July Challenge: The four Haskwood Canifers

[SeerBlue]

Fick, thats good, we really like the spiral staircase, really, really like it. Ours is a bit of a bodge job, but Snap is in pretty tough times so there stonemason ain't the best...suffers from Pother's Fog.

You should check out the free version of Houdini, seems pretty powerful, even runs on this old laptop, I just use it for fun once and a while.

I also have a bit of the abbey in thrub inwork, and now that I have learned enough (meaning let ruby scripts do the hard stuff) to actually make a go of it in Sketchup and have it look good I will get back to it after Snapgallows and Hebbies.

Really good work, oh, did I say we like the Tell also,,,yup, we do.
SeerBlue and the FHCO's

[Redrobes]

...we really like the spiral staircase...

I make them like a real one. All you have to do is make a single step. Thats a round central column bit with a wedge shape coming off of it. Extrude it by 6 inches and thats one step. Then find the height required and divide that by 6 inches to see how many steps your gonna need. Then take the rotation angle which in my case was 180 and divide that by the number of steps. Right so get out the clone object and ask it for that many clones with 6 inch Y offset and angle rotation per clone. Zap a full set of spiral steps appears. I did the same for another challenge :- http://www.cartographersguild.com/showthread.php?t=1475 Werthers Skull where I put in an iron staircase. Same technique but its tricker there because the hand rail must line up with the next step. Did that by guess, trial and error - second only to a pencil in the box of invaluable tools !

You should check out the free version of Houdini, seems pretty powerful, even runs on this old laptop, I just use it for fun once and a while.

I will but I know Blender is going forward at a considerable rate. Its just the UI thats getting in my way. I really should hit it tho. Torq said he has some knowledge of it and can lend a tip or two. The thing is that I only use 1/10th of the capabilities of all these apps. I don't do bones and inverse kinematics, all the spline patched stuff, lofting etc. I need the app to do about 20 things real well and thats it. Maybe Houdini can provide that - I will definitely have a play.

Oh and I really really should try sketchup sometime too....

oh, did I say we like the Tell also,,,yup, we do.

I believe you did Its your magnificent writing thats prompted me to elaborate on this a little more. I write like a right chav tho.

"...then this geezer came along and got some gear and then it was alright innit."

well thats what it feels like looking at it after reading yours.

[Redrobes]

Ok so then I made the bar and put some doors into all the holes I made for them. As somebody mentioned on another thread (Toff?) these doors need to be thinner than the walls by a considerable margin so I have made some chamfered door frame and put a simple door into it. I know I should add the doors as separate objects in the scene editor but I am lazy and I can edit these out later anyway. A 3D editor is not a VTT after all.

So a few more WIPs showing the staircase - you can see how its made of individual steps. And the bar.

[ravells]

I really do hope you're going to change the textures soon...I'm expecting John Travolta to come out on to that floor any moment now....

Too much wine, but the thought of John Travolta doing his Saturday Night Fever dance in a Tavern full of half-orcs just gave me the giggles.

[Redrobes]

I really do hope you're going to change the textures soon...I'm expecting John Travolta to come out on to that floor any moment now....

Ohhh I am seeing a vision of doing an animation... one involving a mirror ball and bullseye lanterns....

Well I have been busy... Here are some more textured and lit versions. This is getting closer to where its currently stood w.r.t indoor main hall.

[Redrobes]

Now I gotta say I am having trouble understanding the lighting in that last image. The torches don't seem to be lighting up the pillar they are attached to and that the light is going through them and lighting up the opposite side. Also the light flare from the rear torch is showing even though its behind the pillar but I think that is a bug in the app - or maybe an unticked option on my part.

As usual, the textures come from cgtextures.com and I made them (moderately) seamless in the usual way. Its all a bit too clean at mo but whether it will allow me to dirty it up enough I don't know yet. That would be easy to do in 2D but wheres the fun in that eh ?

It still needs some pillars holding up the elevated floor and more decoration. Some of that should be easy but it would be easier in 2D for sure. This is where doing it in 3D starts to hurt.

[ravells]

Hmm you may need to ramp up the reflection on the pillars a bit and to make the lighting work to a squared range (it may be infinite).

It's looking really good RR!