A Castle Tower

Sir_Dillon

Hi there, guys!

I am quite new here, as well as I am to 3D-art.

I recently started to learn and train myself on creating environment assets with some kind of modular use and tiling textures... Not quite got the hang of it yet, but as I said: I just started...
I want to show you my first real project! So, to start on a --for me-- obtainable scope, I decided to make a castle tower. Sculpted tiling textures with normalmaps. All the stuff of which I see plenty around here, scanning your posts and projects.
I have gotten quite far now with the model itself. My last week on the project I spent fighting with the lightmap and I will come up with some questions about that one. So feel free to drop by and give me your comments! I have a lot of bleeding going on in my lightmap and I might need some good advice there
There are a lot of things I am very aware of myself. Such as inconsistencies in different textures/materials, the still recognizable tiling patterns which I not yet have managed to eliminate sufficiently... maybe things like meshflow. But I thought it more important, not to stick with these issues too much but to go ahead and complete a model with works inside the UDK. So that all the export-stuff and the lightmap got tackled too.
Now… here you go! Some pictures of the current state. Feel free to share your comments and wisdom.

Cheers!

Sir_Dillon

Yeah...

And here I go with my first question about lightmaps.

I understand that the lightmap of a model is responsible for the shadow it casts on other objects and the world, as well as for the detail of the shadow it receives by other elements. I also know that UV-chunks may not be stacked and must't overlap and stuff...

But what about distorsion?

I have attached an example. So just for demonstration purposes look at the Window example and at the way I just mapped it. As I have it inside UDK now I cannot see bad results... But maybe you can tell me if there are things I am doing wrong.

Give it a shot! Thanks!

pnyx

Hey Sir_Dillon
I like what you got going so far. I can't really help you with your lightmapping question though as I don't have any experience with that sort of stuff myself, but I'm sure someone around here can help

as for the tilling, probably some decals or plants, ivory being the classic here i guess, could break up the tilling as well as making it look a little less sterile.

cheers

Snader

Well, distortion in the UV means you'll get distortion in the lightmap, too. Luckily they are generally pretty low on detail so you won't notice stretched/skewed pixels as much, so 'does it look good' is a decent approach. And your current UV isn't all that horribly distorted, anyway.

Sir_Dillon

Hi there!

@ pnyx

Well yes. Some vines to cover the tilling is the thing I will try next.. as soon as I figured out how I do it to match the style at least a little bit.

@ Snader

Well... Okay! Sounds quite reassuring. Happy to hear that! So I will try to keep things the way I started out... And if I should overdo the distorsion... well I guess thats the first thing I will see in the result then ^^

Thank you guys!

Oh yeah... One other question:
Do I get bleeding in the lightmap from anywhere else than the spacing in my UV mapping too? Or is this the only reason?

Sir_Dillon

Finally!!

I managed to overcome my project progression crysis and finally fixed some new parts to amend my tower by a wall.

Some fixes in eg. base colors of the textures are still required to make them blend together more nicely.- And then up next....

some vines I wanted to make will have to be added.

but enough chatter! Here the pics!

Greetz!
Dillon

the elements:



and the results:

moderiert13

Castle Tower is a Facebook-based tower defense game where you build your fortress, create an army of fairytale creatures, and fight other players to become the greatest. I found a game site MMOWood which provides all kinds of game guides for players such as business game Biz Tycoon, MMORPG Wartune, and card game Kings and Legends. I hope it will be helpful to you.

Sir_Dillon

...yyeeah.

Nice Comment, really xD

but I don't care the least bit

C

To get rid of the tiling feel, you can use decals on your walls and roof with damaged bricks/ roof tiles.

Sir_Dillon

Yes, thats right. I am aware of decals, though I do not yet know how to create and use them. Getting into decals is still a thing on my learning-list...

Sir_Dillon

I have added some vines. They can help break up tiling and cover seams of elements, as well as give some life to the scene.

ASGUARDVIKING

Hey dude!

I think what ya have now is getting good! the vines really made a big difference. One thing i have to say at the moment is with the UV, I would relax the UV more so the smaller spaces have more 0:1 info then scale the whole thing up so it uses the most of the 0:1 as possible so it will look better. Keep it up!

e-freak

bump - this looks pretty rad any chance to see what happened to it?

Sir_Dillon

Hi, e-freak!

I have to admit, that this project has not received further attendance yet. Building this tower and the wall, I wanted to get used to the Asset-import pipeline for the UDK. Also I got in touch with modelling and baking my own textures, normals and stuff. I learned quite a lot there so far. But as you can see, creating foliage made it obvious to me, that it is a complicated chapter. And until I have not learned to create shaders and blend materials (e.g. a kind of foliage-roots material with the stonewall) I saw no point reworking and reworking the Vines
Also I would have to do some more assets if I wanted to boost up the scene and make the tower and wall become a castle.

So as soon as I have learned the next things I think I need for this scene to improve, I will revisit. But is a lot there is to learn. And I often do not know where to start

:poly142:

Greetz!