Roman temple (total war style)

Nistrum

Hey guys, this may be a little unusual. but I have always wanted to work for The Creative Assembly. I have never been able to find references for the kind of polycounts they use for their structures in the TW siege battles and battle scape... does anyone have an idea what would be an acceptable polycount? anyhow, I want to doll up my folio and would LOVE to apply to CA but I wanted to do something that would specifically point out that I would be good for CA so I figured why not replicate parts of ROME and bring them up to date with modern poly counts and texture files.

what I have at the moment is basically a block out, the normals on the columns are mostly done, they just need some messing up but ill do that alter with the diffuse map. other than that its mostly place holder stuff until I get to each specific part. I'm trying to make space savings in the uv map by using alot of repeating shapes, the "support things" sitting just under the roof supports and the column parts themselves being a good example.. id like as much help as I can get at the moment so everyone is welcome I know this Isn't the most flattering SS but hey it will do for today :P

so without any more blannering here we go :P



the dark block is basically human scale, this is designed to be a medium scale temple. not monolithic but impressive enough to make people go OOOooohhh

nbac

good start!
what references do u use?

Nistrum

ha a mind numbing assortment of google trawled images, I have a folder full of them, its sort of based on a number of things, mainly the pantheon and a number of other small temples, i was originally going to make it smaller, more like a shrine, but i wanted something more impressive for my folio tanks for the support, hopefully it will get better from here on in :P

Nistrum

ok time for stage 2! few tweaks to get the scale to feel a little better. starting to add some details to bits with normal maps generated in ZB. progress is slow but happening. any crits welcome guys.

oops double post. and my god that BG is painful, will fix it asap ::fixed::

Nistrum

hey guys, I'm starting to feel a little lonely in here cmon guys, i know i started this early on but give me something :P

ok ill give a little more first.. my poly count is 10k is that alot for something like this? can anyone tell me?

also another update yay! this one at least looks better



i added some detail to the wall now the temple structure is UV mapped the only thing left that is "placeholder" really is the outer edge of the base the temple stands on. a little more normal mapping work to be done and then i can move on to some colour.

any comments are good comments
ok maybe not any but still :P

::EDIT:: oh and dont worry there will be a door in the doorframe, I removed it because theres a massive smoothing error on the normal map :P

Nistrum

hey guys, im trying to get this up to standard was going to ask if 1024 is the kind of tize texture you would use on an asset like this or if you would more likely use 2048? at the moment its broken up into 2 1024 maps. one for the coloumns/doorway etc and one for the structure itself.. the way it is now it seems really low rez.. id really like this to look awesome and id really like some help

Noors

If it's for a total war kind of game, 10k tris + 2048 is too much, if it's for an FPS, it's not enough, so, it depends of your target
Can't help but find the curvy shape of the columns a bit weird. It feels a bit egyptian.
Would help if you post your textures also.

Nistrum

Hey man, thabks for the reply. Awesome aavatar. Btw.

By curvey you men that they bulge out about half way down? That's easy to fix and yeh. I'd thaught the smae thing on the polycount. The problem is there just isn't anything I can look at that would give me any idea of the polycounts they have on the tw games. I can cut it down a little. I'm trying to place it between current shogun 2 and next gen which I'm guessing will be rome 2. So I want it higher than what's just come but still a belivable level. Does anyone know any details about empire or shogun 2 buildings? I might change the tops of the colomns. The ionic. Type might fit better and I should be aable to drop the number of tris with that. Its obviously the colomns that are upping the polycount. Do you think 2 texture sheets is over the top?

Noors

Well I do think your polycount is high for such shape, so post some wireframes, it's hard to tell like this. 2 sheets of texture isn't too much. I guess they use a lot of tilable textures for their buldings. You can still use atlases but i wouldn't bother for a small project.
That base is made of 1 stone block ? pretty weird, also is the pediment, but its maybe still wip.

Nistrum

hahah yeh you got it, the textures for the base are totally not done. i just put it in re to stop it looking quite so odd. ill definitely try and bring the polycount down though. il make the coloumns streight up and down first, thatll help

Nistrum

ok another update. im getting somewhere slowly... colomns fixed, and i think the normal map came out much better, ill post a shot of it on its own in a bit, unfortunately the maya viewport is making it pretty noisy, I sharpened up the diffuse textures, ill be starting to add in some damage to the bricks, not allot, just subtle things and i will paint some actual diffuse texture rather then the bland things i have now for the columns etc soon.

in other news I am now at 6k tris, thats a side effect of the changes to the coloumns, steps and the blocks that were going round the edge of the roof, a waste of polys as i can just texture them in.

if anyone has anything else to say feel free

Nistrum

ok guys, I'm basically done with this, saved on textures by reusing alot. i have 2 textures that are small tiled textures. one for the roof tiles and another for the floor tiles. both 512 tiled a few times. the only unique textures are on the temple its self and the coloumn/door parts.

Anyone have any comments?

Habboi

Show us a wire and the texture sheets. Other than that it looks suitable for an RTS game. It'd be nice if you could make more structures like this and a build a scene out of it to mimic Total Rome for your portfolio.

achillesian

present in an engine

Nistrum

@ Habboi yeh, i had been thinking that definately. i think if i use this as a sort of centerpeice i could build some hos municipal style buildings around it? ill work on that asap

@achillesian i will wanted to get it mostly finnished before i jumped into UDK and made a whole new set of headaches for myself :P

thanks guys

Oiban

Looks good! Only crit would be adding some variation in the walls and roof, i see you've added some green, but if that's for an RTS, the player would see this thing froma distance, and those things are too small to be noticeable, I would try to do something bigger that makes the structure more interesting from a distance. Be careful with the pillars intersecting with the wall, they look a little bit odd if you pay close atention to the model.

anyway, it's looking good! i'd like to see witha cool render in UDK or any engine!

ayoub44

great job , i hope you make this piece on udk . and use vertex paiting to add more details on it

Nistrum

thanks oiban i LOVE your warhammer hall. I have it in my inspiration folder.

i was thinking about that, but the texture is obviously tiled a few times.. im just a little worried about repetition.. yehwell spotted i have been going through the thing cleaning it up for moving into UDK and cutting the intersecting parts of the pillar is on my list. i 100% agree about the roof too. i was intending to putsome moss amoung the tiles to add some more interest... but totally forgot :P


@ ayoub44 i still need to learn how to use vertex painting properly. does anyone want to point me in the direction of a good breakdown of exactly how its done?

thanks for all the help guys. ill try to get more updates asap.

Nistrum

ok i have a bad feeling that imagecave is getting shirty with me. if my images aren't showing just let me know and ill find a work around.

i played with shading in the brickwork. i like where its going so ill vary the shade a little and add a few bricks of a lighter/darker shade to help break it up. i finally got round to doing some sort of texture for the columns i think they are really starting to look alot better... i feel like i might have to redo the roof texture. its tiling a hell of alot and anything i change on the diffuse map is going to show up really badly especially if i do create a scene and use that texture on the other buildings i will have problems. so i think ill just pre-empt that and redo it now. the intersection on the columns i should be sorted now... other than that i think its getting there now. ill redo the roof and touch up a few bits before i try and move it into UDK, although im notoriously bad at getting UDK to do what i want :P



and since you asked so nicely :P WIRES http://usera.imagecave.com/nistrum/Templewires.jpg

Nistrum

ok guys time for more updates. a slightly less clean temple. .. i think img going to have to redo the roof.. we will see....

KazeoHin

I'm going to be a pain and say, the temple looks good from the perspective rendered, but its missing the marble statue-facade found in the face of the roof. Needs gods doing battle or something. With that it would be great for an RTS.

Nistrum

haha. i had exactly the same idea. i gave it the UV space to do it, im just not confident enopugh to produce one of my own... im not really sure how to go about it.. anyone have any ideas?

i had a shot in Zbrush but feel my lack of good anatomical sculpting skills will just hinder the overall look...

Lazerus Reborn

Nistrum use a alpha,

Scroll down Orbs thread to see a mini tut on how to do it ;3

http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=83186&highlight=orb

Nistrum

that is an awesome post thanks for the link. ill have a look into alphas, now i have to find an image to put on the pediment

thanks for everything guys. when i look at how i started till now i remember why i love polycount so much.. you guys are awesome :P

Nistrum

ok mini update. i started on the peent sculpture thing.. and the way im working it this is how its comming out, does it look ok or am i just epic failing at this...

Nistrum

im not really sold on the deisng gn thing.. im going to leave it out for now and port it into UDK and see how we do... do you guys think this is a strong enough peice to put on a folio

Dagon

Well if you could get a nice scene with it or maybe have it on a realistic hill in a dusk setting it may look awesome who knows... But the best idea I think would be to have a showreel of the model showing the basic model then all the detail and then textures added you know what I mean and then a high detailed render.