New Dwemer ornamentation

[bob196045]

Originally posted by InsanitySorrow
WOW, thats some nice work :goodjob:

It certainly is :goodjob: :goodjob:

[Ibsen's Ghost]

Looks extra special in-game. Please use this, guys!

[InsanitySorrow]

If we get proper permissions.

[Ayreus]

Thanks, I appreciate the good reviews . Well, since you already have the base textures I've been using (you did get Phitt's Dwemer tilesets, right?), I don't see any "intellectual copyright" issues with letting you use them...unless there are ettiquette issues that I'm overlooking that I'd need to work out first with Phitt. I seriously doubt that he'd have any problems with it. The silver-ish material and pebbled iron textures I literally made from scratch, so there won't be any problems there. Personally, I'd be more than happy to make these available to the ST community .

[Ibsen's Ghost]

Hallelujah! :bananarock:

[Ayreus]

There is one lingering question, though I take the fact that no one has brought up anything about it as a good sign...is this in keeping with the aesthetics that would have appealed most to the Dwemer? I'm probably my harshest critic, but personal growth, evolving style and all that aside, to be honest the designs in these textures still aren't quite there for me yet. Maybe I just need to work on expanding the aesthetic "vocabulary" a bit... I've been focusing on trim textures because of time, but I wonder if I'm going to need to graduate to somewhat more ambitious pieces before it really starts to take off. Any and all constructive criticism is appreciated... I'm a sucker for punishment (you'd have to get a look at the ex-gf :eek: ), so don't spare my feelings, lol.

EDIT: I'll upload the new textures (or however that's handled; guess I'll need to go over the FAQ again) as soon as I get the "go-ahead" from the other core members of the Forsaken Isles project, since I'm still not sure if there are any issues with loaning materials from the Forsaken Isles project w/o Phitt's explicit permission even if I created them. Phitt's been absent from the Forsaken Isles forum for awhile now and I have no idea how soon I'll be able to get an ok from him directly, so I've put the question before the team.

[Ayreus]

Well, hopefully this won't be taken as ruthless teasing, but I have one final shot of a modified version of the rivet clamp texture introduced in the last post I put screenshots in. This one's definitely a bit more in line with the "steampunk" look's more Victorian accents, but it still looks suitably Dwemerish to me, so I'll let you cast the final verdict.

And here it is: http://i37.tinypic.com/35lu8wk.jpg

Well, enjoy! And don't forget to critique! The more input I get on how I can make these better, the faster it'll happen!

EDIT: As far as giving the community access to these textures goes, I'll let you know the team's decision ASAP. If worse comes to worst, I'll just make my own material textures and recreate the ones I've shown here so that there won't be any claims conflicts at all...as much of a pain in the rump as that'd be. I seriously doubt things will get that bureaucratic over at Forsaken Isles. Bottom line: It's a question of "when", not "if" the community gets these.

[nick_op]

Originally posted by Ayreus
And here it is: http://i37.tinypic.com/35lu8wk.jpg

Well, enjoy! And don't forget to critique! The more input I get on how I can make these better, the faster it'll happen!

I quite like what you have there, but there is one thing I would change. At the moment, the upper and lower trims of the bottom piece seem a little too clean and smooth, I'd personally either gritty them up a bit, or very slightly desaturate them to make them appear less new.

By the way, I was wondering if there are any particular techniques you use to create your dwemer textures? My only experience with them involved massive overuse of the clone stamp tool, but when I finally get my Steam Centurion ready to be texture, I'd like to do a proper job. Any advice you could offer would be appreciated.

EDIT: As far as giving the community access to these textures goes, I'll let you know the team's decision ASAP. If worse comes to worst, I'll just make my own material textures and recreate the ones I've shown here so that there won't be any claims conflicts at all...as much of a pain in the rump as that'd be. I seriously doubt things will get that bureaucratic over at Forsaken Isles. Bottom line: It's a question of "when", not "if" the community gets these.

I was under the impression that Phitt was planning on everything in Sheogorad being modders resources after the initial release.

[RideWithTheWind]

Those textures are gorgeous imo. It's hard to give constructive criticism since your work is more on the artistic side rather than technical side. When I was making textures for my dwemer exterior buildings I choosed to stay close from morrowind's textures, focusing my attention to get a nice ingame rendering with n/disp/spec maps. But I clearly understand your difficulties with artistic choices since you decided to go for something new and never seen before. Dwemer is an old fictional civilisation, so as long as you stay close to the color scheme from tes3 I would say that anything you'll come up with will fit the job nicely.

I personally imagine dwemer textures with a lot of metal rust. But I only worked on rusty exterior pieces so my vision of interiors is maybe not accurate enough. Interiors are less exposed to elements so textures can be cleaner.

In my perspective the upper trim is just perfect. I also like the central patern of the second trim, but like nick_op I'm not so happy with with the external parts. I would have tried to make those kind of beans flatter and increased the relief of the central pattern. Think _--------_ instead of --____-- if you know what I mean. It's nothing really bad but it has an organic feel rather than geometrical feel so I would have make those beans less noticeable. At least for a dwemer ruin. In a game like bioshock for instance it would have been perfect (lots of ideas for dwemer textures in that game btw).

You could also increase the specularity of the central part or decrease the specularity of the sides.

Those shapes around the big white rivets are really nice, maybe you coud increase their relief on your normal and parallax maps. But again, you're the texture artist here so it's up to you.

I wouldn't make any change to the upper trim.

I can't wait to see what you'll come up with for the walls!

[Ayreus]

@core members: I've just spoken to Phitt this morning and he's given his ok; the textures are yours if you want them.

Thanks for the critiques . That border trim's been bothering me too. The aesthetics are just a little off; the bean pattern is a bit too tight considering the high frequency of the pebbled iron grains imo, so something a bit looser would probably work better. I'm also now of the opinion that the beans are completely wrong for the Dwemer (as has been pointed out, too organic), so I'll probably just replace the borders when I get the chance.

@nick_op: I'll be more than happy to give you a few pointers . My approach to creating textures is a bit different than the usual and is fairly involved, so I'd rather exchange PM's than take up a bunch of space trying to explain it in the thread. The best thing I could probably do is write up a tutorial since there's quite a lot to know, but of course that would take some time.

EDIT: @RideWithTheWind: I'll have to take a closer look at Bioshock then. I remember that the style was a bit more Art Nouveau--which come to think of it, you're absolutely right, that would be a really good source of design ideas :goodjob:. I've also been studying up on "turn-of-the-century" (19th-20th) railroad station architecture and ornamentation (think Paris' Gare d'Orsay circa 1910-1920), which also looks like it'll be an extremely promising source of design ideas. Not a surprise, since it also has a bit of an Art Nouveau influence, just a bit more structured, now that I think about it...