Psientist

I'm going to put this on ice for now. With the amount of problems I'm running into I'm getting the feeling that I should practice some more with something... simpler and smaller :P Let it necro for now and I'll get back at it once I'm more skilled.

Nah they won't be a problem, just have to position the sitting devices in a non-intercollapsing angulation

Still working on the design for the big tables near the scene, here's what I've got so far. Like I said, it won't be done any time soon but I'm working on it. http://i.imgur.com/LQJ8m.jpg

Cool idea meatbomb, but way too advanced for me to mess around with shaders to make dream sequences. To be honest, I'd like to ask people just chillax a bit until I have something more substantial to show and let's not go crazy until then :P But you should totally try to pitch that idea to someone or try to make it happen yourself.

However in reality it will probably look like Ikea's Lego Kingdom, at least for another few months until I pick up some experience :)

With the finals over I finally got a little work done, will post tomorrow night when it (hopefully) looks less like Ikea-furniture :P And for the cave-people: I'm doing this only because I want a reason to actually practice and learn some 3D modeling and texturizing and not just play around with the presets.

Have been studying for my finals, which are tomorrow, but I'll get right back on this once that's over with.

Alright, here's a rough prototype of building 2, floor 1 (Since I've been banging my head against the pillars used in the scene) Like I said, just a prototype, no decoration and pretty much all the placement is subject to change, the textures used are only placeholders to give depth of vision. http://imgur.com/a/WUQOI Also here's a little description of the interior scene I'm concentrating on first: http://i.imgur.com/KVKIf.png

Well, tonight I have learned several ways not to do things! Luckily as far as I know I am free tomorrow and have much more time to spend on this.

Just got back home, gonna down a couple of beers and see if I can squeeze in some actual work on the project today before bedtime! @Suey Yeah but it would raise new issues anyway concerning the angles, don't worry though I'll think of something! @Luke Oooh useful! I'll take a look at that for sure :) @Raddra It's too early to flesh out any NPC's and such, I like working on one thing at the time and right now is basic textures for the environment so I can make a prototype. Still not going to be a cave ;)

Haha yeah I sat like 5 - 14 hours a day with my minecraft project. I remember spending every day trying to come up with a way to make a kind of jackpot system for a mod of mine, after a week (and some help to be honest) I finally succeeded! Only the game's obfuscation rendered the arrays useless so I had to scrap it all :) Sadly my "eye for details" is already rather decent, I already can't play any game without localizing tiling patterns, seams or such or think about the way they've arranged the furniture and so on. I can chose to ignore it, but I'll always know that it's there... Well of course! I'm going to make sure everything matches color-wise, play around with light sources, try to add details as the big picture grows. But I think it would be better to save the hand-work for the smaller details. I mean that texture could probably work in some more cartoony or line-art indie game, but it doesn't quite fit with the overall quality of Skyrim. Although Skyrim has a mix of photography and hand-designed textures. Mainly due to lack of dragon and ancient ruins reference photos I suspect, but there's also stuff like that one texture with the leaves which seem to have gotten a pastel filter and outline effect or some such, or the very obviously tiled field of daisies texture. But since I got interested in this kind of stuff I've always used that as an inspiration, that even professionals aren't flawless and if they can afford to make mistakes then so can I! I will keep that in mind, maybe I'll bother you about 3D modeling if I can't find a tutorial that explains what I need in a way that I understand some day in the future :)

Ooh be sure to show it to me once you are done! :) Is it for a mod, game, commercial/project or movie? Yeah I just use it for a quick overview in the render, I'm about to install CS 32-bit so I can get the nvidia plug-in working. Also I'm abandoning that abomination! I was going to use that texture from Two Worlds 2 as a reference for detail work when I discovered it was a free texture :P Still, it's an experience. I'll probably end up hand-making things again in the future but right now I want to get the ball rolling for the skooma den so I'll be cheaping out and using free textures as much as I can :) Or well, tomorrow is ball-rolling day, today is resting my eyes-day I think!

Well, it ain't exactly great but it's a big improvement from earlier versions :D 44 unique bricks, just need to add detail to them but I've got tunnel vision from working 10 hours in a row so I think I'll save that for tomorrow. Funny enough I'll probably end up just using a free texture instead, but practice is never wasted time! http://i.imgur.com/Uzpef.jpg Edit: No no no no! I was just browsing CGTextures and noticed one thing... one of the super-sexy textures from Two Worlds 2 is from there! I guess now I can use it without worrying about copy-rights at least :)

I'm having a hard time trying to check out the texture in the render, as soon as I as much as glance at the normals they make everything look like some kind of alien sponge :( http://i.imgur.com/n9rL6.jpg I've done about 1/4th of the current version, probably not going to be able to finish it tonight, plus I'm starting to freak out over if it doesn't look good with hand-drawn bricks. But I don't just want to take a brick texture that someone else has already made and just call it mine :( Oh and thanks Suey :)

Ok I think I've got it :) Thanks for all the help, I really appreciate that you guys are taking your time helping out! Also working on a totally revised version now, should have something ready by tonight! Also I cut down a lot on my shadows and highlights, I am too used to the cartoony style I used for minecraft with exaggerated highlights and shadows.

Yeah the walls are one of their concrete textures :) But they have almost no sandstone textures, at all. Next gen model would be cool, but I've mainly done textures (I actually got into this whole thing about a year ago when I made a texture pack and some mods for minecraft, which means no modeling) and haven't gotten into any real 3D software, my cunning plan so far has been to make as much as possible in UDK and then export the meshes and then read a guide on how to use 3DS Max so I can adjust them. So no skill, almost no experience, but for the first time in my adult life I have a hobby that I enjoy so I'm determined to give it the time it needs :) Anyway [/blog] :P Changed the texture to a sharper one, more "bricky" I guess. I realized that if I had to change the base texture I had to go back a few versions before I messed up the bricks themselves. So if this base looks better then I guess I'll start working from scratch on it. Also I know the areas around the bricks are too dark, it's just a layer of darkening to give the bricks shape, I didn't realize how dark it would look in the render so I'll just adjust that, maybe replace it with some concrete. http://i.imgur.com/wavRe.jpg

W.I.P (actually about to be scrapped) the pattern is more soothing but doesn't tile like I mentioned, so something like this but with vertical seams that are somewhat asymmetrical? ps: I could probably use a more high res base for the stones themselves, this one is kind of blurry. I just don't want to use any copyrighted material. http://i.imgur.com/lUQAp.jpg

@TheSuey Dat pillar! I love that greek structure, but honestly what is lacking is my skill at modeling. Here's some concept for the pillar that I just whipped up but that's been at the back of my head. And yeah maybe I should simply take a photo of my blueprints and try to explain the layout more properly so you guys who wants to help can get a better idea of what it looks like in my head. http://i.imgur.com/yxbtO.png @Matth85 The pillars will be mostly along the wall where there's no real "action" but there are 4 pillars in the center of a great hall, with tables placed on 2 sides of them, but the centerpiece will be a performance stage which I at least plan on making rather dimly lit. Actually here's a toss up instead: Black Circle = Pillars. Gray Cicle = Table. Red Circle = Warm light source. Black square = Scene. Blue Circle = Cold directional lightning from an opening in the roof that is supposed to hit the center of the stage and creating like a pillar of light that will illuminate the performer. (Preferably operated so it can be opened/closed) http://i.imgur.com/XDRa4.png The problem is that it HAS normals :P I just need to make better ones, draw them by hand or something. I started on a non-tilable texture where I started polishing each stone to make it unique, I'll just drag and drop those onto a new plate and see what I can do with them. I made the structure with 128x grids so the long stones should be 256x128 and the smaller ones 128x128, sadly I also made them very square :(

Also a question to anyone who've worked a bit with graphics before: Do you think it would work well if I made the texture simply not tile around the edges and then just slap it onto each surface of the pillar? If I'm not screwing up too much I've estimated that the size of the blocks means only 1/3 of the texture will be used on each pillar. My headache about it is that they would still need to connect at the edges which does not work well at all with an asymmetrical pattern. Hell I'll probably spend all day making another 5 versions of this texture until something fits. As someone pointed out in the previous page there's many vertical lines, but there has to be seams at the edges otherwise it looks completely unnatural. Not that I'm saying it does look natural right now, but I just need some goddamn seams ok? :P http://i.imgur.com/rvMwV.jpg Going to try something similar to that texture but see if I can mess around to remove the horizontal seams or at least make them less obvious, but keeping the vertical ones.

Hehe ok it's cool man, it's just a far throw from "arabic whorehouse" to "stoner cave with dubstep music in the background" Get... out... of... head, Charles! No really, house 2 floor 1 south-west corner is a hand-to-hand fighting pit. Rather close to it is the cooking cage. So far I don't really plan on any quests or even NPC interaction (Although I have a few concept in my head) because just making the graphics and models will probably take around half a year.

Dubstep :( really. And again, nope, no cave. But feel free to make a cave skooma den, I'm sure Skyrim is big enough for two of those!

Yes sorry I am just very tired and stingy tonight! I will try to do something about that tomorrow morning! Thanks for the suggestions!

Were those some hidden insults? :P If you think I think this s*** looks good then you are mistaken, but I am a complete newbie to graphics so I'm not really able to whip up anything good just like that. Takes me hours just to make something barely presentable. But if you want to give me some pointers please do! Are you thinking something like elevating bricks randomly to break the cross pattern?

The vertical lines are supposed to go in the angles of the octagon, because it's hard to bend a brick :) I just need to adjust the size and alignment correctly

Good point Luke, I'll save that for finishing touches on textures that turn out decent enough to use :)