Having decided to take up Collins challenge for his Lost World image contest i immediately had an idea floating around in my head.Now this can't be that good
considering my modelling skills aren't that great!

The first thing i knew i had to do was a imprint of a foot in some sort of material and it had to be slightly uneven and not flat like a real imprint,haven't quite decided what material yet.
To do this i thought would be to create a bump map,great i thought ! only i wasn't quite sure how to do it.A quick look through the brilliant new Technical reference
manual that came with my upgrade and i was away.

Here are some of my first steps :-

Oh Dear!!
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Getting better,but still not right.
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Hmmm! Try merging the alpha image then apply it.
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Eurbloodyreka!!/Close enough.
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I'm not sure if this will be the footprint i'll use in the final image but at least I've got a better understanding of bump maps (sort of).

Jay

Congratulations! You win the prize for being first out of the gate! I'm sure the inumerable hord will follow shortly, but hey.. a head start never hurt anybody.

It won't be long before I get going.. but I'll save that for my thread.

For now.. Great work on the foot print. If you want it softer.. try blurring it and then painting some slight soft detail like wrinkles back in.

I'm intrigued about what the final pick will look like.

Any ideas about the concept or theme? we might be able to throw some good tricks your way.

Also, look into Normal maps if you want greater detail on the footprint. And is that a displacement map or a bump?

Thanks for participating,

Cheers Colin,I'm going to have fun with this.

Jay

Can't wait to see where you go with this one. Good luck!

Just a quick addition to the thread.
Colin suggested using a Normal map for greater detail....Used my own foot this time for the image.(Just be thankful there's no such thing as Smellynet!)

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This is my first attempt at creating a Normal map or any kind of map come to think of it, needs some work on figuring out how to make it better.Thank goodness we've got until June 1st.

Jay

Looks fantastic, though, Jay. I have to read up on how to create a Normal map. I have a feeling I'm going to be needing a lot of them for my idea to fly. There's so much detail captured. I can't wait to see what you create out of this.

- Michael

Hello Michael,
I don't know what photo software you are using,but i created this very quickly using The Gimp and the following
Normal Map Plug-in for it....

http://nifelheim.dyndns.org/%7ecocidius/normalmap/

Jay

Duh - I have a Normal Map converter that I downloaded somewhere. Just got to find it. Thanks for letting me know about the GIMP one - it jogged my memory. Well, when I get the main temple modeled, I'll start playing with normal-mapped textures on it - thanks again!

- Michael

****** The Tower of Babel ******

After much deliberation over the weekend i have decided to do the Tower of Babel.
The reason behind this is simple,my first idea was shall we say 'nowhere near' the topic of this competition!
Plus i have also started a College course after work which will take a lot of spare time up and there was no way i could pull off what i wanted to achieve in the time we had.This way i hope to do something that doesn't embarrass me in front of my peers to much.

Attached are some samples of arches that i am working on for the Tower,there will be quite a few different types within the building to give it a more realistic look(i hope).

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Jay

P.s.The work done with the Bump and Normal maps won't be going to waste as i am sure i will be using the technique in texturing the Tower.

I love all those arches. The Tower of Babel should be a great piece to work with.

Ok just another quick one.
Getting close to the arches for the Tower,practising away like crazy at the moment and getting less frustrated each time!
Hope to post final designs by end of the weekend and then make a start at putting the Tower together.

Colours are just temporary.
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Jay

I hear you on the frustration part! Those arches look fantastic, though. I can't wait to see as you progress!

Originally, I had some non-traditional thoughts on the whole lost world thing. One of my ideas was to model the Titanic (or parts of it) - but my technical modeling skills are seriously lacking at the moment.
Then I thought of the lost innocence of youth - but having to model people - I'm not sure I'm there yet.

Anyway, I'm babbling. I want to see more!

- Michael

I think I will be "cheating" most of my doorways/windows and use booleans, haha.

Don't worry Michael more updates this weekend and hopefully a big increase in the work next week as i am on holiday (Yhaaay.),I've got to use up my holiday entitlement before April.

Jeff,I came very close to using booleans but decided against it because of the mouldings for the archway's would have made it too much hard work(for me anyway!).



Jay

Another quick update,and hopefully one of many this week.
Done a quick Ao render of the three arches i will be using (may need to tweak them a little).

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Also done a quick test using one of the arches to see if i could get the circular look for the tower.I need to do the walls which will take me a while to figure
out the best look.

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Jay



Edit:

Tweak 1 , Tweak 2 Colour & Bump map applied (Temp)


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Ok final one for today,I'm starting to get arch fatigue setting in (i think i must have done approx 100 arches in the past week).

Just added a support wall to the side of the arch to give a bit more character,the textures are just temporary until i find the right one,also i haven't put any texture to the arch relief yet.

Tomorrow i will start to build the wall for the arches and hopefully find the right textures to suit.

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Jay



P.s.Final final one for today,quick Ao render for a texture that's near to what i want for the wall.............i think !!

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Another update,
Finally settled on the textures that i will be using for the brickwork and arches.
I've put in some 'people' to give an idea for the scale of the arches (approx 100 ft).

Let me know what you think.

Time to start on the rest of the model.

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Jay

This is going to be one ENORMOUS and GORGEOUS building!!! I like your choice of textures for the brickwork (but I think I liked your first one even better - just a personal preference - these bricks/stones you have seem more modern - which could be what you're going for )

I can't wait to see more. I gotta get cracking on my scene - I'm falling behind .

- Michael

Cheers Michael,
The bricks do have a slightly modern look to them now that you mention it,but I'll be honest i prefer it that way at the moment (probably regret it later.)

One final image of the arches,all 4 off the ones to be used on the Tower.

Now to definatley get cracking on the rest of the model.

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Jay

Quick test on the diameter of the ground floor,

I think this is going to be a 'bit' bigger than i originally thought !!

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Jay

That looks great Jay! But wow! It's gonna take a while to build all the way up to heaven

Good luck!

Lee

GeeHosaphat!!! thats gonna be Huge!

I like it ;-) Great texturing to.

Thanks Lee & Colin,i really appreciate the support on this.

Just done a quick test for the stairs on the base,not entirely satisfied with the result so will have to go back to the drawing board.

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Jay

It's looking great so far. I really like the texturing. This will be a great scene when it's done. Cheers.

It really has a strong sense of scale. It looks HUGE. I like it.

As a child I always imagined the Tower of Babel as kind of thin and tall... like a needle. I never imagined it like this... it has the feel of the great pyramids and stone henge.

It will be a striking image. I can imagine a view looking up as the tower disappears into the clouds. You would probaly use forced perspective for that to avoid building something so big in AM.

-vern

Thanks Mark,I'll let you into a secret as long as you don't tell anyone else .I've just realised that the textures on the Arch models were applied really badly.
When i textured the models i kept grabbing the Decals from the image folder and then applying them by 'sight'.As you can imagine my PWS looked liked it had been invaded by a small country.....

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I then accidentally figured out a better way (hopefully the correct way) of doing it.
By centering my models and the grabbing only one decal and then stamping it in the required locations i was able to give my PWS a breathing space...

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I feel a lot better now and hopefully by sharing this appalling mistake i made it might prevent someone else doing the same (then again they're probably not as stupid as me.)

Vern,as long as i don't keep making silly mistakes which are costing me valuable time then i probably will go down the forced perspective route,it just depends on how much time i have left towards the end of the project.I am hoping to add a less detailed City of Babylon in the background of the Tower providing i have the time!

Jay

You could condense this down even further on your decals, if your color and height maps are aligned in the same place. Delete your height map decal, under you color decal is an image folder, right click on it and add an image and select your height map. Now you have 2 images under the same decal, so next time you apply this decal to another part of your model, you will be applying both images at the same time.

Thanks Mark,you don't realise how grateful i am for that,really appreciate the heads up.

Cheers

Jay

****** HELP ******

Someone please help me as I'm pulling my hair out at this moment in time.
Following recent disasters i thought i would re-decal the arches which is fine until.....After i had finished texturing the model and 'saved as' and copying into the appropriate folder along with the decals i used i thought i would open a new modelling window and import the textured model to 'make sure'.

Right click to import model (fine),and then the decals for the model (fine) but when i go into shaded mode hoping to see the decals on the model absolutely nothing.
Open up the decals folder in PWS,yep they are there.

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Can anyone shed any light on this? Or am i missing something and have forgot some step along the way.

Please please help

Jay




**** Panic over ****

I just went through all the decals and looked in the image folders and realised there weren't any in there,quickly added the decals and everything is sweet.

Phew!

After the pretty bad day I've had with the decal situation (now sorted) I've just done a quick mock-up of the base to the Tower.

I'll start the resizing and texturing tomorrow.

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Jay

Lots of hard work but it should look great when finished

I agree! This looks awesome! The little men at work sign is priceless

So considering the size of the structure--are those step sizes going to be big enough?

Good work!

Lee

**** Warning - Slight image nudity ****


Thanks John,lots more work to do on this!(hopefully I'll finish by the deadline,if not I'll keep on going until it's done.)

Lee,the steps are the right height for the base(approx 20 ft) i just need to resize the actual base for the arches.Although the steps for the base aren't that high in comparison to the overall structure,the subsequent steps for each level after that will be much higher.Too bad they didn't have any elevators back then.

With regards to the base i realised that just having the brick structure would be a bit dull,so i am going to put some sort of relief in each of the corners to give it a less plain appearance.

These renders are just for inspiration at the moment as i need to find suitable images to act as the relief's.

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Jay

Oop's,
Sorry Lee you were right about the size of the steps for the base.When i resized the base for the arches (originally bigger than shown in attached image) it looked like a squashed pancake and frankly ridiculas. I think i'm going to have to lose an arch and resize it slightly....It's still going to be big.The steps are around 60 ft in height now and look about right,i pity the poor buggers when they have to start climbing to the top .


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Jay

Another quick test.
Just used sweeper to to create a closed arch loop (36 arches) to see the effect,also at least 4 arches will be removed from each ring to facilitate the stairs to the next level,i've done a rough approximation and figured this beast is going to be at least 1000 ft tall.

I'm getting a bit worried about the patch count.Can anyone tell me how i find out the amount of patches on a model,as each time i delete or copy and paste on this model my computer is slowing right down to a crawl and i need to make sure it's not the model causing this and hopefully something else.

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Jay

Hey Jay!

This is looking cooler every day!

To find a patch count right click in the modeling window and click "info".

Have you considered stacking multiple models? How about using low-count proxy models of the real models to assemble in the choreography and then replacing those with the real models for rendering?

Just some ideas...

Lee

Thanks Lee,I found the culprit that was causing all the problems...............The stairs.

In any other circumstances i would be too ashamed to admit this really silly mistake,but if prevents other people doing the same thing then so be it.

Old stair patch count = 4920 patches

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New improved stair patch count = 480 patches

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At least one good thing,you can't see my red face right now.

Jay

Lee, if you turn those new steps over and break all those excess splines, (K), you will get the patch count much lower.

Nice work.

Or whoever needs to

Oops! Sorry, Lee!

Jay, chop out some of those excess splines. The steps won't collapse.

Thanks for your help Paul,I think I'm heading in the right direction now!
I post my new 'improved' steps tomorrow along with wire frame and patch count ,right now i need some shut eye as it's 1.15am and my body is crying out for some rest.

Cheers

Jay

Considering what the Tower of Babel was supposed to be, I think those buttresses around the arches will end up looking ridiculously small and out of place.

Hi Michael F,
The posted images are just a little rough at the moment,I will be refining a little over the weekend.The arches shown are spread apart quite a bit to what they will actually be.The buttress actually sticks out at base level approx 50ft before tapering in to the top.If you mean the blue marble effect around the arches they are just to add a bit of colour to an otherwise bland brick arch.I'll be honest i don't know much about engineering and i'm just going for a certain look at the moment.


Jay

Another quick update,Lot's of work still to do but should be coming thick and fast now I've got my head around it.

Finally got the base shape and stairs look i was after and the base ring size sorted.I need to fill the gaps and texture them and start adding the rest of the tower.

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Jay



* edit*

I think i read somewhere while researching this that it took approx 43 yrs to build the Tower of Babel........mmmmmmm.I might not be to far of myself.

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looking good.. nice now just copy and paste

Thanks John,
Unfortunately copy & paste is not an option on this model as i intend (to my sins) to do a conical shape to the tower.The base Arches are at 22 with the next level at 19 and so on etc.The final composition that I'm striving for (due to time restrictions) is a top down look.I really hope that i can accomplish at least some of what i'm after by the end of play,if not please see whatever i submit as an almost finished scene.There is so much to do and little time (for me anyway) time to do it.
Rest assured this has me gripped and i intend to see it all the way through,even if it means missing the deadline.

My current motto is 'The Imagination of a Master with the Abilities of an Apprentice'

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Jay

Almost there!

Just a few more floors to add then a quick tidy up and the Tower will be open for business.

Then the hard work will really begin.There is so much i would like to add to the scene with very little time to do it justice,definatley one to come back to after this competition.

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Jay

Looking great

Sorry, what? I can't understand a word you're saying

Great work Jay, keep it up! Are those textures final?

Lee

kljaf kljaf.. lkkekek ... kdol;a...dllke

translation: Looking great! My only comment would be that its looking very repetitive. You might try varying the levels slightly. Or not! lol

Can't wait to see it with some normal sized people or objects to see the scale!

C