[WIP] Long Dive - Japanese Feudal Fortress Concept

Skinner3D

I've wanted to do a complex scene for a long time and I found this online which I think will work well. 

How would you guys go about establishing proportions, scale, and the terrain? I have Zbrush, Blender, and Substance to work with.
I have done individual buildings before but nothing like this.

The polygon count and texture detail are going to be kept pretty low. I am going to have enough going on just with each of the buildings to try for more.

Skinner3D

My first attempt at getting the ground terraces figured out.

Skinner3D

Solidified and hopefully close to real scale. I think it is probably going to need to be bigger though.

Skinner3D

I finished a wall section.. The other sections I need will be variants on this. I put shapekeys on the window and shutter, so I should be able to randomize the hole size and open/close amount across the multitudes of this model. It really bugs me to leave it this simple, but I know it's going to save me a lot later.

Skinner3D

I don't think I yet fully realize the scope of this project, but putting these walls down has given me a really good idea of the amount of work ahead of me. This was mostly for proportion sake, so all the corners will need to be fabricated. I switched the bamboo geometry out for a texture. It was stacking up way to fast.
81k polys and counting.

Skinner3D

I only get to put a couple of hours in at a time, and I feel like I get a good amount done during that. However, when I put the new buildings into the scene, it seems like I did no work at all because of the scale. 

Skinner3D

Slowly getting things built.

Skinner3D

Added a couple more buildings then ran into serious crunch zones with the proportions. Took some time to purposefully wreck parts of the terrain and then move all the stuff back into place.

ElyesBens

This looks very promising ! Keep it up ! 

Skinner3D

Having to take a few days off because of an art test for a job possibility. Will be back soon.

Skinner3D

And the next round of buildings. 118k polys so far

Skinner3D

My wife asked me if I could put this in UE4, so I guess that is going to be a thing to do for fun at the end of this. I do plan to do a rendered flythrough at the very least. I keep having to remind myself not to worry about textures or how on Earth I am going to make them.
I think I want to shoot for something like this for overall style.

Skinner3D

More buildings. I think block out is maybe 50% done. The large keep and the upper tiers of buildings still need made. 130k so far. I know my machine can handle a couple million just fine. I have to keep reminding myself to keep it low. The terrain and trees are going to eat up a lot, even if I work to keep them lower poly as well. Not actually sure how I am going to tackle either of those parts yet.
I think because of the way I am building this, I can get away with a lot of reusable modular UV map sections.

Skinner3D

Oh look! More Buildings! I am enjoying this project. I am definitely going to have to put the terraces through a sculpting session to smooth out the transition sections.

Skinner3D

Got the keep in at least in proportions. My wife decided that she wanted this to become an Unreal level and then she decided that she wants a character to explore with. So now I am also concurrently making a female steampunk samurai person from a concept I found.

Skinner3D

Well its been a bit. I think I have the modeling done, mostly. I need to figure out how to connect all of the arrays of wall sections. I am not even trying to model the landscape until I get this part textured. 

Skinner3D

I have had a hard time getting myself to move onto the texturing stage. I have no problems painting models, but making tiling stylized textures requires a very different part of my brain, and its not much fun, if that makes any sense.
Anyway I know this is a really bad first look, but I would like help. I used planar projection just to help me see the texture.
My original plan was create a map, divide it into sections, and UV map all the similar polygons into those sections. Unfortunately the roof section needs to be tiled, because there aren't enough in the image to make any roof have enough beams.

Do I need to make a massively repeated image, or is there some other trick? Every polygon is going to need a different number of repeating tiles to get the scale to look right.

I dont think I am going to be able to get away with just a texture for the roofs. They have very distinct 3D silhouettes and the texture just isn't doing it justice. I think the scene poly load is about to skyrocket, but I dont know of a better way to do it. This might make the need for a heavily repeating texture moot, but I need to learn the texturing skill anyway.

Then again, the concept has no pattern at all. What would you guys do?

Skinner3D

I had to take a break from this project, because the UV texturing was not making sense at all. Finally got some advice and figured it out. I have to exaggerate the colors and texture to get it to be visible in the long shots.

Skinner3D

Finally got myself to do the ground texture. The buildings are slowly being fixed as well.

Skinner3D

Pretty much everything except the castle keep and vegetation is done. I am going to paint that as one object.