Hel Borne's Final Resource

[Ibsen's Ghost]

Wow! I had no idea he'd done so much for us!

[Back2Murder]

Originally posted by Ibsen's Ghost
Wow! I had no idea he'd done so much for us!

Same here, it's actually looking pretty nice. Except for the textures. But I figured they are just temporarily.

[Deeza]

Yeah, they were just a placeholder texture.

Hopefully he will return soon and complete it... but it's not essential for our first release, so time is on our side with this one.

[Ibsen's Ghost]

Just out of related interests: What Happened to Rickious?

Anyway, let's try to keep our discussion here on this thread focused on Helborne's resources. I hate it when things get messy. X(

[Deeza]

Now that we have the Grey Wizard's resources for Blackrose, we can combine it with Hel Borne's gothic architecture. Blackrose looks great by the way - dark, moody and atmospheric. Some gothic touches would only enhance that in my opinion:
City; Blackrose

http://img443.imageshack.us/img443/772/10yq3.jpg
http://img443.imageshack.us/img443/5761/14yd7.jpg
http://img510.imageshack.us/img510/8568/15qe6.jpg
http://img443.imageshack.us/img443/9656/19wn3.jpg
http://img443.imageshack.us/img443/6061/20wy5.jpg
http://img510.imageshack.us/img510/7006/26vt1.jpg

Oh, and this may interest you (contains screens from Arena):
Soulrest (warning, alot screenshots)

[Ibsen's Ghost]

Blackrose looks pretty damn cool. The tower is especially nice! I like towers. I have no idea how he managed to make everything so dark but I worry about how that will look during the daytime (maybe a special weather condition was or can be created so that it can be seen in all its glory). So we now have Grey's 'Blackrose' esp, do we?

There are some interesting points made about Soulrest. Personally, I would not bother to look much into the previous games but that's just me....lore monkey, I ain't. However, the idea of a mud-brick wall is distinctly appealing. As for the coastal area, I've always wanted to see something built on cliffs with winding stairways, paths and cobbled streets. That could be achieved in the outer area beyond the main city walls (in a similar fashion to how Anvil is laid out).

[Deeza]

I put up the link mainly for the discussion points raised by the team members, rather than the screens. Obviously it would be ridiculous to base our city on a version so pixelated (and randomly generated, apparently)... still, I think it might be cool to sneak in a few nods to the original like the High Rock team has been doing. Such as that bright red and white inn somewhere in the city, perhaps?

BTW, I don't have the esp at present but Grey says he will upload it tonight (from the context he said it in, I think the file includes Lilmoth as well).

I think the dark textures should be fine. The weather in central BM will be almost constantly raining or thick fog anyway (you'll hardly ever see the sun in there), so I doubt it will be an issue. Here are the walls during the day, for your viewing pleasure:
http://img443.imageshack.us/img443/6021/05bl9.jpg

[Ibsen's Ghost]

Thanks Deeza! Yes, I'm behind the idea of casting an eye back to the old games.

[Ibsen's Ghost]

Just an update on this. I loaded up the files into Black Marsh just to check them out. Of course, I couldn't get any textures sorted out because they weren't in the files. This puzzled me though because the screenshots show the files as being mostly textured except for the windows...? Nevertheless, I wanted to set them up against the backdrop of Gideon just for reference and I'm pleased to say that the models themselves at least looked absolutely superb!

A few strange things, however:

• The church tower model (#1), although it looks magnificent, seemed to appear in the CS alongside its own interior. I don't know if this is a problem or whether it simply represents just a stage in the normal method of modelling something...?
  
  
• Also, my favourite building from the screenshots (called simply 'building03.nif') behaves in a rather bizarre fashion in the CS. When I drag it into the render window, it appears many, many cells away and even centralising by pressing 'C' did no good whatsoever. In fact, it made me lose the thing entirely after I'd tried to drag it into Gideon. Loading another eventually ended up with two models of the same building floating over the city....and that was just the tip of the iceberg....it just seems to do random things all of the time :eek:. I included the only shot I could manage that showed some part of it remotely up-close (shot #5).
  

[nick_op]

Originally posted by Ibsen's Ghost
Just an update on this. I loaded up the files into Black Marsh just to check them out. Of course, I couldn't get any textures sorted out because they weren't in the files. This puzzled me though because the screenshots show the files as being mostly textured except for the windows...?

You probably already know this, but missing textures cause show up as magenta on the mesh as is shown in your screenshots.

The church tower model (#1), although it looks magnificent, seemed to appear in the CS alongside its own interior. I don't know if this is a problem or whether it simply represents just a stage in the normal method of modelling something...?

Looks like the normals flipped themselves on export. Probably because the x-form wasn't reset prior o the export. It's an easy thing to fix, just need to load it up in a 3d program, get all the normals back the right way round, reset the x-form and re-export.

Also, my favourite building from the screenshots (called simply 'building03.nif') behaves in a rather bizarre fashion in the CS. When I drag it into the render window, it appears many, many cells away and even centralising by pressing 'C' did no good whatsoever. In fact, it made me lose the thing entirely after I'd tried to drag it into Gideon. Loading another eventually ended up with two models of the same building floating over the city....and that was just the tip of the iceberg....it just seems to do random things all of the time :eek:. I included the only shot I could manage that showed some part of it remotely up-close (shot #5).

I'm thinking this is one of two things:

1. The model wasn't centred on 0,0,0 in the 3d modelling program.

2. Another issue with the x-form not being reset.

I'm more inclined to go with the former guess, as I've never seen anything get translated so much with the x-form issue. Either of these would be an easy fix in a 3d program.