architecture My Medieval City

[Klank]

This is by no means a finished work, there is so much more to do, including humanoids, which i have no clue how to create, the biped is fine, but making it walk, and creating the skin, no clue :P

But anyways here a view from my fountain up towards my cathedral and city wall:




I was thinking that i should scale the walls up a bit as they are smaller than the houses i made too.....

[Jelmer]

Hey klank, welcome to the community! You've got a good start i think, i like the gate building, although the gate entry itself could be a bit higher.
The 'main' castle building to the right is quite good, but has some small things you could change. I think the door is a little too small, even for medieval standards. The fountain texture, maybe use stone instead of this procedural shader? cgtextures.com is a pretty good source for that.
Another thing i like is the lighting, which is important as well!

[Klank]

Hey thanks

Yeh the doors are something i had trouble with tbh..i guess making it a tad bigger would definitely improve it. Also the gatehouse and walls i am going to scale up, just to make the entrance way slightly bigger.

Hmmm...i guess marble was too ambitious for the fountain. I'll try stone thanks for the pointer there.

Lighting is one of my main focal points with this city. In previous things ive made, i had never really delved far into lighting, so i took your GI tutorial, and have adapted it slightly for this scene. I used a sky light ofcourse, and a directional spotlight with a square beam, a circular spotlight or a cone just didnt get the right affect, the shadows didnt seem to stretch how i wanted them to.

Thanks for the feedback jelmer! When i have more done/updated ill put it up here

klank

[Klank]

Meh i know this is a quickly updating thing.






I made the walls alot bigger as you can see in the background. This shot also shows my seriously unfinished houses and a small market. The tops will be sifferent colours, this was just a test shot to show lighting, and perspective of how big the whole thing really is There will also be assorted fruit in the market stalls later on :P

Feedback on what to do with the houses will be immensly appreciated as they are a problem at the moment, thanks in advance!

Klank

[Jelmer]

Hey, nice to see you're making progress! I think there are too few windows in the houses, and are there any doors? if there are any, make them larger, i think you need to think a bit more about proportions of the scene.
The market stalls are pretty nice, although the cloth on top needs some smoothing/subdivision. Have you added any bump maps to the stone textures? If not, you should because it will make it look a lot better.

[Klank]

haha thanks mate

erm, what are bump maps? :O sorry that must sound stupid, but ive only been using 3Ds Max for bout 4-5 months, so theres still alot i dont know. So if you could just explain what they are, and how to add them, then ill add it Pointers are always awesome.

There are doors, but for some reason the one door thats actually showing has been deleted for some reason, and as i used 'shell' on the houses, you are seeing straight through the door way :P

Klank

[The_Head]

Oh that is awesome, it looks so much like Counterstrike, I can almost see the enemy trying to duck out from my fire, on the far side of the cathedral hehe. Will this be for a game? Animation? Single frame?

[Jelmer]

Bump maps basically fake the look of detailed geometry on your texture, by adjusting the lighting, shadows, specularity and reflections and so on. you should just play with it, you'll probably love the detail you're going to get!

[Klank]

to The_Head: Ha, thanks its for my Comp Game Tech course, it will, if the guy can figure how to, be imported into Source SDK and used as the main city area (it will only be a demo which is why the area done is so small, otherwise i would have done a blacksmith and so on). I guess after the module is done, i will probably keep expanding my city just to play around with things!

to Jelmer: Tried bump map, it was a litle wierd, i could definitely see when up close that the bricks for the house looked alot more rocky, like there were indents on it, as the light would reflect of some bits but not others, extremely clever!



I'm hopefully gonna spend the next few weeks learning how to create rudimentry humanoids, then ill shove some in, have them walk around and host the .avi so you guys can see it. Thats if i get that far :P



this shows the whole area that will be shown, that is untill i expand after this module is over. I may also add a blacksmith or something of that nature behind th market instead of all houses to create something different. Any suggestions on what i should put there? As long as its medieval i dont mind

Klank

[TE_]

i think the castle is a bit small to the size of the other houses , u can add more diferent buildings, maybe a statue or a church,,, good luck