Silgrad Tower from the Ashes

A harbour set and siege equipment set sounds especially exciting! It's good to hear that there's more to come once you're done. And nice that you've chosen ST as your home, nonetheless =) .

Actually, I think that before I start on those package sets, I'll do some armors first. I have always wanted to make my own armor, that's what got me into 3d modelling, I wanted to make my own armor and weapons.
I think I'll try Gordon Freemans suit, or perhaps the Ironman suit... or both. That would be fun

Which reminds me; are there any good armor modelling tutorials for 3ds max?

armor is prety much done the same as any character modelling. Nothing special to it, standard poly modelling stuff. edge and face extruding, cuts and redirection edgeloops.

It is most important to get good reference photos though. preferably orthogonic views.

Surely there have to be some tricky parts?
It has to be different from the modeling I've done so far. I know I have to apply a skin modifier, but is that really everything?

hang on. skinning it is a little far down the road . I just mentioned the modelling part. Skinning is the last thing before you nif-ify it, cross that bridge when you come to it. Tricky parts? thats relative. Depends on what it is you are modelling. just skim some tuts on character modelling for real time applications for workflow hints. Some times I model high poly> retopo/low poly> UV> normal map> textures. Other times I will model low poly>UV> highpoly>normal map>textures. Depends on how organic it is and what details I want to bake. Just get good reference and you can make anything.

Drawbridge is almost done I think:
http://picasaweb.google.dk/TTaastroem/Po...0589815746(looks like it wants to eat me)
http://picasaweb.google.dk/TTaastroem/Po...5203213122(there's a bug in my testing worldcell that allows the camera to go trough surfaces and such. I've tested the models in other cells and there's no problem there, so there's nothing wrong with the models)
http://picasaweb.google.dk/TTaastroem/Po...9435469666(the winch for the drawbridge mechanism, I know the winch is floating in midair. By the way, the stairs over there doesn't work, you can't get up without jumping)

Fabulous, Tobi! That's two magnificent pieces of animated architecture in one day (RW's hoistbasket being the other)....exciting stuff! :goodjob:

I don't know how to animate it though. It's easy to animate the winch since the only thing it needs is to turn around a few times.

The drawbridge itself should have it's Pivot point in the right spot.
Of course the easiest thing would be to remove the ropes, but then there's no challenge to it.

I have attached the Nif files (both bridge and winch) and the 3ds max file for the drawbridge (not the winch)
So if anyone wants to give it a go on animating the damn thing, here you go

I'll take a shot at it, I've had a few ideas for animating ropes recently, so hopefully it shouldn't be too tricky.

Should the whole lot go up, or should the three beams stay down?

Edit: Here's a max scene of the animated ropes for you to look at. As you'll see, they could do with a few more segments, but it gets the idea across.

I think I can probably work havok onto the ropes as well, so they'll act as they should when hit by the player.

That looks pretty good.


The whole thing goes up, beams included.

I imagined that the player would simply walk right through the ropes, first of all because I think I would be annoyed as a player by getting stuck while trying to make my way through.
Secondly because I think that it would make the whole scene much 'lighter* for computers to handle.

But if you want to work havok on the ropes, I won't stop you. It would look really cool.