suggestions for tower modeling
 

I am currently modeling a little tower (see the pic). Now since the stones are quite large, I think I need to model them directly, since they will affect the silhouette, and so a bump map is not appropriate (though I will be using it for the fine detail) Now you can see the geometry there - that is a polygon model by the way - with the rough map of where I want the stones to be in the texture. Could anyone suggest how I might cut and model the stones to give them a rough shape over which I will later bump map - which tools to use and so on?

edit to add: if building the polygon model and then altering it is a terrible plan, then feel free to say, I don't mind remodelling the whole thing, it only took me about 10 minutes to do that.

Hmm, nice idea.

The only idea I come up with RadicalEdward, is probably the answer that you didn't want to hear...


I just had a bit of a poke around and what I did, was to model and texture it as you've done. Then just go around using the CutFacesTool. Just select all the faces that each boundary will cross, spin the model to face you in the perspective viewport then use the cutfaces tool to make the straight-line cut that defines the boundary of each stone.

Then just go back and remove the extra edges and verts, from there, just pick all the faces of each rock and do an extrusion in or out to suit.

Here's my poxy effort. The faces with the red dot are extruded out, the blue dot faces went in.
S.

I really think that you could get away with texturing this, a good displacement map, bump, colour and spec maps you can do it no probs.

I posted a link to a thread on antoher forum that showed the effects of a really good texture map.

Steve is correct. Don't remodel, get yorself a high quality color map, create a bump map from it and maybe a displacement map too.

thanks all for the advice, I didn't know about displacement maps; that's what I'm after.