Skooma's Architecture Works

[SkoomaBoy]

Hello guys

 

First of all I wanted to mention some parts of my ideas that guide my work on Skyrim.

 

Skyrim is a dirty, destroyed place, and most of the cities don't reflect what the lore tells about them in my own personnal opinion.

 

Let's see Whiterun, the city is often told to be some kind of equivalent to the Imperial City in Skyrim, but it looks weak, as for its Jarl, Balgruuf "the Greater", ofcourse it looks charming, but I think this ruin of a city in the middle of that tundra plain gets boring after hours of playing Skyrim.

 

But I wanna talk about something else for now, because even if Whiterun looks "weak", it has an identity, and walls.

 

I actually want to talk about what I call the "Bethesda-non-important-towns-visuals-kit" which refers to Towns such as Winterhold, Falkreath, Dawnstar, which are actually made of that kit which includes: The Jarl Longhouse, Some random cottages, a wooden gate if we're lucky, and the usual boring Stormcloak soldier uniform readapted to the colors of the hold. These towns were highly neglected, and the developers used the excuse of Skyrim being in a crisis time and events like the Red Mountain Blow for making these towns look incredibly boring and weak. They don't have an atom of personnality so they will be my first priority here.

 

Winterhold.

 

There's a few things in the lore about Winterhold, it was built by an archmage, it once was a town as powerful as Solitude economicly, it had the great mix of cultures that you can find on Island Solstheim, with a settled Dunmer community. My point is to make Winterhold a place where magic seems present, let's take it Winterhold was saved by the magic effect field the college generates around the tower. Making it a place surrounded by magic, triggering the apparation of unexpected vegetation, and maybe grass? And implenting some elements of Dunmer architecture aswell. Maybe at some point i'll start to really appreciate the town and decide to make it semi-lore friendly, deleting the fact it is supposed to be a town which was destroyed and replace it by the fact it stayed intact thanks to a magic surrounding field, but we'll see how it goes on as modifying the lore is always a tricky thing.

 

Let's get technical, the actual version of my Winterhold remake includes a few parts of custom architecture. Walls, gardens, some buildings are now made off stone, as for the Jarl's Palace or the Important town's families houses. The towers used for the town were chose to give that identity to the town aswell. I consider it on Alpha Stage by now.

Most of the interiors will be also remade.

 

http://nsa32.casimages.com/img/2012/11/12/121112013743712474.jpg

http://nsa32.casimages.com/img/2012/11/12/12111201333351793.jpg

http://nsa31.casimages.com/img/2012/11/12/121112013828618781.jpg

http://nsa32.casimages.com/img/2012/11/12/121112013909624979.jpg

http://nsa31.casimages.com/img/2012/11/12/121112013532284324.jpg

 

I expect some critiscism and discussions about the ideas I've evoked and further ideas from you guys!

 

See ya!

Edited November 12, 2012 by SkoomaBoy

[CanisRex84]

Hey Skooma, looking great, nice to see you followed through with the WIP..

[TWarrior]

nice work! make sure to keep us updated!

[samv96UK]

Looks nice pal! If you ever wanted a hand with anything, whether it be building, or just giving some feedback, I'd be happy to help! :thumbsup:

[SkoomaBoy]

Thanks for the feedback guys, i'm putting the Winterhold project aside for a while at the moment, i'm focusing on creating a whole new world featuring its own lore, and a Late Medieval setting, the map featured in this world will be about 2xSkyrim, the specific setting is a Kingdom named "Milsenval", here are a few screenies, the mapped world at the moment equals the size of the Whiterun Hold.

 

http://nsa31.casimages.com/img/2012/11/15/121115015258524503.jpg

http://nsa32.casimages.com/img/2012/11/15/121115015357575857.jpg

[Framentin]

Very, very nice!

Creating architectural models for the Skyrim game engine is my favorite creative endeavor atm, and having done some already I know how much work that could be, so congratulations for what you have started here. I like the towers, stone work, and the slightly sagging rooves. Good attention to details.

 

You also seem to have tackled the usual specularity issue rather nicely, would you care to discuss and exchange some pointers on your method for this? (since there is sort of a debate as to the best way, alpha ch. for the normal map and/or alpha property node in the nif file). Personally I found how to reduce this but I'm not fully satisfied yet.

 

Anyway, at the very least, this deserves a thread of its own. 8-)

Edited November 15, 2012 by Framentin

[SkoomaBoy]

Very, very nice!

Creating architectural models for the Skyrim game engine is my favorite creative endeavor atm, and having done some already I know how much work that could be, so congratulations for what you have started here. I like the towers, stone work, and the slightly sagging rooves. Good attention to details.

 

You also seem to have tackled the usual specularity issue rather nicely, would you care to discuss and exchange some pointers on your method for this? (since there is sort of a debate as to the best way, alpha ch. for the normal map and/or alpha property node in the nif file). Personally I found how to reduce this but I'm not fully satisfied yet.

 

Anyway, at the very least, this deserves a thread of its own. 8-)

 

Thanks! Well I think you're right and there's a bunch of opportunities creating new architecture models for the Skyrim engine, there's about 2 or 3 real mods avaible for Skyrim which brings interesting new models and settings (Moonpath to Elswyr is an example). There's something bigger to bring with custom new settings than with making Female models' boobs bigger and their outfit almost unexistant, or bringing to Skyrim cities more Trees and flowers than there are in any forests of Skyrim ;), things people seem to love nowadays, facts that depresses me highly.

 

And ofcourse, here's my method on nif files, it's rather simple. I simply use a BSLightingShaderProperty that I copied from some standard Skyrim architecture, and copy it under my NiTriShape with the "Properties" option at the very bottom of the block list (write the ID of the BSLightingShaderProperty that you've copied in your .nif) replace the textures with the correct ones, enable vertex colors in NiTriShape data, and you're done. If in game, you're experiencing awful overlighting and unexpected reflection, then open your .nif, disable the vertex colors, save it, reload it and enable them again. Most of the issues I personally had came from incorrect vertex colors which is triggering overlighting problems ;).

Edited November 15, 2012 by SkoomaBoy

[omnimuffin]

Your rendition of winterhold looks stellar, man.

[SkoomaBoy]

Your rendition of winterhold looks stellar, man.

 

I'm not quite sure about what "stellar" exactly means as an adjective (sorry i'm french hehe), I take it you mean it doesn't look like a place that could exist on earth, well if that's what comes from it, thank you, as the main goal was to make it look like a place in a sort of valley surrounded with magic :) .

[kili202]

i like the idea a lot, magic is a huge part of skyrim, it needs to start influencing something. i would quite like to see some kind of glowy, particle effects like some kind of magic looking fog. afterthought, maybe use that fog and surround the area with that no damage frost effect thing you pass through during the sheogorath quest to make it feel like going through a barrier. would be a cool addition.

p.s for the winterhold thing, didn't notice the new world your making, scrolled down too fast :psyduck:

Edited November 15, 2012 by kili202