Tamriel Rebuilt

Nice, looking awesome. Otherelo woods is going to be fun.

What happened to [url=http://img42.imageshack.us/img42/1571/othrelethwoodsmedmush.jpg]these[/url]? I liked the short, fat style. Also, it seems a bit odd to have a whole forest with such similar looking trees. Are those cool green slimy trees in the atmospheric art going to be made?

This is just a single set of trees. Other styles of trees will be made for the region.

[url=http://img833.imageshack.us/i/tall2.jpg/][img]http://img833.imageshack.us/img833/7011/tall2.th.jpg[/img][/url]

[url=http://img834.imageshack.us/i/mediummush.jpg/][img]http://img834.imageshack.us/img834/817/mediummush.th.jpg[/img][/url]

[url=http://img51.imageshack.us/i/bigmush.jpg/][img]http://img51.imageshack.us/img51/9163/bigmush.th.jpg[/img][/url]

A handy argonian for measurement... I also made variations with a bit wider petals

What happened to these?

Those are the medium sized mushrooms, their stems have just been made a bit longer... Maybe I can make a variation with a shorter stem?

Epic mushrooms. Probably taste excellent with a little guar and grinded scrib jerky and some fire salts! :3


I mean, I think they look great and all such and can't wait to see those mushrooms in work.

These look great! Maybe make some mid-size version of the big mushroom?

Me wondering: could we add a slight glow-map to these? The MCP enables this, and we kind of tell users to use it anyway.

I'm fairly certain the topic of glow maps was discussed, and it was decided not to use glow-maps for these trees.

Yeah Aeven this isn't Avatar, come on. Also, there are already mid-sized mushrooms for this set.

I have uploaded the models now, and I'm going to put it to 100% within a few days, unless someone protests wildly... I can make more variations eventually if it is requested by an exterior artist...

I think you might have uploaded the wrong files. The .7z file I downloaded contained four ash swamp emperor parasols :/

Oh... Sorry... I have just uploaded a new one...

Looking awesome. I love the huge one.

Just taken a look at the models, Gnober. I have to say the quality has improved a lot. I think there is still a little room for improvement, but you're getting there.


General criticism:
- You've generally covered up the petal-bark transition rather well. It could still be more smooth, but it's acceptable in my opinion.

- You should do something about the shading. Currently the petals have a rather odd metallic sheen. It looks to me as if the specular color on the material hasn't been set to black, which can cause that.

- You've been very conservative with your polies, which is good.

- I think the petal texture is rather good, though maybe it could use a slightly more discernible edge. Then again, I'm not sure how that would work around the seams.

- Right now you're using the Emperor Parasol texture for the bark. For variation's sake, I'm thinking we could maybe make a new bark texture for these. It would be a small effort for a rather big visual effect.


Big mushroom:

- These look pretty good. Good call on the roots.

Medium mushrooms:

- The modeling is decent here, but I feel you somewhat lost track of the proportions of the original concept here. Even on the variation with the biggest petals, they're only just the size of the concept art. In all the other ones, the stem is proportionally longer and the petals proportionally smaller. Some variation is called for, of course, but I think you should rather look to shape than to proportion for that.


Small mushrooms:
Compared to the other ones, I felt a little disappointed by these, but nothing that can't be fixed.

- The petals have a rather noticeable pointy tip, which could be remedied rather easily.

-More importantly, though, your meshes have convex petals, curving outward and then up, while the concept has concave ones. The convex look is rather important, because it has a clear visual link with shelf fungi. Right now, they look more like flowers.

- I realize now this isn't obvious at all from the concept, so I figure I had better say it here now than never. The idea behind that straight and tall mushroom was that all its variations would retain that straight-up look. I suppose I just kind of wanted to go against the normal organic/curved look of fungi by making one that was oddly straight. I don't know how other people feel about this, though.

- You should do something about the shading. Currently the petals have a rather odd metallic sheen. It looks to me as if the specular color on the material hasn't been set to black, which can cause that.

Do you mean in-game, or in nifskope? I know they look weird in nifskope because the colors have been painted on with vertex paint, which isn't show at some angles in nifskope... I think they look fine in-game, but that might just be me...

- Right now you're using the Emperor Parasol texture for the bark. For variation's sake, I'm thinking we could maybe make a new bark texture for these.

I'll try working a bit on this...

Medium mushrooms:
- The modeling is decent here, but I feel you somewhat lost track of the proportions of the original concept here.

The stem i quite short on the concept with only the medium mushroom, but in the [url=http://img143.imageshack.us/img143/876/trshroomforest.jpg]atmospheric art[/url], what I suppose is the medium mushrooms, have quite long stems... I don't know which one is right, but to be honest i quite like them as they are now... I can remove the proportion variation, though...

Small mushrooms: - The petals have a rather noticeable pointy tip

I'll change this

your meshes have convex petals

This will probably add some vertices, but I'll change it

The idea behind that straight and tall mushroom was that all its variations would retain that straight-up look.

Sounds fair, I'll change this...

Any progress to show perhaps?

I hoped that Adanorcil would have replied... But I have updated the files based on Adanorcil's critique... Not much have changed, but here are some pictures...

[url=http://img525.imageshack.us/i/tallmush.jpg/][img]http://img525.imageshack.us/img525/2937/tallmush.th.jpg[/img][/url] [url=http://img219.imageshack.us/i/mediummush.jpg/][img]http://img219.imageshack.us/img219/817/mediummush.th.jpg[/img][/url][url=http://img8.imageshack.us/i/bigmush.jpg/][img]http://img8.imageshack.us/img8/9163/bigmush.th.jpg[/img][/url] [url=http://img253.imageshack.us/i/othreleth.jpg/][img]http://img253.imageshack.us/img253/6264/othreleth.th.jpg[/img][/url]

It's always a good idea to prod Adan with a pm if you have questions. I'm sure he doesn't mind helping you out if you're not sure how to continue, but it's easy to miss a forum post.

I scaled the tall mushrooms slightly down and added TR prefix to meshes and textures. Set the progress to 100%

submitting to review

It's always a good idea to prod Adan with a pm if you have questions. I'm sure he doesn't mind helping you out if you're not sure how to continue, but it's easy to miss a forum post.

What Myzel said.



I've just taken a look at these again. On the whole they're pretty good. I'll give my final comments in random order:

- Bark-petal transition is as good as it's going to get, I think. No comments there.

- The strange shininess of the petals is still around. It appears to me this has something to do with your texture file, but I don't know what exactly. (Probably some or another setting.) It does show up differently in the CS, but they still appear unusually bright there. (Especially around the tips.) It looks a lot shinier and brighter than either the concept or the modeling program suggest.

I suppose I won't let that hold the whole thing back, though. If I ever figure out what's wrong with the texture I'll upload a fix for you and that's the end of that.

- You have been very poly-conservative, but don't let that trick you into not using triangles to their fullest potential. Especially the tops of the petals of the tall, thin trees were often noticeably straight and blocky. Just moving the middle or the two side vertices up/down a little would have sufficed to fix that. It is less of a problem on the larger models, though on the 'medium' mushrooms I feel there are still some noticeably pointy petals.

- The issue with concavity: By and large, I felt this one still hadn't been really solved on the tall mushrooms. If not curving inwards, they are more or less straight where they should have had a slight curve outwards.

I see why now: the way your petals were modeled didn't really allow for this properly. If anything below the petal's 'balcony' was moved inwards, an ugly not-subdivided edge ran along the entire length of the petal. To show what I meant, I added a couple of triangles along the bottom row of the petals [url=http://www.majhost.com/gallery/Vahiku/TamrielRebuilt/othmushroomsconcave.jpg]in this picture[/url]. (And also took the liberty of 'unsquarifying' some of the petals.) A small change like that can fix a lot.

- The big mushrooms are good.

- As a final practical point: mind your pivot points. I found that many of the mushrooms always rotated around a point outside of the base of the trunk. (Albeit only slightly.) This can get a little frustrating to people who have to use these models, because they become harder to rotate, but is really easy for modelers to fix. Make sure all tree bases sit as close to the scene's (0,0) point as possible.

- Tiny thing: I've noticed a lot of your models have the NiStencilProperty enabled on them. I think this is something the latest Blender exporters do automatically or such, because I've noticed it too. This is hardly worth mentioning, but I will for good form. What this property does is basically make both sides of a face visible. While this is useful in some cases to save on triangles, nobody has any use seeing the inside of a mushroom. In some cases it can also get confusing since you can't see the a clear distinction between the in- and outside. In the end, all this property currently does is needlessly increase the filesize, if by a very small degree. If you want, you can simply cut it out in Nifskope.



The way I see it, these are all minor concerns. None of these should be a serious impediment to the usage of these models. We can go about this two ways. To make the above picture with the concave mushrooms I already had to edit the models slightly, so basically that's done already. With that done, fixing the pivot points is an infinitesimally small effort after which we can ship these models off.

However, I don't want to deny Gnober the chance to address the last few issues (concavity, pivot points) himself. So I'm going to leave that choice up to him.





On the whole, I'd rank these models somewhere between decent and good. I think you got some skill there, but remember to not let the model control you instead of the other way around. Sometimes it's better to try and achieve a better result by beginning from scratch again, then by trying to alter what you have. (Though not always.)


All in all: good job.

Thank you for the comments...

If it is not too big a job (or just a bit boring), then I wouldn't mind you changing the small issues...

I'll keep your critique in mind when making future models.

And thank you for mentioning the NiStencilProperty, I wasn't sure why my models were always exported with both sides visible...

Will do then.


And yeah, I have a feeling there should be something you can turn off to stop that property from showing up, but I don't know what.

Long review, is this going somewhere?

Approved

Are these in Data yet? I can't seem to find them. Only the ovary trees, but for some reason those aren't prefixed with TR_flora.

I'm quite certain the two trees to which you refer predate this claim.

The items you are looking for are currently prefixed TR_oth_, but it shouldn't matter because there are no claims being worked on which are in the Othreleth Woods region.

Um, I might be working on a little idea on the side, so it is somewhat relevant.

Not to Aeven. As HoE it's somewhat expected that you will have your hands in lots of stuff, future and current. But Aeven is only working on current stuff.

He's making a couple of retextures I will try out in the CS, since my efforts at retexturing usually ends up with stuff turning bright yellow in game.

Anyway, I reported a few errors on these objects, texture wise - in the error thread. Low priority as of now.