VG REMIX - A Link to the Past

Zerogun

Okay, so when I was reading through the contest announcement page I suddenly had A Link to the Past stuck in my head. I've had a few sudden visions about what I am planning to do and came up with three:
1. The moment you discover the Master Sword with tiny animals running across the landscape and fog (if I can pull it off)
2. Settlers of Catan meets Hyrule
3. A diorama of the light world with the dark world opposite it below (think two sides of a coin)

I am currently working on sketch work to help solidify an idea and design down.

Zerogun

All right. So I've decided to hold off on the master sword scene as well as the added work of the dark world. I have settled on a Settlers of Catan hive board design meets A Link to the Past's world lay out. So i'm basing it off this:


I have decided to change the Lake Hylia to the more recognizeable Twilight Princess aspect due to the fact the lake just has a bare island in the middle. The Eastern Temple well probably change a bit with the design but I still want those monster things on the wall. Death Mountain will still have the tower but I'm contemplating how I will finalize the other mountains and/or the Ocarina of Time smoke ring.


I might have to change the board or cut some pieces to place them. I know that the Sanctuary is not fully needed but I would like to play with the graveyard. I want the village but I also want to play with the Desert Temple and have fun with the faces.

But I do need a quick break and I'll be back with models soon enough.

Fenyce

Awesome idea! I love it.
I'm looking forward for more!

Zerogun

Okay, so after a quick detour to marvel at the world's largest and most precisely calibrated magnet in the world that is passing by where I live, I went back to work.

Here we have the base of the castle. I do want to adjust it to add the "secret entrance holes" both in and outside of the courtyard. Kinda hard to change flat pixels to 3D so this will slowly turn into something nice.

Here I have the temple heads and a stand-in cactus. Missing is the courtyard, tongue stairs, and the bones.

Here I have a quick throw together of the swamp temple. The statues lining the door walkway will more than likely change. I feel the textures of the tile will bring this to life a lot better.

My plan is to keep popping out these pieces. I may go back and change things here and there. I am also seeing a lot of other people have a few more polys than what I'm working with, so in the end I might blow up the size of the tiles to add just a few more. But for now I shall just get the small work done.

Zerogun

OH! I totally spaced! I forgot to post how these kinda work together to get a better showing. I'll post more when I get more tiles set up.


On another note I will be sketchfab-ing soon enough.

SentryTheGod

Sweet! I like this idea of tile sets. Keep on going!

Zerogun

Quick set up for Death Mountain

And a quick set up for the Master Sword's resting place.

Next updates should be with some textures as i play around with both pixel art designs and hand painted textures.

Zerogun

Quick little set up of how pieces are looking together. Obviously no textures have been added nor are the models finalized.

I am contemplating adding in basic forests and such to expand out the scope and really fill in a Catan board.

Zerogun

CALL FOR HELP!!!

Okay so after a long delay I've got some new stuff. Right now I'm just finding it a paint in the butt trying to unwrap everything. And this is where my problem is...

here is my swamp temple test....

I like the water and the grass designs which took way too long to work, but somehow this doesn't look right. It's too blurry and it's just... wrong. I need help. A lot of help or else I fear I won't be able to finish this contest.

Please. If anyone is offering help on how to texture such a lot poly, I'd be very grateful. At the moment, trying to follow the rules from the contest, every tile piece and items on that tile are unwrapped on the same UVW which I render out at 128x128.

AlanSMitchell

http://ask.brothersoft.com/why-do-my-reference-images-in-3ds-max-come-out-blurry-when-i-apply-them-to-a-plane-55107.html
This should help

Zerogun

Thanks. But sadly this doesn't help as much. I need to find a shader or settings for a low poly. I also need to figure out how to properly texture everything. Gonna need brain juice on this one

Anthricus

if your textures are low res , go into rendering - renderer, and turn off anti aliasing, filter maps and shadows!

These are all checkboxes hopes this helps dude

Zerogun

First off thanks for all the help with the rendering.

Second off. I think my project is dead in the water. Damn.
http://sketchfab.com/m5kihe0a
I have no knowledge of how to use Sketchfab. And that seems to be the first brick wall of many.
I am unable to figure out a CLEAN way to texture at 128x128. Thus everything looks blurry. My models seem too low poly. And I'm not sure if I can fix it before this weekend. My personal time is extremely limited and I doubt i can save this.

Any help would be welcomed. Though I feel like I've got nothing at the moment.

Vailias

The blur is likely coming from bilinear filtering.
When you upload to sketchfab open up your model, and scroll down on the right hand side to the materials section. click on the diffuse slot, then on the diffuse map image that shows in the browser. Uncheck "Bilinear filtering".

As for texturing tips: in photoshop, use the pencil tool, and change your preferences to use nearest neighbor or point filtering (not sure which they call it) rather than bilinear or bicubic, or whatever it defaults to.
Just remember to turn it back to normal when you're done with this contest.

Zerogun

@Vailias: Thank you very much. That was pretty much the missing key on my project.

Anyways, I will be taking a much needed vacation this weekend and will not be able to finish this project. I am disappointed in myself for not finishing it but I have learned a lot on this project: rediscovering my love of cutting down polygons, pixel painting, low res-texturing, and the rough usage of Sketchfab.

All in all though I deem it a failure of finishing this project I don't consider it a failure of learning from it. And while I concede I know that one day one of this golden orbs will be mine.

This is what I have gotten done so far:
[SKETCHFAB]307d2e68d26a4a749f25906e6e8a7a64[/SKETCHFAB]
[SKETCHFAB]94993e826a9a40af90da308c219b02ae[/SKETCHFAB]
[SKETCHFAB]7f09dd6775564f2085e94110d6080153[/SKETCHFAB]

I would fix: redoing the layouts to incorporate the tile pieces, spend more time texturing, changing the layout.

Good luck to all those finishing the race!