Robin Hood
 

So, friend is doing his thesis film, Robin Hood. I've been asked to create the following: a castle for wide shots, and arrows for general mahem. My castle is at this point... any suggestions?

The edges look a tad sharp, and the testure dosnet really have much of a "feel" to it, i.e no/not much of a bump.

I agree with gster123.
The piece looks more like a Lego castle set. I like it.;)
The model is ok except for those sharp corners mentioned earlier. The texture work is a bit too monotonous. Try adding some moss on the bottom and vary it on both sides of the castle. You can also change the tone of some bricks on either side to show some weathering and discoloration as well.
Bump maps will also help by adding more depth.
That should add a bit of visual variety.

*Some flags might be a nice addition.

yeah. My current plan is as follows:

Add displacement map in shape of castle bricks.
Add procedural bump map for close ups - there will be one, MAYBE two.
Add procedural color textures... also for close-ups, probably will match the procedural bump in shape.
Add flags on the top spire and the center spire
Add catapults to flat surface towers.

This will be composited onto a live-action hill, which will give the foliage requested, however, I'm thinking I should have some vines on the outside as well, but I'd like to render them as objects, not a map, due to the close-up. So:

displacement - will the system automatically tessalate my mest when I apply it, or do I have to do that? I've actually never used displacements before.

I'm sure there are tuts about flag dynamics, as I'm not familiar with Maya's dynamics package.

What do you think? Will displacement take care of the lego feel? Or do I need to bevel the edges or something? Thanks!

With prelim bump maps added - no displacement :<

needs more detail like turrets and stuff, theres too many flat surfaces right now

Jay

Bevel!

Go on bevel the edges you know you want to. And perhaps rough up the silhouette a little so it looks less boxy as you don't want to rely purely on displacement maps.

Cheers

Gio

i have to agree with rocky... it looks like it's made of lego :attn:

and it looks pretty squished in, but then i haven't seen a castle from the timeframe of robin hood in my years of being able to remember what i see

maybe those outer corners can be cylinders instead of boxes?

I'm fairly new at all of this. The best way to "rough it up" would be? I don't have z-brush, I've seen a LOT of talk about it, but alas :<

So, would I tesselate the model (much of it IS indeed large flat quads and such) and then just push and pull, skew the vertical lines, or what? Not build each brick individually, I hope!

Yeah, Jay, I intend to be adding stuff sticking out of the walls as well (just found that out after the last post), but when you say more detail, are you talking about more brick structures as well? If so, and this goes to Chirone as well, the design for the castle was given me by the director, so, I'm sure I could suggest things, but he's got a specific geography in mind :<

Anyway, thanks a lot so far. I'll see what I can do to butcher the silhouette.

talk to the director mate. Find out what shots you need, how close/far different elements will get to the camera.
You won't want to add unnecessary detail where it will not be utilized or seen.

Where you are going to get close you might want to model detail or use a displacement. From far away you are able to get away with different details.
See what you need and then lay it out and ask for more specific ideas.

There was a challenge on here quite a while ago to make some ruins, tweetytunes made a castle, try to find that as it would possible help you out if you look at his development, although your not going for a ruin the workflows and texturing methods should hold true to what your doing.

needs lighting! :P and bigger size pictures would be nice to comment on to.



yea i would add alot more stuff into this

Got an issue: I'm trying to add inconsistancies to the mesh's silhouette, but I can't seem to tessalate the mesh in such a way that I can have much control, for instance:

The towers in the front only seem able to add diagonal lines running from corners to windows and such (see attached). While I'd like to instead add more grid-like quads to the mesh for editing. Does that make sense?

I can't really see whats going on with your mesh but by the issue you're describing you probably made the windows by extruding a face and scaling it inwards like the tower on the left, split poly tool + delete edge/vertex is your friend, you can rework the mesh so it more looks like the one on the right, then you can easily just drop edge loops in and get those "grid like" quads you want.

Definately the problem. It'll take a while to update, since I've got all the school stuff to do :< I'll have to rework everything, but hey, it'll teach me... speaking of, the windows are supposed to be the attached. Should I then use the same suggested technique for roundish shapes? I suppose it should work...