Recreating the Imperial City(and possibly more) in Blender

[jstevoj]

Hello Nexus Community, Fans of TES:IV Oblivion, and Blender Enthusiasts.

 

I wanted to let you know that I am currently working to re-create the Imperial City in Blender for nostalgic purposes as a way to memorialize The Imperial City and by extension, Oblivion.

 

The goal is to end up with 100% new high quality models and textures that look photo realistic by modern standards. I want to see what the Imperial City looks like when not limited to the graphical capability of real time rendering from 2006. When it's all said and done a video tour of the entire city would be in order, lots of still renders, and a port to UE4 for at least my own pleasure to walk around in. (I'll have to look at possible legal issues but I can say I would love to release the .Blend file and UE4 project to the world for free when they're finished, if Bethesda lets me).

I've spent some time on this already for a few days and I'm still in the phase of getting the original models into Blender, placing everything where they need to be, and applying the default textures to them so that I can start with a true to form accurate representation of the Imperial City as it is in game so that I can work from there. The final result will be as close to the original as possible but essentially way higher res and more geometry detail.

 

 

My Brother will be helping me on this endeavor bringing modeling skills to the table and I also have experience working with Blender with which I created an intro for a youtube channel.

-Texturing is an unknown as of yet given that both our attempts to learn how to do it has resulted in us giving up but we're committed to learn, as needed we'll reach out to you on this thread and elsewhere on the forums.

 

 

So after just getting things started I've imported every building structure into blender, placed the Palace and Market District models to where they need to be and rendered a few images just to see that cycles lighting in action with original assets (I'll eventually get links to higher resolution uploads, but for now due to the file size limit I've turned 5k and needlessly higher resolution renders down to 720p Jpegs)..

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Will post more documenting my progress. If you think you have knowledge that could help us PLEASE post it! We're specifically concerned with Texturing but it will be a while before we get to that state.

 

PS: I can only dedicate at most my weekends to this project as of yet, so if you're looking forward to the final results do be aware that it could take a very long time. Minimum several months and hopefully not longer than a year but no commitments!

Edited October 29, 2018 by jstevoj

[crazylion]

Hi

 

Ambitious project

Before you put more work into it, you should know that you have already an legal issue on hand. You can recreate the Imperial City but you can not use any assets (Meshes or Textures) of the original Oblivion Game. Bethesda made that very clear and thats the reason that Projects like Beyond Skyrim have to create all asssets from scratch. That also means loading the original mesh into blender and manipulating them is out of the question as you still use the original ( you might use them as a reference for your model)

 

Also my advice befor you make any models be aware how the texture should look as you need to make the uv's (this is part of the modeling). Also you want to reuse textures as much as possible otherwise the load would be even for UE4 to much if everthing has induvidual texture maps (particular as you aim for high res). Make for example one Window mesh plus texture and reuse it every where it fits, same like columns and anything that repeats itself. For texture variations you can use decal in UE4 to make them look not so repetitive.

 

Good luck

 

CL

[jstevoj]

Thanks for the comment, and yes we fully intended to reuse (our) assets as much as possible, similar to how the originals are set up.

 

The final result would have no original meshes/textures manipulated or not, they'll all be made from scratch made to look similar by our observation of the original, but I have a question.

 

When you say "you might use them as a reference for your model" that reads as we are free to use them as a reference or was that said meaning that the mere act of loading them into blender is an issue because we "may" use them as a reference and that wouldn't be allowed? It's my understanding that as long as I'm not publishing them I can use the assets as I wish(Such as making renders for my own pleasure), and secondly that as long as I don't publish any of the originals in any way shape or form it shouldn't matter that at some point I used the originals inside blender for visual comparison's sake. The intent for the models was always to make them 100% from scratch, but obviously to keep them as true to form as possible we need to directly compare them to the originals inside Blender.

 

Also, I wonder if there are issues with simply posting rendered images of the original assets in Blender? Before I get to ever publishing Blender/UE4 files I'll read all of Beth's legal documents and do more research when it comes to this topic but thanks for your comment because potential issues like this was one of the things I wanted to have discussed. I hope that one day I can get the formal consent from Bethesda to continue with this, but in the meantime I'll do my best not to violate any terms/laws and obviously won't publish any original assets, the extent of porting them is solely that we can compare them visually to make our own Meshes/Textures- doing so is not a violation of the law as I understand it but I'd be happy to hear from anyone who might know better.

Edited October 30, 2018 by jstevoj