Hello all

[chisui]

Hi

my name is Philipp Dargel aka Chisui. I'm 19 years old and from Bremen-Germany.

for about 4-5 years I'm now working with Cinema 4D and gained much experience in subjects like modelling, lightning, texturing, animation and design as a whole.
Of course did I play Morrowind and Oblivion for some 100 hours and also modded a little for Oblivion. I'm also working on The fall of Osgiliath as 3D Artist, but the project state is fragile and no one is realy working on it (we are currently two 3D Artits for a project of a compareble size of Silgrad Tower).

I just wanted tu introduce my self to all the guys here and say that your work is astonishing. I'm looking forwarde to support this project as a 3D Artist.

some of my work:
Toiletts

Building (done for Fall of Osgiliath)

Osgiliath

Trailer (I don't like that music but doing the 3D stuff was fun)

yours, Philipp

[Zurke]

Hi Chisui and Welcome to Silgrad Tower!!

It looks like very nice work and we can always use the help.

We have a new area 'Veranis Hall' starting and I dont think blackbird has any models yet.

Anyway, glad you decided to stop here

[Razorwing]

Hi chisui, and welcome to the Silgrad Tower team!

I'm glad you found your way here. I think we're in somewhat of a hiatus now during the summer months, as it's been very slow here for the past month or so. I've been away quite a bit as well, but I'm settling down now and looking forward to a productive autumn both here in the team as well as in my personal life.

I like your work a lot, and I was especially impressed with the 3d city concept. I wish I had any kind of real skill back before the game was released when we were planning our Oblivion mod. But in the future, when the time draws near to start planning for the next Elder Scrolls game, I look forward to doing something similar to your city design plan.

I'm sorry to hear the Fall of Osgiliath mod isn't doing too well. Would you assess that it's abandoned? If you assess that it is, then perhaps the model work you put in could live on in our mod instead. I couldn't say for certain without checking it out, but going by the look of your beautiful building I think it could fit in well in an Imperial-style context in our mod -- if the FoO mod has ceased development that is, if it hasn't then I certainly wouldn't want to suggest taking a model made exclusively for that mod from them. =)

Out of curiosity how do you export your models from Cinema 4D to Oblivion nif format?

We do have an open modelling job which I think you might like, which is to create a set of house models for our town Reich Parkeep. The name has a German sound to it, which I think ties in nicely with our mod given that our founder and most of the early core team were in fact Germans, and silgrad.com is hosted in your country as well. Despite all those coincidences it was actually Bethesda who invented the town, which one could visit in TES I: Arena. I thought it would be nice to tie in with the German-sounding name by having the look of the architecture remind of the Medieval German style.

I wrote a little bit about the job in a post in the concept art thread, after which Rickious created concept art of how the buildings might look. I really liked the "tightness" of the houses, since Reich Parkeep has limited surface area to work with. His concept seems to fit perfectly for the idea of a cramped city where land is so valuable people build larger levels on top of the houses' ground level to capitalize on the small space. But having said that, should you be interested in taking the job, you'd be welcome to differ from his concept at your discretion.

I look forward to hearing what you think.

[chisui]

Originally posted by Razorwing
Hi chisui, and welcome to the Silgrad Tower team!

I'm glad you found your way here. I think we're in somewhat of a hiatus now during the summer months, as it's been very slow here for the past month or so. I've been away quite a bit as well, but I'm settling down now and looking forward to a productive autumn both here in the team as well as in my personal life.

It seems that Sommerhollidays are a little boring for Nerds

I like your work a lot, and I was especially impressed with the 3d city concept. I wish I had any kind of real skill back before the game was released when we were planning our Oblivion mod. But in the future, when the time draws near to start planning for the next Elder Scrolls game, I look forward to doing something similar to your city design plan.

Thanks, It's good to hear that someone likes it. The concept took a hell lot of time. It's taken from this map and every house hat to be masked out manually. So be aware that it takes on a even scaled citymap about 3 weeks in the making.

I'm sorry to hear the Fall of Osgiliath mod isn't doing too well. Would you assess that it's abandoned? If you assess that it is, then perhaps the model work you put in could live on in our mod instead. I couldn't say for certain without checking it out, but going by the look of your beautiful building I think it could fit in well in an Imperial-style context in our mod -- if the FoO mod has ceased development that is, if it hasn't then I certainly wouldn't want to suggest taking a model made exclusively for that mod from them. =)

It's acctualy pretty hard to say what'll happen with Fall of Osgiliath. RPGblackdragon, our leader, tries hard tu keep it up. But I'm not so confident that it ever gets released.

My last task was to tear this building in a tileset. I could continue building it and give it to Silgrad, since it's still my Model and texture.

Out of curiosity how do you export your models from Cinema 4D to Oblivion nif format?

I export the meshes from C4D as *.obj and import them in Nifscope and apply materials in there. To bad the UV gets f**ked often during the export. There is a plugin for C4D to improve the *.obj export but my trial expired.
also this export does not cover animations. I tried to export it as *.fbx and load it into blender and then to Nifscope but I couldn't get warm wit blender. Also my experiences with Nifscope arn't to well but I'm learning.

We do have an open modelling job which I think you might like, which is to create a set of house models for our town Reich Parkeep. The name has a German sound to it, which I think ties in nicely with our mod given that our founder and most of the early core team were in fact Germans, and silgrad.com is hosted in your country as well. Despite all those coincidences it was actually Bethesda who invented the town, which one could visit in TES I: Arena. I thought it would be nice to tie in with the German-sounding name by having the look of the architecture remind of the Medieval German style.

Hm medieval german style acctualy is not so different to others(or do you mean Schloß Neuschwanstein wich is not build in the middleages but is the most famous german "castle")

I wrote a little bit about the job in a post in the concept art thread, after which Rickious created concept art of how the buildings might look. I really liked the "tightness" of the houses, since Reich Parkeep has limited surface area to work with. His concept seems to fit perfectly for the idea of a cramped city where land is so valuable people build larger levels on top of the houses' ground level to capitalize on the small space. But having said that, should you be interested in taking the job, you'd be welcome to differ from his concept at your discretion.

the concepts look cool. I take it.

[Razorwing]

When I personally think about Medieval German style I like to picture houses looking something like this. It's quite likely it isn't actually medieval German house design though, but it's what comes to my mind when I think about old German houses.

About the city map, no problem. I imagine I'll have oodles of time between the game announcement and it's release, and that I'll save a bit of time after release by getting a bit of the planning done in advance.

We've had quite a bit of experience with exterior tilesets in our mod and I'd have to say I wouldn't recommend it. The main problem is that Oblivion uses the size specs of a model to calculate how far away the player can see it, which causes an assembled building to fade much too soon. Then again perhaps your blocks are much larger than the ones we used? Ours were 256x256. Thankyou for your offer, I'll discuss it with the other core members Though I just thought of the issue of interiors. Do you have, or do you plan to make, interior models for these houses? Perhaps that would be a lot of work for you, especially since we need the German-style houses more.

I'm sorry Cinema4D is causing you so many problems. I'm not familiar with the program myself but perhaps there's a chance C4D can export to another format that Blender or 3D Studio Max can import? Or if all else fails perhaps you could install a copy of 3D Studio Max and only use it for uvw mapping. Just a few ideas.

Great to hear you're interested in the buildings! I uploaded a copy of our Imperial textures -to here- in case you'd like to check them out. If you want to use other textures that's totally ok (as long as they're free of copyright issues and sized to a power of 2).

[chisui]

These houses look pretty much like those in the concept art thread. But I like Rickious concepts more. They take this as you call it german style and give it a little fantasy touche. I like that.

We had this problem in Osgiliath too. we tried to build a whole Mountain as a model. I think the problem is still there.
I think the tiles would be 512x512. Interior concepts are just partly there but not yet build. I could do that.
So I shall start with the german houses first?

I also tried max but I simply can't work with those. The layout is too odd for me. But since I'm looking forward to studie media-informatics there will be no way arround blender so i'll have to learn it anyway.

Are those the morrowind textures? I own Morrowind myself and know how to unpack the *bsa files but thanks.
power of 2? Do you mean 1024x1024?

Uhm, what shall I do with the ready models? I just found the guide for the CS guys.
edit: argh too fast. found it

[Razorwing]

I agree Rickious improved the concept of this house style over any real-life photographs. Please go ahead and start working on them. If you run into a problem or have questions don't hesitate to post them here in the thread.

Out of curiosity, how come the mountain idea didn't pan out? My understanding is that as long as a model is large enough then it should stay visible long enough for the _far model to kick in. So at least in theory one should be able to create a mountain using models, though I couldn't say I think it would be a good idea to do so since the many _far models would likely impact the FPS to a point where the game wouldn't be playable.

If you're interested in completing the work you started on the Osgiliath houses (after you've created the German-style houses) then I'm certain we can put your work to good use in our mod

I thought 3D Studio Max was bizarre when I first started using it. I think I spent an hour fiddling with it just to find out how to navigate around the viewport. But once I got comfortable with it I felt it was actually very easy to work in, and I couldn't imagine an easier modelling program to work in. Though I would imagine everyone feels that way once they've gotten comfortable in their favourite program. But it was only after I got a plugin called TurboUnwrap that I felt like I had mastered the program, at least mastered it in the sense of creating static models. I still spend as much time creating uvw maps with the plugin as I did in the past when I mapped polys with individual planar maps, but the plugin helps to make them seamless and technically perfect.

Originally posted by chisui
Are those the Morrowind textures? I own Morrowind myself and know how to unpack the *bsa files Wink but thanks.
power of 2? Do you mean 1024x1024?

Nope, they are original textures unrelated to Morrowind or Oblivion that are intended to be used on Imperial-style models. They're primarily suited for architecture. You don't have to use them if you don't want to. It would be a plus if you didn't use textures from Morrowind/Oblivion though, because one day we'll look into porting our models for the next Elder Scrolls game and then the porting will be made easier if we can reuse the textures.

By power of 2 I mean the numbers in the series you get by multiplying 2 with itself over and over again. I wasn't 100% sure you knew Oblivion textures had to be sized to a power of 2 or not, so to be on the safe side I figured I would mention it. =)

[chisui]

The mountain disapears if the angle betweene its anker point and the players cam is to big. so you are walking on the objekt but can't see it. We also tried to tile it but you would have to grind it into tiny peaces to get it working.

The Osgiliath set was ment for a small mountain village. With walls, towers and stuff. Much of it is not yet build but the concepts are there. I will build this village for Osgiliath after the houses are ready. So if Osgiliath keeps running both mods would profit from it.

I spend some time with max but don't like it. It has a weird stuff going on like modifiers. In C4D you see everything you got in the scene at once. there are many reasons why I stay with c4d. Of course there are also many against it. Like the bad exporters, the materialsystem, supported texture fileformats, etc. . The next application will definetly be blender.

I always thought just degree means exponetial groth.
edit:[smartass] the *.dds format forces the user to use texture width in power of two due to the automatical creation of mip-maps during the saving process.[/smartass]

[chisui]

I'm very sorry to tell you but my PC crashed so my work is forced to pause. He's not even starting. hopefully I get it fixed during this week.

Chisui

[Razorwing]

Originally posted by chisui
I'm very sorry to tell you but my PC crashed so my work is forced to pause. He's not even starting. hopefully I get it fixed during this week.

Chisui

That's a shame

I hope you won't have to go without a computer for long.