Rodan
Spellbinder of Blacklight
Registration Date: 02.03.2003
Posts: 1,089
Location: City of Blacklight
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Just got this message from Astarsis. Has some rather interesting suggestions for building the new city:
Hi there, I will quickly explain my Daggerfall stategy and how it can apply to Black Light
Each TES4 city has a unique architecture. One way to create a unique
city without redoing all the work is to select stone, wood and roof
textures for the general buildings (Church, Fort and Walls / Barrack
have their own separate texture sets)
Then the idea is to pick a *major sysle* by selecting buildings from
2-4 cities to represent the general regional style. You can add a few
exceptional building from special sources (other cities and / or Dongle
or Lady E for exemple)
All the buildings get retexture with the common texture set. Not as
simple as it seems. When I retextured the Bloodmoon Skaal houses in
Morrowind, some textures match directly, others don't and you need to
build textures from scratch for those, using painting/cloning or in the
worst case doing it all from scratch.
One way to avoid a huge mod size is trying to pick/adapt textures from
various city. For exemple take the wood from Bravil, the stone from
anvil, the roofs from Cheyindal.
If peoples with 3DS experience are availlable it may be possible to
create models quickly by rearanging meshes. Or even brand new models
(Barabus, Dongle, FlyTSI) but those take a lot of time.
Of course all this take time. So how do you start working in the
meantime? The idea is to use placeholder. Once you selected all the
buildings you want retextured for Blacklight, you create a new object
slot Blacklight_house_01, BlackLight_door_01, etc and you assign to it
the appropriate placeholder model. It's easier than that. In Morrowind
you just opened the house object you want, type a new name in the name
space, click save and it ask you if you want to create a new object.
You say yes.
The same procedure is used for walls, fort, caserns, bridge, church.
Again, you can choose a church from a city and retexture it
differently. Because the house, walls, fort, church will be both
retextured and mixed in a new way, it will fool the eye and look fresh.
Keep in mind for each building, both the LOD (simplified) model and the
real model need to be retextured so the city can have a region separate
from the wilderness / villages so you get a good load time.
What I plan to do for Daggerfall is an ultra fast mockup with the main
models, just to select them. Once satisfied I create the placeholder
set in a separate mod and start working on the real city using
placeholder.
I will likely try various retexturing and see what work best.
For Black light, I think a Skingrad/Cheydinhal/Chorol/Bruma (non-Skaal
buildings) would be nice. You may want to throw in
imperial-retextured-for-Redoran feeling (much like Mournhold but golden
rather than greenish) as the mainland side probably don'tt look like
the Vvardenfell side.
But all that is up to you. I haven't seen a stone texture that fit
black light, as from memory I recall really cool black stones that
would really fit neatly with the name. In fact a mix of darker stones
for walls, fort, housing, church would look cool and very distinctive,
ranging for gleaming black to dark gray. maybe even with gold-incrusted
decorative patterns. The wood from Bravil would fit nicely as it is
already dark. Not too sure for the roof. Cheydinhall seemed to be
darker, but you may want to lighten the mood. Still I would not go too
colorful.
If the city is that dark, you can lighten it up with banners.
In any case, that's just idea I had thinking about black light.
I did similar analysis for Daggerfall / Camlorn and surrounding areas
(Alcaire, Anticlere, Yrkalon, Dwynen, Illesian Hills, etc...) I'm bound
to try out / explore various retexturing and get familiar with the
buildings.
Daggerfall *style* is planned to go around
Skingrad/Choroll/Cheydinhall/Anvil with mix from Bruma (nonskaal),
Leyawiin, Bravil (especially poorer quarters)
I'm thinking of using Leyawiin wood, and probably mostly Anvil rooftop.
For the plaster I want it somewhat colorful. For the stone I want it
colorful as well. perhaps on the redish side, with variances for other
town. Some houses might get stone artwork as in Arena. I'm thinking of
using Anvil/Imperial city structure for temples (instead of churches).
Uncertain about walls and forts, but it has to look somewhat massive.
Probably Skingrad or Choroll style.
I think blacklight should ere on the Bruma/Cheydinhall style since
those cities are closer and those would be the strongest influences.
I don't plan to go too extreme in size. Daggerfall and other major
cities might ere in the imperial city scale for size, but I doubt I'll
go in the 400 like in Arena /Daggerfall. But then, who knows.
Daggerfall was large, but most buildings were empty.
Anyhow, will really be a side project... I'll see how easy/hard it will be.
Let me know if you plan on using a similar approach.
Take care !
Astarsis
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