First Hlaalu Building model completed

[jonrd463]

Razorwing,

That's strange, re: the sizing, as I used the actual Bethesda mesh as a template. I imported it directly into Rhino, put it on a locked layer, and built my model around it. Oh well, resizing won't be a problem at all.

It's the slicing up that I'm not so sure about. Unfortunately, my friend with 3D Studio, who helped me get the mesh from the .max file is one of those... eh, well, let's just say his copy of the program is probably less than legitimate, and he has no intention of learning it. He's offered to get me a copy, but scruples won't let me participate in that kind of thing, if you know what I mean.

At any rate, what we need is someone who knows how to slice and uv map meshes within 3D Studio itself. I don't have any experience in doing that myself in any program. About the only thing I can think of is that it'll most likely use planar mapping. Beyond that, I haven't a clue.

So... if anyone who reads this is familiar with slicing up and assigning UV mapping to a mesh like this, and is willing to give it a try, please post here.

Quentin,

Nice work with the textures! Creating bump maps is fairly easy. For example, a rough, sandstone surface like Hlaalu walls could be bumped using monochromatic noise in Photoshop. Just take your existing textures, convert to greyscale, add about 15 to 20% monochrome noise with a gaussian distribution, and increase the contrast +30 or so. Save them as seperate files, and apply them to the bump channel in whatever 3D program you use, and voila! Once you see how the noise pattern creates a surface texture, you can play with how much or how little noise to use to get the desired effect.

With bump maps, dark colors represent recessed areas, while light represents areas in positive "relief". You can do cracks, simple friezes, and other surface details all with bump mapping to give the illusion of polygonal detailing, as Razorwing mentioned.

-Jon