Tamriel Rebuilt

Since TR is no longer working on Hammerfell, neither are the concept artists. Hammerfell was actually the project that made this department shine, and for the past something years it has been our main focus. Obviously, that means we have to change a few things now. With Hammerfell out of the picture, TR can focus all effort on Morrowind. This will be especially true for us. From now on, Morrowind will be the main topic for all concept art.

Morrowind doesn’t need art you say? Wrong. If we want to do Morrowind well, it is necessary to visualize the rest of the province in art. New places must be visualized. Things that were seen in the original game need to be expanded and elaborated, or we will end up with mediocrity and just more of the same. It may actually be the case that the province is now seen as an extension of Vvardenfell, instead of Vvardenfell as an extension (a fragment) of the province. Now that Hammerfell no longer absorbs our efforts, maybe we can change that view.

Rest assured, the transition will be a smooth one. The well known FCG will stay, and will feature topics related to Morrowind. While most previous FCG’s were focused on the designing of specific objects for modeling, many future FCG’s may have a different character, focused as much on visualizing as on designing objects. I’ll try to find a balance between efficiency and freedom, between the essences of ‘atmospheric’ and ‘functional’ art.
How effective this approach will be of course depends as much on our respected artist’s efforts as on my organizational skills. But I’m optimistic about our future, and the role we can play in the making of Morrowind.

Cheers! Lets make Morrowind shine.

Any extra attention lavished upon Morrowind can only be a good thing. I love what's been going on over at the Morowind Creatures thread.

Would new TR-unique landscape-setups be a possibility?
This would primarily mean new ground textures, rocks as well as plants that blend in with the vanilla-style building new compositions. There are a few reasons making me think it could be a good idea, especially for the South of Morrowind.

-Making the 3D-Art for things like trees and rocks is not much work. It's much less demanding than modelling architecture or creatures and can be a matter of only a few hours.
-As it is now the mainland consists of a repetitive use of the 9 landscapes on Vvardenfell. While it makes sense to have similarity in the regions bordering to that island, it would be a nice thing to see something new in the deeper areas.
-Lowpoly-Models like rocks don't take much space in the BSA-archive. They however have a slight impact on the clarity in the static list in the CS.

As far as I know there is only one ground texture and very few container plants added by TR. Trees, however, are not lacking as much.
So I think at least new ground textures should be considered.
When I had a testplay of your current Map6 a while ago I was a bit disappointed by seeing a eastsouthern border of Morrowind mostly looking like the Westgash of Vvardenfell (well done, though). I know that those areas are subject to changes anyway but... I just think we could pull off even some more uniqueness there.

lol map 6...

that aside, I've long thought that having a set for the deshaan plains would be nice. Still need to figure out what they are though before we can ask for concepts...

If you or anyone wants to throw together some concepts of Deshaan, or show some examples of Deshaan textures, that's fine and could be helpful. Just make sure it's in an appropriate thread (as in not this thread; put it in a personal concept art thread or make a "Deshaan Plains" thread instead ).