Model by Robert (Kel) Kelley

Dang. No wonder Robert was dragging his heels on the uniforms. He's been busy! Nice work!

I cutting the descriptions out of the script and putting them in the appropriate threads.

I've started to work on some of the details of Jinxland castle. First, the landing field where Capt'n Bills balloon arrives.

Before getting too, too involved, I want to post the buildings that have been sitting in a folder for a bit. Noye the section I chopped out of the main castle. I'm putting some buildings along walls, [not too many] and parking several balloons, and a few coming and going.

The red squarw is where there will be a gate into the castle proper. Enter there, walk a modest length street, [Pic.#2. The street should be narrower with a stone wall on both sides, but still open to the sky.] and arrive at the main gate where Bill has his conversation with the guard.

Give me some opinions on building style.

They are great looking buildings - They look typically European.

I think it would be interesting if there were architectural elements "of unknown origin" added.

EG.: how about some mixing of cultures? like maybe introducing some Russian swirly domes? chinese pagoda shapes, grecian columns, etc into the buildings to create a non recognizable culture.

At the moment I'm drawing a blank as to what other elements might be.

Its a great looking setting.

The buildings look really nice Kel, but I also agree with Nancy. If we want "Ornate", "Over-the-Top" and "Extravagant", we should probably apply that to the village and the castle too.

In fact, we can go way way super-detailed over the top with buildings because we don't have to worry about rigging and animating them. With buildings and such, I would suggest modeling the detail instead of relying on a decal or material. Save the textures for the very last, just for the finishing touches.

I also agree that they look too "normal". But it wouldn't be terrible if we had to use them. I do see some splining issues though. Some/(all?) of the edges seem to have razor sharp edges. If we did use them, we'd need to adjust the biases on those.

Hmmmm. Not drinking enough of my own Kool-Aid? OK. Points well taken. These were early days attempts, and I settled on a Toudor-ish middle-of-the-road look since it is so common to fairy tales.

Gimme a day or two and I'll massage the basics.


Indeed, they are just cubes. You can create bevels by adjusting bias? Cool.

Well, it's not quite as simple as that. The splines need to be "layed out" properly. As you know they're not just lines like in poly programs. So, to see if yours could be done easily you might select all the cps in a house and make sure they're not peaked (press the "Oh" key). It'll create quite a mess as the biases will be at 100%....then it's a matter of working through the biases and setting them to 10% (only at the corners).....which is usually good for buildings. It gives corners a small worn look and makes a world of difference.

There are shortcuts to setting the bias.....you can select a spline and changing the bias will effect all cps on that spline. Then there's also the setbias plugin which gives you more options.

Here you can see the difference beside each other:

AcK! How could I forget? Perhaps draw inspiration from Antoni Gaudi ? Ultimate true life whimsical architecture

http://www.greatbuildings.com/architects/Antonio_Gaudi.html

For the airport, if we see any detail of it in the movie, I think we need something more offbeat. There was a wonderful image of a skyport with single seater airship in 3D World a few years ago (I've ditched all my old magazines so I can't find it now). Basically it was a stone tower with wooden roof, with offset platform on whcih there were stores (think 18th century dock/wharf scene) and the airship tied up along side (like a ship ties up to a dock) rather than the airships coming down to land at an airport.

Cheers

What about making the town and castle reminescent of MC Escher? We could either try to pull it off in straight 3D, or we could design a street scene or room so it looks Escher-esque from one perspective, but when the camera moves, it looks vaguely "normal" ? Escher's works are still copyrighted, so we would have to be original with our actual architecture - just use his concept of disorienting perspective.

I think Escher works because he flattens 3D objects onto a 2D page. But Gaudi...I'll do some seriousl Googling.

Thanks, Ken. Another whole aspect of A:M about which I am wholly ignorant. Seems like this is something that has to be factored into the model before you start, or, at least, as you go, as opposed to applying it as a 'fix' at the end.

Perhaps as I explore Nancy's Gaudi suggestion I can side-step the issue. Gaudi didn't use a lot of right angles.

OK. Here's the first cut on a Gaudi-looking City Street.I think it has real possibilities. The sidewalks were left broad for a series of gaudy-Gaudi umbrellas for stalls and kiosks. I'll dummy up some for the next iteration. There'll be thin bridges arching over the street connecting the two city walls. Floating globes. [city lighting] and all the spaces between the condo-apt. modules HAS TO BE filled with exotic looking jungle foliage will fruits and impossible blossoms. How about some of the fractal vegetation?

I like. Maybe one or two more building types beside these would add some variety.

Very interesting, I like the concept.

I like!

I agree with Ken - a bit more variety would be good.

Even taking your basic pod shape condo unit and scaling it wide for some, tall for others, some larger, some smaller, varying cluster distances a bit would add visual interest.

And heres some examples of fantasy (yet real) shapes that might be used as inspiration to mix in if possible. Or to be used somewhere else.

While hunting up some googly shoes I found this as maybe some inspiration for King krewels Palace - Over the top British style, taken from:

http://gouk.about.com/od/picturegalleries/...al-Pavilion.htm

Click to view attachment

nice

LEVEL_02

Still much to do with textures and lights, foliage, etc. But here's another iteration for critiques.

That's great Kel. I really like how its going.

Great Kel! Very Oz like.

That's coming along great.

I found a better web site for references for the Brighton Pavillion - if you choose to use that for some inspiration for the Palace:

http://www.royalpavilion.org.uk/

It's an interesting site to explore for inspiration for the interior rooms as well perhaps (Gloria's room, reception hall, gardens, etc). It has a better image of the exterior of the palace than I posted before.

A quote from the site:

"Adorned with gilded dragons, carved palm trees and imitation bamboo staircases, the Palace's unique style mixes Asian exoticism with English eccentricity"

Oh, I do love those mad, crazy, empire building Brits!

I'm stumped. I keep looking at this and saying [on the one hand] 'I think it's working', but, [on the other] it's not...and I'm not sure how to bring it together, or what it needs. At this point KAAF [Kelley Avoidence/Approach Factor] kicks in and I'm hip-deep in the swamp. At times like these, the more indecision I harbor translates into "the more time it takes to dive in and bring it to some sort, any sort, of conclusion".

So here's some pics., [not much different from those already posted] and the .prj.

Suggestions are ernestly solicited.

Sorry to hear of your struggle (sounds like me - so I can truly empathize).

Just off hand, IMO, your original tudor style street was quite good and needed only the introduction of different styles here and there, not necessarily wholesale replacement. You might take bits of the new stuff and add it to that scene (or vice versa).

The revised village style uses interesting shapes - but feels a bit claustrophobic (due to lighting, and camera angles probably), and "canyon type walls". The shapes might be scaled differently to create groupings of different heights, and terracing outward from the street to open up to the sky more. Perhaps some open "park like" areas?

I'll give it some more thought

EDIT: I just took a look at your project- WOW! I am blown away by the work that you've done - very impressive - lots of very good stuff there, lots of "building block" stuff to play with

As if "3D writers block" were not enough, the universe has just decided to up the ante: A:M, which has been acting a bit 'off' since I upgraded-by-internet from v.13 to v.15, has finally gone over the edge.

Lately, every action, or, click-of-the-mouse has been followed by a 5-10 sec. pause, then the image area [e.g., the whole Choreography window, tho' Tool Bars and PWS, Properties, etc., remain] disappears and goes grey. The Vista blue [I'm thinking] circle appears and the program thinks for another 10 sec. and it all comes back. Then I move the mouse, and it all happens again. Then I get the mouse over the image and carefully click on an object. If nothing disappears, I try, and fail, to move it. Then it all happens again, but when it re-appears, the object has been moved. At first, this has happened when I've had the computer running all day. In the last week or so, it's taken less and less time to get there. As of yesterday, I could shut down for a few hours, then come back and work for an hour or so. This morning, nothing. Which tells me that it's not my video card that's overheating.

The upshot is, I'd appreciate it if someone could take over the street model while I get a new copy of A:M V.15 and do a fresh install. THanks.

Um....that happens with me when I switch to DirectX in the options. I only use Opengl. Could that be the problem? I doubt it's the copy of AM.

Upon checking, I find that I was using OpenGL, so I switched to Direct3D v8 and got about a 25% improvement. That still leaves me staring at the wall during the other 75%, and if I get impatient and try to noodge it forward with extra clicks, Vista just shuts A:M down.

In any event, I ordered another copy of A:M this morning [with overnight delivery] so I should be up and running by Monday or Tuesday. This way I can use it with my laptop when I leave the house or have long renders that will tie up the desktop box [since the downloaded upgrade cannot be moved.]

Kelly, if you are using Vista, try turning off "AERO Glass" and all of those cool Vista visual effects. That has worked for several people.
A more solid fix to your problem may be to *upgrade* to WindowsXP

Nice picture blixien
Did you make that model?
Would you be willing to share the blimp/balloon model and possibly the building too?

I am changing "Jinxland Castle Exterior" and "Jinxland Village" to "Unassigned".
Kelly's last activity on these were 03/22/08 and no files were ever submitted.

I was worried those modular homes would end up looking like this screen from Riven, but as long as they are going to be colorful and have additional features, i'm happy with the direction they are going. I just dont want anyone to say that we copied from somewhere else

Hey TacoBallz! You said "WE". Don't deny it, I definitely saw the word "we". Does that mean you want to model something? Jinxland village is up for grabs

I put together a quick concept. The villiage would be housed within the walls and maybe spill outside abit with a few buildings. It would just be a matter of making low patch windows and doors sticking out of the walls. And maybe a moat around it too.

I was imagining something a little more flamboyant and less pragmatic. But what you have is a lot more than what we had. I'm just happy you're working on it

Is there any reason why you decided to model it differently than Kel's original design?

I'm not fond of the "round house" look. And I'm not modelling it (yet?)......that was only a concept. Though looking at the first post in this thread, I might modify it into something like that.

That's what I was referring to, the first post. You are modeling the castle right?

Hold off on modeling this... I HAVE Kel's model, (and others). I'll put them in the SVN tree. Plus, Alain wants to take a look at the designs and see what he can do?

The village was integrated into the castle in that concept. So both.

Hi everybody,

Here some sketches Martin ask me to do for the Jinxland castle

I also put some ref pictures for boat and building.

Don't know if it will do the trick, take some inspiration from Quebec city
hope this would help

later
Al

nice nice nice nice nice!

Great Castle!

I'm sure this will probably, eventually, be covered in Al's One Man, One Movie forum, however; I'm trying really hard to get a conceptual handle on the overview of process in 3D animation.

Would the entire castle be modeled? When doing the actual animation, Will all the models be used as a set in a Chor, with the actors and cameras be wandering among them on constrained paths or will they sometimes be layered in as background images to decrease rendering times?

Thanks,

Myron

Oh Myron, Myron, Myron...It all depends ...

In a normal production process - most likely the entire castle would not be modeled - just those parts that would be actually seen..according to some storyboarded animatic, that animators would also be obligated to follow ....

However this is a different kind of process we have going here - we have a bunch of crazy ass modelers who just luvvvv to model every nut and bolt just for the pure fun of it. And a bunch of crazy ass animators who do what they want anyhow...and I wouldn't stand too close if trying to stop them...and they wouldn't listen anyway. And I have to count myself in as one of those crazy ass rogues...

And yes in some productions, planning goes into creating background images (rendered once, used many) - instead of rendering the background over and over - but no process is ever perfect...and what fun is that if it were?

The cameras and models - depending on the scene, will most likely be hand animated - some will be put on paths - there's no rule - depends on what method the animator chooses ...

I just got the go ahead to model Jinxland Castle. That means I'm off Captain Bill's bedroom model to concentrate fully on the Palace. I'll rely heavily on Al's posted references and any and all input you guys have for me. I also gave the go ahead for Martin to use my Galleon ship model in SO. Since I'm not done with it yet, I'll upload it once I'm satisfied with it. It will be interesting to see what the texturing department will do with it since I won't get to texturing it until I finish the Palace. Ok, I'll lock myself away for a while to build the Palace.

Cheers

Eric

Yay. That's great Eric. Good luck and thanks.

Um, ... the locking away part or the other part??

Everything. As long as you have someone to throw you down some food and water, you'll be fine. No shaving though. A stubble is necessary to prove to the world you went through the pain.