House has 892 patches

Without Hair - took 10-14 secs to render using either 5 pass multi or AA

With Hair - took 1:21 mins rendering with 5 pass multi, but only 25 secs with AA. Big difference.

Delightful house, Nancy ! Mmmmm . . . that roof . . .mmmm . . er . . uh . . . isn't that the area rug in your guest bedroom? I like it with fringe best.

Looks cool , Nancy!

(That that indentation in the roof is just asking for a leak to develop.)

That house looks very...oh-whats the right word....GORMENZANO! The roof has the guest bedroom carpet...the guest bedroom is SHINGLED! Great work!

wow! Very nice!
Makes me feel like deleting mine.

Oh Ye Young-uns of No Imagination. Have thee not heard of the Art of Carpet Bagging?

Hurry! Greta's been reliably going outta bizness since 1889...

Perhaps I should do a butcher shop...Sweeney Todd style.

EDIT: Forgot to mention - that rug pile is a re-purposed Money Pile originally crafted by John the BigBoote Boy

And Thanks for the comments. I think.

Can't pass up a good sale! I'll take a a rug . .. er . . roof .. er. . .. What country did you say these were from?

Luckily they didn't swap the duvet for the shingles. Ouch!

Nice work. Looks grand to me. If you need help making variations, let me know.

Yay Nancy! If you upload them to svn under props > buildings, I will use them. And keep the signs! The signs are awesome.

Attack of the Onion Domes (31 secs to render 1000x800 - IBL, z-buff shadows, AA).

I will upload to svn, eventually - but first I want to add some detail to the doors (3d relief) , and perhaps some side structures (sheds, awnings, signs, symbols) to hint at building purposes.

I think that these could mix well with tudor, or any other style of whimsy-fantasy type buildings. It would be good to have variety.

Jinxland is so "You" Nancy.
Is there any way you could turn some of these into multi story buildings? I'm thinking Jinxland might be a busy, and thus prosperous port (a balloon port). So there might possibly be a lot of multi storied buildings crammed together along winding streets with dark alleys all over the place. Maybe a blend of Constantinople and downtown Paris.

But I'm not strongly attached to that vision. If you have another idea, please communicate it. I'm assuming that I will be assembling all the buildings together to create the town - unless of course someone else wants to do it (Speak Up!) - so it would help me greatly to have a very clear idea of what we all want for Jinxland.

Nice Nancy!
We might make proxies for distant buildings.

Jeez those are so wonderful!
Really great work!
Makes me not wanna work on mine lol.
Really don't think mine will fit in.

My vote is for whimsy - with a mix of styles, that makes one think of a locale, but doesn't replicate it realistically. A port town - would be a blend of cultures. Narrow, winding, crammed streets is good. Ideally it would have a variety of vendor shops: eg. butcher, doctor, fruit, awnings, town center fountain, clutter, on going construction, bridges, activity, people, animals, etc, etc). That is, of course, overly ambitious.

It would seem to me that it is best to add geometry only where it's needed, based on camera. I'm not familiar with the script, chor layout/camera angles, nor what you've done/not done so far for Jinxland.

The models I did are very low patch count (all 7 buildings total 2100), not including Garbonzo's house, which is approx 800. The Doomed Pagoda's are all in 1 model - It is boned, so you can rearrange the individual buildings in the chor (or create an action), but no action objects are required to group them.

The buildings can be modified - they are constructed from basic shapes, and the detail is changed by switching decal imagery, patch images, changing repeat counts, and scaling the geometry. If they are to be viewed closeup - then they would need more detail geometry - but are fine for normal background, and medium-far viewing.

I didn't want to put too much effort in, if it's not going to be seen.

For another low detail variation, I'll think about some quick geometry mods, some decal changes and come up with another model set with a different look



Gene - it's a matter of color balance and texture. If there is a variety of styles, then everything can be made to fit. It makes it more interesting. Geometry variation is needed. Zoning laws haven't come to Jinxland .... yet.

Here's a quick, rough aerial shot test - to see potentially what changing textures on buildings does, and cramming together, and scale compared to Bill & Trot. Took 53 secs to render. It needs much more variation.

How about we get the road/path in first so we can do the animation. That will dictate the camera angles. Then it's just a matter of putting in the buildings where they're seen. An aerial shot can be done after where we fill in any blanks with "proxy models".

Nancy, your vision seems to be consistent with what I'm imagining ... OK, yes maybe we are a little overambitious, but we have to have something to aim for don't we? The real Jinxland will probably be much much more simple.


I'm working on it Ken. I'm going as fast as I can brother.
Since everyone seemed OK with the landscape and the position of the castle relative to the village, I cut out the village part of the landscape and made it a separate model. Then started playing with town layout in an Action.
I scaned through the script and it seems there are two streets that need decent resolution.
1. When they first land in Jinxland, Trot and SC stop and a vendor stall or shop and Bill urges them onward to the castle. This street leads from the ocean in the west, eastward through the village.
2. When Krewl and guards are escorting Gloria to the witch's house, and SC, Trot and Pon hide behind a stand of flowers to let them pass. This street leads from the base of the cliff in the south east corner of the village and parallels the cliff toward a small path leading from the north of Jinxland that is supposed to lead out of town to the witch's house.

I'll get those two streets roughed out and try to get the basic assembly actions for Jinxland Aerial and Jinxland Village together ... somehow.

I've uploaded Garbonzo's House and the Doomed Pagodas to props/buildings/Doomed Pagoda Whimsy

I could really use a little help finishing off the texturing on my jinx house.
Mine looks a tad too Toon to fit in, but some texturing touches could fix that

Gene - What state is it in? (besides Texas) - start a thread, post what ya got so far

it is my section
the observatory building

Your observatory geometry is definitely in the style of Robert Kelley's "jinxland condos", and Doomed Pagodas

Can you upload to the svn? If not, upload to forum in a zip file, with image files - I'll put it on the svn for you.

What kind of help are you looking for? Advice? Someone else to texture it?

It just needs tweeking. I will upload the files tonight sometime.
Really not happy with the straw roofing, the rest seems ok.
I will upload later tonight.

Click to view attachment

Mt. Spleenomar Observatory has been texturated-tweaked - will upload manana, after I tweak textures a bit further. Very, very nice model Gene. But a gawd awful mess o' groups - ya needs to learn how to work with groups, patch images and decals...

This is the first time looking in on this one and...

VERY VERY COOL!
B e a u t i f u l!

They look great.

Wow Nancy! That looks cool!
That fits in!
Thanks!

Coooellle!

I want to do one. What other buildings are needed?

Amazing what good texturing can do!
I would very much love a copy of it textured please Nancy.
geneakabbk@hotmail.com

Since you asked .....
We need:
A couple of Vender Stalls,
A Fruit & Vegetable Stand (maybe with exotic looking fruits),
A detailed Flower Merchant Cart.

There is a model named "Vendor Tent" in Props > Buildings that you can use as a base if you want, or of course you can make something from scratch.

Here is an aerial view of the village so far
Click to view attachment

Here is the view looking from the base of the cliff at the north east corner, towards the path to the witch's cottage, which leads out of town.
Click to view attachment

Here is a view looking from the edge of the ocean, toward the road that leads up the cliff to the castle.
Click to view attachment

I've uploaded Mt. Spleenomar Observatory to svn (Props/buildings/Doomed Pagoda Whimsy) also tweaked textures a tad. Perhaps it should go on a mountain/hill top? It also looks good at eye level.

Also I did a test render (1300x1100) to get timing, as well as check for character models sizes relative to buildings & rendered with hair on, Took 1:56 mins. I down-scaled the image in photoshop to 1000 x 846 - for purpose of display here.

what is svn?

http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=32558

Well...I've been off having fun experimenting with rendering styles - and this model is probably too late for Jinxland...let me know if you want to use it. Took 35 secs to render with AA - 1000 x 1000

To see variations on rendering go here

Woah!
Awesome work!

Nope, not too late! I had to lock down the roads so I could divide the set up into managable chunks (aka actions), but buildings can be added and - to some extent - moved around a little.

I will find a place for the awesome church. Please upload it to svn.

Haha. Now why can't all churches be like that!? More people would go. Love the vanes.

St. Stian's Hermitage has been uploaded to svn: Props/Buildings/Doomed Pagoda Whimsy

Thanks for the comments all.

Does Jinxland need a statue of His Royal Kreweliness somewhere?

I'm finding out that there are definite differences between multipass rendering and AA (15e), besides render time. Bump maps are rendered differently. They seem to disappear using AA. I would test it in 15f but I have the cd (no 15f available).

The first image was rendered with 5 pass - 2nd with AA - not all bump maps go missing - just some.

Hehe. Great statue. Maybe it should be gold? Of course it would be in his throne room in front of all his "guests".

Sheeesh, you are reading my mind. I actually have a pedistal in place in jinxland village in front of the road that leads up to the castle. I was planning to put a statue of ... you guessed it ... on the pedistal. But you beat me to it!

Please upload the statue in the Props folder and I will place it in the set.

Awesome pose.

What is AA ? same as IBL?

and also AI?

All this shortels in the lighting department make things difficult to understand for the newbies....

(Maybe you have to reapply the decals)

Sorry for the shorthand - My shorthand is probably confusing even for non-newbies.

I use the term AA to mean Anti-Aliasing Final Render. What would be more accurate would be Final Render NO MultiPass, versus Final Render WITH MP - perhaps my shorthand should be Final no MP. Final no MP rendering is also known as A-Buffer rendering. So I ain't the only one confused as to what to call it. I'm not a good typer and so I get lazy.

I bring up the differences in render methods here ONLY because I know Holmes has been rendering some scenes with 5 pass MP and some scenes without. Final no MP can be much, much, much faster in scenes with lots of hair. I don't find much difference in timing if there isn't hair, or other particles. If scenes are rendered with different methods there is the potential for continuity problems if bump maps randomly disappear.

I don't know about reapplying the decals - this was the same chor (with the same Scarecrow of Oz models) rendered first with 5 pass, and then immediately after with Final no MP (15e). This may not be a problem in 15f. I can't test it.

For Jake or any newbie: IBL or image based lighting is one of the options for Global Ambiance (versus none, or color). When one chooses to light one's scene with GA, using either color or IBL method, then AI is the Ambiance Intensity property that one sets to some percentage = 0-100 that determines the amount of GA contribution to the lighting.

I didn't make these terms up. I just use them. Even if there was a handy-dandy glossary somewhere - people (me included) would still be confused.

Nancy, your issues with bump maps are interesting. I rendered pretty much everything from the waterfall scene to the end with AA (Default, A-Buffer, no MP, whatever). If there are any missing bump maps, it wasn't dramatic enough for me to notice it ... and I've watch every frame of every scene at least 5 times.

Maybe watch the draft movies and see if you can spot any missing bump maps?

I've solved the mystery. It's the fake rim light material that causes bump maps to disappear (15e), but ONLY if I use Final No MP. The fake rimlight material does not interfere with bumps if rendering 5 pass.

I have no doubt that in the draft movie that for those scenes rendered with AA, and for those models that have the fake rimlight (like Krewel, Trot, Bill, etc) that the bump maps are gone. I do not know if this is a problem in 15f - you will have to test it. If you render the rest of movie, with 15f now - and this has been fixed - there may be discontinuity with earlier rendered portions. May not be noticeable to casual observer, as most models that I did have lotsa color maps.

For the statue - I will just delete the fake rim light from it, as bump maps are the only texturing that is there. There are no color maps.

As for the draft - I wouldn't think anyone else would notice if bump maps didn't look right. But - as a matter of fact - I did think something didn't look right with Capn Bill when watching some of the drafts - his bump maps on his jacket and pants were not showing up. I thought that weird - but I didn't track it down - thought it was just the flat lighting.

Whether it makes a difference to anyone else (besides me - who put in long hours trying to find just the right patterns, & percentage of bump to use) - is another matter.

Glad to see you found the problem Nancy ,that Statue is amazing

The Krewel stone statue model has been uploaded, along with the sword, Lion head pedestal base and an action to assemble them - all under King Krewel's folder.

your amazing.
the statue is top notch.

Very cool statue, Nancy!

Lots of cool work here, Nancy!

Yes, Spleen (and thank you others) - it's easy to be brilliant when one steals steals steals ...

The original King Krewel model design was by Robert Kelley, modeled, rigged by Holmes Bryant using David Simmons Squetch rig, & textured by me. The Lions head and some texturing came from a model done by I believe ? Alweb - aka Alain Desroscher (which I previously stole for a lion's statue for TWO), the coins were stolen from Ken Heslip's treasure chest model (done for SO), the pedestal base was pinched from the standard beveled primitives off the CD (done by Yves Poissant?).

Ok. I modeled the sword (a billion years ago) and re-textured everything (heh heh - changed color maps to bump map), and made the pedestal sign, and made an assembly action. Oh yes - I'm totally exhausted, with bleeding finger bones leaking all over my keyboard.

Gawd, I hate it when I have to be honest.