Velothi Tile Set

[Razorwing]

Ben Vagara: Cool. When I thought about the large tileset I did have a Bethesda tomb in mind where I recall it was used, but now that you mention it you're correct that it's mostly used in Vivec and not in tombs. And I agree with your other points as well To me, somehow Imperial influences in a Velothi tomb would seem sacriligeous.

The Black Knight: I think your ideas are sound, and I wouldn't mind seeing that as the team's official wiev. Though I think we always have to be careful to retain the feeling that we're in Morrowind and save most of the non-Dunmer stuff for our various Imperial charter towns. As luck would have it I'm administrating Reich Parkeep this time around, and I'll be sure to maintain a high sense of Dunmer presence in the town.

spankybus:

Originally posted by spankybus
I ran into a unique Problem as I was making one of the 4 corner pieces. The original Morrowind Corner VS_corner_01 was essentially 2 walls and all open elsewhere. you could like 4 of them and make a 4 sided room. This worked well because the roof was flat so there were no geometric Complications in wide open rooms. This always bothered me because rooms that have a great deal of rock over tehm cannot be that large without support beams. Look at mining shafts and other subterrainian structures. With the domed roofing, there needed now, more than just from an engineering standpoint, a support system to make the overall geometry make since.

As for the valved ceilings; would it be possible to make squarish rooms but then add separate pillar models that can be placed in rooms where the modder wants? That might both make the interior look logical while at the same time giving the modder creative freedom over how to decorate the interior, and at the same time rooms would get to look different from one another. Separate pillars would also let above-ground interiors, like a home, look less cramped. Just an idea. If you already have finished designs I would of course not mind if those are added as extras if you want, I'm positive there'd be uses for those as well, just not as the main style. What do you think?

Originally posted by spankybus
As far as making Traps, that gets a bit complicated as far as 3d work goes, you have to plan for it while you are making stuff. If you want traps, thats Fine, you but you have to let me know EXACTLY how it will work so I can make a set around that, it cannot work the other way round, building a trap round pre-exsisting objects. Even for simple traps...For example, If a stone wall slides down to close the tomb. I need to make a section of wall with Grooves in its sides to accomodate the falling stone slab and a sunken section in the floor so the slab wall really seals the place proper. It can't just be a flat slab intersecting the 3d section, because it will look nuts, the walss aren't straight up and down, so a flat slab would get stuck in the waist-level shelf, it needs its wown trank in Real-life for it to work, so you have to do that in 3d if you want it to look creditble. That said, I will just make the set peieces as they are in Morrowind, new improved look and detail not withstanding. I mean, If its a 3way intersection, i make a 3way interesection. So if you want traps, once you have them planned, i can see about HOW they would work in real life and make a set of parts that will make it a reality in the game...us damn engineers lol.

As far as the large-scale stuff, we;ll see how far I get on the small scale stuff. There are over 100 parts it seems, and you've given me no list as to WHICH parts you will need, so I am just making some of the generic parts. If you have a plan for HOW the interieor will be laid out, that would help me know which parts are a priority, especially it if involves any of the more complex parts,,like bridges and open-air curved sections. If I try to make all the parts will will take a long time, which i guess we have with the delay, but its time the interior decorators will miss as far as using the parts to get the ST insides fleshed out.

Hmm, didn't I mention over email which of the interior pieces were less important than others? I think I did =) but I'll go ahead and take the opportunity to elaborate.

In my mind, the perfect Velothi collection would include both an exterior and interior tileset. With the exterior tileset modders would be able to assemble temples, ancient villages, abandoned keeps, maybe even strongholds. The exterior tileset would allow for all Velothi buildings to turn out looking unique, which would be extremely cool, and it would be possible to create an exterior that matches how the interior cavity looks and vice verca. The interior tileset would come in two or three different sizes, and each size would have two versions, one ancient and one more modern. There'd be traps, urns, altars, ash pits, shrines and what-not. That is as perfect as it is unrealistic, because it'd keep you busy forever making stuff that are nice extras but not really necessary.

In my opinion, when it boils down to it there is the small interior tileset on one side and all the rest of the stuff on the other side, and the small interior tileset stands for like 85% of everything we are likely to mod - be it tombs, temples, ancient villages or anything else. I'm not saying that larger, extra tilesets or ancient/modern variations are useless - they would certainly not be useless - but focusing too much of them might draw away attention from the small interior tileset which is really necessary. That tileset is something the modders of the team, and players of the mod, will become intimately familiar with.

At the base, the small interior tileset should contain the usual building blocks;
- hallway, cap, 3way, 4way, ramp, doorjamb, and curve (for corridors)
- entrance piece, centerpiece and corner (for rooms)
Now, with just those ten pieces a modder can assemble a Velothi interior that looks pretty close to anything you'd find in TES III. Therefore I hazard to say those ten pieces are the most important ones in the whole collection that's being made.

Beyond those pieces come these, in my personal opinion of course:
- dome; this could be anything from one single set piece to a more elaborate system of pieces that can yield different-sized domes, but a single piece is all that's necessary.
- pit; pits are really nice, both to act as natural traps and to make tombs even more interesting to explore, and are something I really enjoyed dabbling with when I modded tombs. A pit set can be as basic as three pieces, with a top hallway piece with a hole in the floor, a centerpiece that would be tiled appropriately by the modder downwards, and a bottom hallway piece with a hole in the ceiling. Those three pieces alone would make for fine pits, but could of course be expanded so that the modder can make pits of varying length, or make pits in rooms as well as hallways.
- ramp variations; one half-piece that changes the altitude 50% from what the normal ramp corridor does, one double piece that's as high as a normal ramp corridor but twice as long... and maybe one that can lead from a corridor below to a room above? The last one would be pretty complicated though.
- extra room pieces; from corners shaped like "/" instead of the usual "L" to walls with a U-bend sticking out, and anything else you could think of that would look cool and give modders more creative freedom and allow for less generic interior locations.

To supplement the architecture it would be very nice to see these models:
- pillar
- brazier
- burial urn
- altar
- shrine
- ash pit
- platform
- lecturn
- kneepads (those weird 'chairs' you rest your knees on when praying)

So if the above pieces were made, BAM! that would take care of 85% (or something like that) of our Velothi modding needs in my opinion. We'd get to mod a wide variety of interiors with those, and they'd take us a really long way.

An exterior tileset would be highly useful, and would be very creatively rewarding to mod with, letting the team mod anything from a small house in an ancient village to a huge abandoned stronghold. As with an interior set it would also have the advantage of letting the modders make each exterior location feel less generic. A few wall pieces that slant at different angles, a floor piece, a corner, a tileable staircase, a doorjamb or entrance, and railings would go a very long way. The entrance could be nixed, if wanted, and instead one could use the doorjamb from the interior set. With an exterior tile set to go with the interior, BAM! we would be up to 98% or something like that

So, again, while traps and different sizes and styles of the tile sets can surely be quite nice they are very far down on the list as far as necessity goes.

Originally posted by spankybus
Also I will see what I can do for the Ash pits to make em feel more like a place where bodied were burned, instead of just some obscure circle with what looks like dirt in it lol. Any ideas on WHAt makes an ash pit look like a place of Cremation? other than ash lol

In TES III, most ash pits were 'decorated' with separate skeletal remains like bones, rib cages and skulls. The fact that the Dunmer consider such ghoulish displays holy echoes the dark and evil reputation that often surrounds them in the eyes of other peoples. Then again, the Dunmer view on their dead is quite different from that of any other Tamrielic folk. I have every reason to believe those objects will come with Oblivion, but if you feel up to making them please feel free to go ahead.

Originally posted by spankybus
Also, because I am kind of new here. Who is who...i mean, chime in here and tell me what you post is, texture artist, script snf code writer, producer, director, etc so I know WHO to directspecific questions at, as the occur to me. lol I would recommend we add titles to our forums names that reflect our jobs, but my last gig was workin with actual developers so I got used to knowing WHO did WHAt, so if i had a quetion, i know who to ask. You guys seem to be a pretty big mod team, perhaps similar organization could be useful, maybe we'll even end up being a company of our own, stranger stuff has happened

Oh, the workings of Silgrad Tower is nothing like that of any commercial entity. It's far trickier, and harder to explain But I'll have a go. At the top are core votes, where the core members decide issues put forth for voting. Next comes our founder Valderon, who's traditionally regarded as the leader of the project. After that comes Quentin Fortune and me, and then the rest of the core. Here's a list of our core members. Anyone who's in our team's core core has a certain degree of knowledge and history of the project, and have earned the right to vote on important matters.

We each bring different skills to the table and don't restrict ourselves to fixed responsibilities or positions. One day I might be writing an article for the website, another day I might be promoting on ESF, or answering questions from our hosted sites, or rummaging in the database, or doing 3d modelling, or... well, you get the drift.

[spankybus]

I can probably pull out the support colum and make it an object unto itself, they have em in morrowind, and in the exports you sent me. The room might look odd it its roof looks like upside down egg cartons with no supports. but maybe not, could look like a church of sorts, but that would be for the decorator to decide i rekon. I will see about exteriors once the interiors are done.

[KuKulzA]

well well... you guys need to learn more about Chimer/Dunmer burial habits!!!
okay, you guys know most of it.. but....

there are 3 styles of burial:
Tomb
Cremation
Mummification

As you can see when you go inot the caverns and sewers under Mournhold. there is a small room with... right, tombs, this mean the Velothi or at least the highly civilized Indoril of the Old Mournhold had buried some of their deceased in tombs.

Cremeation... you know about it...

Mummification is used by Ashlanders. The corpses are decicated and either put inot a sitting position (cross-legged or with knees up) or they are simply laid down. Thei prized possessions are placed with them... the burial ground are normally caverns... LARGE caverns... guarded by the undead... reanimated ancestors forced to protect the tomb... similar to civilized Dunmer style, except in a cavern rather than a Velothi tomb.


ok, so I guess you guys knew about most of it
for more info:
Chance's Folly
Ancestors and the Dunmer

[Razorwing]

Yeah, we did.

[KuKulzA]

Originally posted by Razorwing
Yeah, we did.

I was joking, I know you guys knew most of it.... o well... I'm sorry if I insulted you guys' intelligence... I just wanted to tell you all that there were tombs.. very few... and that I presented 2 sources :yes:

man, gotta work on my english

[Quentin Fortune]

Originally posted by spankybus

Originally posted by Quentin Fortune
If this can wait until the weekend, I'll see what I can do. It would be very helpful to know what sizes you need and if you are content with square textures or need some rectangulars as well.

Greetings

Quentin

Whichevers mate, they don't even have to be finished products, just something to see how it will look ruffly and then it will be clear how 'Velothii' it feels.

I guess 256x256? or even a 128x128, square textures should be find it they cause a problem, a little cut/paste/blend in PBP will make em rectangular enough for gov't work.

Seems that I'm able to stretch the meaning of 'weekend' again.

Alright, here are two wall textures and one for wooden posts (just in case you need one)

Since they are only to give the feeling, I refrained from making bump and specular maps ... won't be too hard to add them.

Greetings

Quentin

[spankybus]

Thanks mate, i will get some renders here with em in-place just as soon as I can, i got feedback from FLS about my West Indiaman boat, and need to make some corrections before she can be implemented into the game. So I am jumping between projects.

[spankybus]

Thanks for Q I got the textures i needed, I threw em on the constructs and played with it for a bit, just to see what it would look like, so i didn't get much into the UV mapping. That said, they lok pretty kewl, good work on those textures! I did a low light render as it might look under in-game torch light...really nice...i am gonna pull that wooden column, make it thinner and a stand-alone object, but you still get the general idea of its design. tehre you go, i iwll get some more shades done ASAP, i just wanted yal to see the textures Quentin made, in proper use. :bananarock:

[Razorwing]

It looks nice :goodjob:
Except the yellowish texture doesn't seem to tile very well on the horisontal plane.

[KuKulzA]

I agree... I think th yellowish should eb changed slightly :yes: