Walhalla, Regensburg

[EricPoehlsen 0]

OK, I know a little about modelling, alone time was a problem and now I thought I take some time and do some buildings.

The first one will be a landmark, the Walhalla is a greekstyle temple close to Regensburg, Germany. It is a not so much a challenge of how to model but of how to manage the fact that it is sitting upon a hill, my idea is to build this as lot with overhanging prop.
But have a look on what I did the last hour.


final size will probably be a 4x5 lot with overhang as 7x9 lot, size is 138x91x60 meters.

[Kwakelaar 92]

The model looks very good so far.
Walhalla what a peculiar name for a classical tempel.

[EricPoehlsen 0]

if you would like more information on the building check out:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walhalla_temple
but I think better even if you are capable take the german site which contains more information
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walhalla

I tried to work on the LOD but it did not work as I planned it to work. At least I am currently having problems to get the Prop into the LotEditor

[Kwakelaar 92]

You can change the size of a prop in the IliveReader or I think in the SC4Tool.

If the prop is too big (bigger than the lot) you are not able to open it in the LotEditor, still you can try to work around that problem by temporarily making the lot bigger.

I will look forward to see this building on the STEX.

[EricPoehlsen 0]

thanks, this was a helpful advice

This basically worked, but there are still some problems, I somehow messed up with the LOD as you can see from the ingame screenshot, and I have to look if I can use the trick with the temporary larger lot to place small props (Sims) outside the final Lot. would be a little empty else but as you can see it works at least from the idea


maybe I have to look for a less bright texture as well

[Kwakelaar 92]

You should absolutly do something about your textures, this a far too beautiful model to have (sorry to say) flat and lifeless textures. At least the rooftexture and the white stone covering the foundations and staircases needs to be reworked.

The LODs are probably fitted too closely to the model.

I don't think you can place props sticking out from the lot more than half of the prop. So I think you will not be able to place props enterily outside the lot.

What is possible is to render props not in the x=0,y=0 position in gmax. When it is not sentered when rendering you will see the image of the prop outside the lot while the footprint is still on the lot.

But maybe you should have a look at some of the stuff that Jeronij has been making with his seawalls etc. He and some others will have had the same problem with placing props on some of the corner lots.
Also take a look at Gascookers tutorial on adding gradients to textures, that will greatly improve the quality of your textures. You can find it in the Omnibus.

This is quite some project you have started, seems to me it will be complicated to make this work properly.
But you have already come very far, so keep it up.

[EricPoehlsen 0]

I will do something about the textures, for sure.

The thing with the LODs will be a little tricky as the must fit quite closely to the temple for protruding from the ground.

Maybe I should make two pieces out of it, one for the temple and one for the stairs. I think this would help me to get rid from some nasty problems.

as I have access to 3dsmax it is not much of a concern of rendering it over and over again - the gmax:bat rendering takes for ages.

I expect the progress to be not to fast though as I have some upcoming exams in urban economics, spatial information and planning, strategic management and decision theories over the next weeks - i have to look always what my time budget allows for.

[brtim2 11]

Can we see what your LODs look like? You're going to need a perfect fit for the stair section (at least the parts that could be underground) and a box over the temple. If you take the stairs together, clone them and attach the clones together and then attach that to a box encompassing the temple you will come up with a very good LOD for the temple.

And if you wanted to do it another way, perhaps taking a different approach could help you with your empty lot problem. If you make the bottom of the stairs at z=0 and have everything above that you can create the lot with the stairs and have the temple hanging off the lot. That way (with the LOD provided above) you can place lots of people on the stairs walking towards the temple.

Good luck on your exams and I can't wait for the model to be released.

[EricPoehlsen 0]

the idea with splitting the temple into two object seems to be a good way, I reworked the LODs - no time for a picture at the moment.

It seems to work to place stuff on a larger lot and then reduce the size the props will stay where they are.

next step will be taking care for textures.

[EricPoehlsen 0]

Took some time right now for working on the textures - as you can see from the picture the light is very strong, which kills a lot of the details from the textures, I think I have to play around a little more to get the bumps and diffuse right.

this picture show the stairs portion

[Kwakelaar 92]

Indeed still very bright, but nice work!

[mattb325 28,880]

Looking much better!

 

But the texture will still render too bright and the stonework will be lost, and your stairs will blur into a white glare.

 

From rendering to ingame, the colours become about 20-30% lighter, so you should darken all your textures by at least that much so it looks how you want it to.

 

Also, the temple on the link is very weathered and greyish in real life (as old buildings are). Try overlaying moss/dirt textures to your stone pattern and most certainly apply gradients so that the temple looks old (otherwise it may have a lego-like appearance).

 

The textures will be especially important if you don't intend to model all of the existing classical features  along the columns, within the triangular recess and at the top of the stone barge.

 

But the model and idea are impressive and this will definitely be a download!

[EricPoehlsen 0]

this is already the render with the BATforMAX Lighting rig - you really think it gets even lighter in game. I think I will use some mixed map for darkening the gaps especially the non at all visible tiles on the top-caps
I plan to use a displacement map for the figures in the roof triangle - will take a photo try to transfer it into a decent height map I will not add tons of fighting people by hand.
I was thinking of handpainting the texture for the moss and dirt but that would be hell of a work so it will probably end with a noisy gradient which should be enough for an ingame temple at that resolution.

At this point I want already thank all of you who made helpful comments in here up to now.

[mattb325 28,880]

No problem at all...

Hand painting is hard - (believe me I know - I don't have photoshop).

I use this to weather the roof textures over and above the gradients (which I have to apply by hand).

 

https://www.simtropolis.com/idealbb/files//bois_de_noyer.jpg align=baseline>

 

When darkened (20-50% if on a green copper tile, less if on black tiles, and so on) and faded to within an inch of its life it becomes subtle stains and water marks.

 

Oh, and yes, the game will lighten (for want of a better word) that image further. Not so much lighten, but because sc4 doesn't have as many pixels as gmax/bat/etc, it will largely blur into one large whit-ish mass in game. You may in fact be better to choose a brownish tone for the flat paved areas to compensate, or lift the grey SC4 texture for square tiles from the lot editor if you have a decent graphics program.

 

[EricPoehlsen 0]

OK, I will be writing an exam in spatial planning in some hours - and thought bevore I look through my scripts a last time I cool down with working on the textures - here is what I did to the textures now.

[Kwakelaar 92]

It has become a bit better, but still does not look like natural stone. The texture is now very yellow, but I think the pattern of the stones is very good.

Good luck with the spatial planning (as in city-planning?) exam.

[jacqulina 162]

excellent work

[EricPoehlsen 0]

After I wrote my last exam for the term yesterday I took care for the to yellowish base stone texture, have a look here:


I worked a little on the temple part afterwards, especially concernig the roof as it was this big blue spot. I added these crossing white things on the roof because it looked a little empty - in reality there is only one on each end of the building.


Comments are welcome, as always.

[Kwakelaar 92]

Good to see that you survived your exams.

Now it is really comming together, both the tempel and the base is much improved.

A few points that IMO needs a bit of attention.
The texture on the roof is a bit too blue if it is to be copper, and because this is an older building the glass roof could have some more subdividing.

I know that on the real building there is a pattern of 'stripes' and empty spaces between the roof and the columns.

The last thing that could be improved is the texture on the floor of the base aswell as the tempel. The texture you are using at the moment is looking a bit like technical drawing paper. In some places were you have not made this line around the base it actually looks like it is paperthin.

Hope this is not discouraging, but I really think this will be a wonderful building when finished

[jacqulina 162]

wonderfull work looking great and coming on well