First Hlaalu Building model completed

[Razorwing]

Originally posted by jonrd463
Whoa... is that my mesh or Bethesda's? Looks great! If mine, then I think I should look more into this Normal Mapping thing. If I'm reading the articles right, all I need to do is make a stupidly-high polygon version of the building from which to create a map to apply to the low poly version. I say this mainly because of the faceting that's present in the doorjambs. I made them almost identical to Bethesda's, yet they look smooth and rounded in renders of their models.

I think, before I get started on another building, that I'll try my hand at Normal mapping this one. I figure if I can learn the best possible way to make the buildings with this one, turning out the others won't be a problem.

-Jon

That is indeed 100% yours and Quentin's excellent work in the screenshot =)

From what I know of mapping in general, the important thing is actually the size of the mesh, as that ties into how many times the textures are set to tile. If your building is in normal size - for this one I think it would 3x2 set pieces, or 768x512 points - the texture might be set to tile 4 times horisontally, while if it is as small as the model I imported it would only need to tile, say, twice horisontally. Don't take my comments as gospel though... but it's true that if you create a plane sized 256x256 and use a 256x256 pixel texture, it will fit perfectly if tiled once in both directions.

I think it'd be a good idea to focus on this particular building, because when it's set up it's a great base model that I could see being used for pretty much all of the peasant Hlaalu houses. I'd like to beg you on my hands and knees to try and get 3D Studio Max though; I think you'll generally have an easier time modelling for Oblivion if you do. Plus there won't be any conversion problems like the resize (and I'm absolutely not saying that's caused on your end, it might as well be me that's importing it with the wrong settings).