[Building, medieval] Tavern [05/23/06]

This time I did a Tavern.

I know there already is one here in the forums, but I wanted to improve my skills with 3dsMax and well, this was the first idea I could come up with.

I´m pretty content with the result (managed to add some nice lighting this time and I will surely add some shadows in the future).

preview:




the zip (button included):

View attachment Tavern.zip



Please tell me your oppinion and maybe do some requests (I don´t know what to do next)

Looks fabuluous!

Very nice indeed

Thx, but one thing bugs me, now that I look at it again (and also my Brewery).
Maybe I will use a 256X256 texture next time for the ground. But the textures for the building is already 512X512. Don´t know if this takes up too much memory.

Any suggestions Rabbit?

Fantastic Duke. Any plans to add smoke in the chimney?

Duke, best scale that texture down to 128*128. The Programm does not bother about the texture size you used during creation time so you can simply scale down your final dds.

128*128 should be sufficent as the buildings are only viewed once in detail and are usually seen from very very far away. About 20*20 Pixels at most i would say.

P.S. when you are interested in doing medieval buildings... there is lots of art to do for FfH. I think Kael will want to use that Tavern, too (we have an inn and an tavern)

For example the following buildings have not yet a descent Art:
Dungeon
Gambling House
Moneychanger
Public Baths
Siege Workshop

Chalid said:

Duke scale that texture down to 128*128. The Programm does not bother about the texture size you used during creation time.

128*128 should be sufficent as the buildings are only viewed once in detail and are usually seen from very very far away. About 20*20 Pixels at most i would say.

Click to expand...

Are you talking about all textures?

just asking to be sure, then I´ll upload future versions with High and Low detail textures (I think that will be best, so people can choose for themselves and it´s only 2 minutes work).

Yeap offering two versions would be the best idea. And you are of course right scaling something to smaller size is easy - scaling it up is not.

But what do you mean be scaling all textures down?! Do you use more than one texture for the tavern? And those are bigger than 256*256? I usually use one 128*128 for my buildings and in the game i bet you won't see much difference due to the small size of each building. (You"ll see differences of course when you use the flying camera, but who uses that one excerpt to take screenies..)

Chalid said:

But what do you mean be scaling all textures down?! Do you use more than one texture for the tavern?

Click to expand...

Yes, I use two textures for my Buildings, like the guys at firaxis. I got one Tavern.dds for the Building and extra stuff (like the crates) and one Tavern_Decal.dds which is used for the ground.
That´s what the buildings that come with the game also have.

Ok yes the shadow plane.. I just asked bcause some people would use extra textures for the Roof for the walls and for the crates and so on.

Did you test if you name the according NINode of the shadow plane like the one in the civ4 buildings if it will be mapped to the ground (eg. on hills). I think it works that way, but have always used blender for buildings and simply copiied shadow nodes from other buildings.

Chalid said:

Did you test if you name the according NINode of the shadow plane like the one in the civ4 buildings if it will be mapped to the ground (eg. on hills). I think it works that way, but have always used blender for buildings and simply copiied shadow nodes from other buildings.

Click to expand...

No, didn´t test this at all, because I don´t really know my way around the NifViewer, but again a nice tip!! I´ll try it as soon as i get home!
Up to now I just moved all models in 3dsMAX slightly over the ground.


I may also have one tip for you (If you do not already know this:

I just had a look at your UVMap for the Dragon in the FfH thread. And I think you should start to stitch things together.

For example, select all faces of one Horn (select "Select Faces" in the UVW Unwrap modofier) then flatten those in the mapeditor. Press the filter button, so you only see all of those faces. Then select one of those faces (or only some vertices of it!) you will see that other vertices and edges on other faces will turn blue. those can be stitched to the ones you selected. Use Tools -> stitch... do this until you have the horn completely stitched together. Do this for the other horns as well, and then move them so they use the same region of the map (overlap them) this makes skinning a lot faster and allows for higher details even on smaller sized textures.


EDIT: And I`ll definetly try to do some of those buildings you mentioned before for the FfH mod.

Actually i have done this. What looks like many small parts of one horn are actually the uv Maps for all the dragon horns. Each mesh has one part of the uvmap that i combined like you wrote. I did also overlap similar horns but i did not overlap the horns on the spine for example as having them sperate allows to skin more fairy like dragons (like horns rainbow colored along the spine and those things.)

But i have to admit i hate the UV mapping tools of 3ds. In Blender you mark first where you want to have cuts and the tool therer unwraps it automatical. you can than adjust it, set some points fix and let the program rearrange the other points. I'm about 4 times faster with UV Mapping in blender than in 3dsmax.

Yes, It´s definitely some horrible work! ( hours just for Unwrapping that simple dragon?!? But the UV Map looked so cunfusing I thought you didn´t stitch the tail for example and overlaped similar horns (man o man, definitely the most complicated model I´ve ever seen for cIV - again )

Duke van Frost said:

Yes, It´s definitely some horrible work! ( hours just for Unwrapping that simple dragon?!? But the UV Map looked so cunfusing I thought you didn´t stitch the tail for example and overlaped similar horns (man o man, definitely the most complicated model I´ve ever seen for cIV - again )

Click to expand...

Guys you do know you can use UV Map (or UVW Map, can't remember exactly) modifier to speed up the process? It's sometimes tricky but especially with simple shapes, like dragon's tail, or legs, or walls and roof, and stuff like that you can use that modifier to apply a flat plane or a cylinder (those are the only ones I use usually though I'm sure with some practice you can use other primitives) mapping which takes care of the "rough draft" as it were, and then you just need to go in and adjust things to be more precise and so on. And you can do it, just like anything else, on parts of the model by selecting bunch of faces or polys or elements.

I read that in a tut, but when I tried to do it, it got me some strange results (because I didn´t know of the filter function in the mapeditor!).

Am I right that you have to give each objet/face an UV Map modifier, then collapse the whole object and give it the UVW Unwrap modifier, which I´ll have to edit afterwards?

because this seems to be more work than selcting the faces or elements one by one and flattening them.

Or does it already stitch some of the faces together if I first use the UV Map modifier?

Duke van Frost said:

Am I right that you have to give each objet/face an UV Map modifier, then collapse the whole object and give it the UVW Unwrap modifier, which I´ll have to edit afterwards?

Click to expand...

Yes but it depends on what exactly you're doing. I mean first of all, of course if you only need to work on few faces there's no need to use UV map, but if you want to work on big chunks of the model then it speeds up the process. Now when you collapse the object you might still need to stich some faces but only if that's how you split them up, i.e. when I work I use UV map on those faces that I want stiched. That way once the final UVW unwrap is applied I already have the faces that I want stiched, stiched, and the rest remain as they are (separate). What's more, on the simpler objects, a house for example you would only ever use UVW unwrap once (it's rare for complicated stuff but for weapons for example I always end up only using it at the end).

You do end up with large stacks of uv map, edit mesh and uvw unwrap modifiers, but I find that the whole thing flows well and fairly fast. And btw you don't need to collapse to use unwrap after several uv map's, you just need to add edit mesh modifier, which will "merge" their uv maps. (Although of course if you still have parts that haven't been mapped you'll need to either map them or use edit mesh to select only those parts that are mapped, because otherwise once you unwrap it'll be messy).

I only ever select faces manually when I get like 2 or 3 faces that I need to map "separately".

Yeah, it looks good. Needs to have "Ye olde pub" on the sign.

yea, it looks fantastic, but now you should do some buttons for the elven warriors

seZereth said:

yea, it looks fantastic, but now you should do some buttons for the elven warriors

Click to expand...

Äah? I think I already did all of those. If not, tell me which ones are missing - you know it´s 1 hour of work (that´s if I get into any complications - like doing woodelf spearmen, that don´t really exist in the Warhammer world).