Finished the low poly base and prepped it all for Mudbox work. Spent an hour or so in mudbox but in the end, it crashed as I was saving the file, resulting in a corrupt file. So I’ll just have to start over, which is no big deal at this point because of the little time I had spent on it…
Right now I’m gonna put in a few hours into RTS-buildings project and then have lunch.
Between working on textures for the unannounced project I decided to make a fast concept for the UT3 level. 
Been working on a brick texture in 4096×4096. It’s a very unforgiving resolution but luckily I’ll most likely size it down to half or less. I generated a normalmap for a quick rendertest and it didn’t look half bad, even though I’m only a few hours in on it.
Finished unwrapping UV’s for most of the model. I need to talk to a few people before I make the final decision on a few aspects of the model so actually assembling the UVmap will have to wait till tomorrow.
Okay, so work I have for this weekend on this project is that I’m gonna make a generic texture/material for this next building and unwrap the UV’s of the model, map it and optimize the model. This is really next weeks work but I’m getting an early start so I can go home for a few days next week for a late easter holiday.
I made a small sketch of a UT3 level I want to make. I’ve had this visual style in my head for quite some time now and I want to realize it in a small ut3 level. At this point I have no time frame for production or even when production will start. It’s at pre-production and concept stage at this point
I never liked the ”arms” on the concepts or mockup models so I decided to redo it and ”Drevlinalize” it, aka make it cooler. So this probably won’t be used but if it was up to me it would look something like either of these.
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Got the three levels approved with the exception of level 3 where the arms went off to wide. I fixed that rather quickly however. Here are renders, first the three renders I showed to lockpick and then the revised level03 building, that then got approved too.
I finished detailing the major detailing of the model and mocked-up the two lower levels for the building. At the moment I’m just waiting for the okay from Lockpick. When I get it I’ll post renders.
At the moment we’re anxiously waiting for another mail from Lockpick as well, regarding the previous building. Apparently some problems has arisen because of a few things we were not informed of before or during production. It’s regarding the new model, the castle seen a few posts below. It’s quite a serious problem, as far as I can tell. We’ve kept our end of the bargain so the ball is not in our court, at least. Still, hope it works out and I hope they respond saying “Yo, coolers. We fixed!”
So I thought I’d take you trough what happened today, from mockup building to the finished model.
I did not, as I wrote in the previous post, make level02 and 03 because I need both Dennis and Franssico to do that correctly. Instead I spent the rest of the day making the actual modules for the real building.
So this is a picture (above) of the mock up model from the previous post. This is my start point that I use to build the real moduels from.
I took a piece from the mockup model, the module where the arm connects with the building and moved it aside. I modeled it to resemble the concept drawing, which I sadly can’t show until I get the okay from Dennis and Lockpick. It didnt turn out very cool though and looked more like a big lump. So I decided to rework the concept a bit and it turned out like in the picture above. Rather than have that thing be a single block with an angeled surface it now consists of 4 blocks. I think it can be cooler to animate it when it is like this anyway.
I move the arm to it’s correct location in conjunction with the module. Also added a some detail and fixed up the shape a bit. I remade the arm so it now consists of 5 parts rather than one big one. I will have to remake it tomorrow and then it will most likely be closer to 8 blocks because the plan is for the arms to extend from itself and sort of grow.
Duplicated the “shoulder” module and the arm. Remade the /\ shape on the tower and added some detail and played with normals on the /\ shape to make it look smother. Reworked the profile of the tower from the mockup quite a bit to make it look closer to that found in the concept.
Copied base platform from mock up version. Started modeling the front sections and the main gate. Also got into making “Fake Bevels” in a lot of the corners of the building. On the previous buildings I decided not to do this because it didn’t really fit their rocky style and the fact that the polycount didn’t allow me to but in this building, with its smooth magic-y style it’ll look peachy and the few modules will let me keep it within the poly budget anyway. Fake beveling is a process that essentially doubles the polygons in a model by having a small extra segment on each polygon. Imagine each corner looking like an L and that right next to the 90 degree corner you cut in an extra polygon. The 90 degree edge is then set to a soft normal, making it appear as a bevel. But essentially is not. It looks better than actual beveling even.
Copied the rear modules from mock up building, added fake beveling and cleaned them up.
Duplicated front and rear segments and mirrored them to the other side. Added pillars under the balcony on the back of the building and added some minor detail.
And this is the stage the model is at when signing off tonight. I got quite a bit of detailing and optimizing left along with adding something on the roof at the front of the building but for one days work, I am pleased.
Mock up building to the left, actual model on the right. Both made today.
