown in to one mesh, it is ~5200 faces. Slightly higher than the Anvil stable; a lot of it is coming from the draped cloth.

Silverwood · Post by **Silverwood** » Tue Apr 11, 2006 10:52 pm

well, could you make the cloth part of an activator, and put together the two? I'm not sure if that would be mroe or less lag... because im guessing the drapes would be moving.

Macar · Post by **Macar** » Wed Apr 12, 2006 12:33 am

Eyeball88 wrote: All thrown in to one mesh, it is ~5200 faces. Slightly higher than the Anvil stable; a lot of it is coming from the draped cloth.

Oh, I see. I suppose, actualy, that that side of it is unlikely to be seen since there isnt levitation...

@Apocalypse: That's not realy relavent here, dude. This is a thread for discussion of Scumbago's concepts and the models of them.

Apocalypse Master · Post by **Apocalypse Master** » Wed Apr 12, 2006 1:46 am

lol, sry

Eyeball88 · Post by **Eyeball88** » Wed Apr 12, 2006 5:29 am

Here are two more models; modular courtyard wall fountains. One of them features Lutemoth's snake concept, while the other is a plain, generic style that can be used in any region. I've also got a concept for a very rich courtyard fountain that I'll post later.

Edit: Both of these will have stonework filigree textured on top.

lb003g0676 · Post by **lb003g0676** » Wed Apr 12, 2006 10:04 am

Yer, that snake idea, is good. Is this model actually going to be transferred into CS, becuase if so, I didn't realse you'd use such hi poly counts. Really nice, and the stables a few posts above.

Anonymous · Post by **Anonymous** » Wed Apr 12, 2006 10:08 am

We are just trying to match the game's polycounts, to make it look similar in quality.

Eyeball88 · Post by **Eyeball88** » Wed Apr 12, 2006 11:32 am

Many of Bethesda's models appear to be messy and unoptimized. I don't know if this is due to the deadlines that the art team was working under, or if it's just how they were imported/exported. Either way, I have been trying to keep my models at the same poly count, or lower. If it can look good lower, do it lower.

Now the snake fountain was hard to keep low poly, simply because of how ornate I designed it; it is roughly 2100 faces. This is not huge by any stretch; a single tree is nearly 5000. I have other high-poly "decorations" in mind as well, nothing to shatter the budgets though. If courtyards in Hammerfell can be "interior" exteriors, we have a lot more freedom for poly counts. If not, I could probably optimize the snakes even more, and could even make a much lower detail LOD mesh for when the player is far away.

lb003g0676 · Post by **lb003g0676** » Wed Apr 12, 2006 12:07 pm

I am happy that you can achieve better than bethesda, even though they took 4 years, I think most of it was spent balancing, cutting things out, and such. I am actually glad levitation is out, otherwise, lots of the mission would be a breeze, but mainly quite boring. But that's besides the point, it's great that you can work in hi-polycount, just becuasee it means that intricate concept designs can be transferred to models more accuratle, but I bet it's no fun for you modellers, trying to achieve all the detail, or I might be really wrong, and that might be the best part!

Morden · Post by **Morden** » Wed Apr 12, 2006 12:33 pm

Very nice Eyeball. We'll also be able to add more details using Normal maps. In fact, small details like the teeth on the snake could probably be done exclusively by texture.

Edit: I've added a fabric texture you requested. I didn't have any fabrics myself, but I found this one at:

[url]http://www.morguefile.com/archive/[/url]

Great site.

Lutemoth · Post by **Lutemoth** » Wed Apr 12, 2006 7:27 pm

I should have noticed the activity in this thread earlier! Wonderful work, Eyeball, it really gives the stylized redguard look that Bethesda would undoubtably go for. Also, I love the additional design you added on the fountain. Superbe look, and does leave the imagination run with what the textures would be amongst it's arching pattern.

Morden · Post by **Morden** » Wed Apr 12, 2006 8:24 pm

I've been starting to play around with textures again. I used to texture a lot, but its really been a while since I went at it. Oblivion texture sizes are wonky though. Sometimes they're as low as 256x256, other times they do a whole building side at like 2048x512. What about windows?Eyeball's fountain?... 256x512 seems too low, and thats what I made this one at. I doubt it would fit the model and still look good, but it sure was fun to make.

http://img134.imageshack.us/my.php?image=fountain0051ay.jpg

lb003g0676 · Post by **lb003g0676** » Wed Apr 12, 2006 8:55 pm

woah! That looks great to me, nice job. Better than lots of textures you find in OB. It will be great, when we start seeing screenshots, of these objects on-scene. I can't wait for screenshots.

Macar · Post by **Macar** » Wed Apr 12, 2006 10:51 pm

very cool morden. Though there is a slight white gap around the top tiled section (above the snakes heads). Is that intentional? How did you shape the texture so much on the bricks?

Morden · Post by **Morden** » Thu Apr 13, 2006 1:06 am

There are a number of errors, like the white lines you noticed.. and the big blank gaps at the top and bottom

Its sort of a WIP... though i'm not sure if i'll finish it, it was mostly just a lot of fun.

As for the shape, I used the front shot Eyeball posted as a basis for the texture. I set the layer to 'multiply' so that everything white became transparent, leaving the depth to show through whatever I put on top of it. After that it was a lot of erasing, dodging, burning, cloning, and other usual tricks to create depth.

Eyeball88 · Post by **Eyeball88** » Thu Apr 13, 2006 2:53 am

WIP

[img]http://img90.imageshack.us/img90/2091/grandminar18ng.jpg[/img]

Notes so far: I'm not sure that I'm comfortable building it with exteriors in mind. Like, each level of the tower a seperate high-poly mesh that the player can explore. I can try to put a lot more detail into each level, but the poly count might become catastrophic. Thoughts?

Nomadic1 · Post by **Nomadic1** » Thu Apr 13, 2006 3:04 am

It's a nice tower

Not entirely practical though. If the top bit were, say, 50% larger it would be an improvement. And maybe less tall from what I can see. You don't need to make very tall towers since there would be no other buildings (save temples, palaces, or in special cases like walls) that high.

On the other hand, it would be great if you made modular towers IMO. You know, several bases, several mid sections, and several tops. Exterior modders could then mix and match, without stepping on your individual modding creativity whilst still giving exterior modders the ability to use modest, intermediate, and fancy towers whatever the situation to arise. Just a thought. As no towers should be really high, poly counts should hopefully not be a problem if you stay within Bethesda's poly counts.

Eyeball88 · Post by **Eyeball88** » Thu Apr 13, 2006 7:13 am

I built this to the scale shown in El Scum's concept art, but I built it in pieces as I was going up, so that each level of the tower is a seperate mesh that I can change as I go. If it isn't feasible to have the tower that tall, I can always take the top two levels and use them seperately. I'll work on them again tomorrow.

lb003g0676 · Post by **lb003g0676** » Thu Apr 13, 2006 1:05 pm

That looks great, but i agree completely with nomadic, in saying that it would be good if you could make bottom lower and upper setions. And do your own ther, little decorative things, like domes, that could finish buldings off. I don't really know, becuase I ahve never modelled a thing.

El Scumbago · Post by **El Scumbago** » Thu Apr 13, 2006 1:14 pm

Nomadic: Check the net for photos of temples. You will see the most bizzare stuff. Huge columns stretching way too high, ending up on just an observation balcony, while all the rest is merely occupied by a staircase. Then, talk about it being practical! Same case as the bridge on this thread. People are nuts, builders even more nuts. Compared to them, TR's buildings are just impressive. And, I for one do like impressive stuff.

Macar: This thread isn't for discussion of my own work, it's for discussion, feedback and opinions on all stuff official, which means Dex's work too, as well as the work of anyone else that affects the concepts and models that are seen here.

Eyeball: Got your pm. I love the stable, just two things about it: Indeed, since the top of the silo can't be seen due to lack of levitation spells, you can as well make it flat to save some polys. Second, do you think the stable's gates can be less large?
Speaking of polys, I've got a hunch that the lighthouse concept would overwhelm the acceptable number of them, if modelled. Suggestions?

About the fountains, they rock, and Morden's retex is awesome, but I want us to concetrate a bit on their patterns. The oriental shape of Eyeball's mesh can be used on empty walls of buildings for more eye candy, like some buildings of anvil (see oaken-hull's house). The houses decorated like this of course should be middle class and higher.

Eyeball88 · Post by **Eyeball88** » Thu Apr 13, 2006 6:34 pm

El Scumbago wrote:Eyeball: Got your pm. I love the stable, just two things about it: Indeed, since the top of the silo can't be seen due to lack of levitation spells, you can as well make it flat to save some polys. Second, do you think the stable's gates can be less large?
Speaking of polys, I've got a hunch that the lighthouse concept would overwhelm the acceptable number of them, if modelled. Suggestions?

I made the stable gates that large so that the stable cell could accomidate a horse turning a full circle, otherwise they were very very cramped and a horse could only back in and out.

Nomadic1 · Post by **Nomadic1** » Thu Apr 13, 2006 10:52 pm

El Scumbago wrote:Nomadic: Check the net for photos of temples. You will see the most bizzare stuff. Huge columns stretching way too high, ending up on just an observation balcony, while all the rest is merely occupied by a staircase. Then, talk about it being practical! Same case as the bridge on this thread. People are nuts, builders even more nuts. Compared to them, TR's buildings are just impressive. And, I for one do like impressive stuff.

I take it you are refering to towers like minarets - that's actually purpose-built architecture. The sole purpose of those towers is for some guy to stand on the top of them to sing religious songs, or to report the happenings of the cities (kind of like some guy screaming the daily newspaper. Doesn't happen near temples mind you, and it was never truly popular). If there is a purpose for those towers in TR, I won't have any objections or concerns of anything less than an ÃƒÂ¦sthetic nature.

ATM, all I see is a flimsy tower which better not be built somewhere which would experience war, wind or earthquakes.