Looks well cool :thumbsup:
Perhaps a tad too much foliage on there?

Nah, it's fine, it's just the leaf texture that makes it look so dense.

Adding on to what Dirnae said, remember that in 2002 cutting edge was the Nvidia GeForce 4, with a whopping 250MHz Core Clock speed and a Memory Clock speed of 166MHz. It even had DirectX 8 and Shader Model 1.1!!! Cutting edge... Compared to today's Nvidia GeForce GTX 295 with a Core Clock of 576MHz and a Memory Clock of 1998MHz.

Looks like it's coming along well, zackg

Yeah but even when I had specs even worse than that (I've had compy's with REALLY bad specs in the past) texture replacers never slowed me down, so I mean, why didn't they just make everything awesomely high res? I mean, now in the graphics age, and Fo3's textures were still terrible!

Because you are only required to do one step better than the competition. They are a business and need to manage their resources to the fullest to balance quality with time. Im sure, beyond any doubt, that if a Bethesda texturer or whatever their official name is redid morrowind textures with the freedom we have theyd be top notch, the game would be far less buggy, and the models alot less rigid. But a beyond belief looking game that takes three times as long to make as an excellent looking game doesnt generate three times the sales.

Missed this comment. Yeah I poke my head around the Oblivion Beyond Cyrodiil Argonia forums quite a bit. They are officially my lore researchers, they are just unaware of it =-).

I gave up on making my own leaf textures, too time consuming with too poor an outcome. These textures are from a retexture of the mod more trees and foliage. Credit (from the readme) goes to:

Texture re-colouring: Rahuu
Original textures: Zuldazug, Raptre, Lord Gabryael and ayse



Perhaps. In the future Ill take a look at it but for the amount of work ahead of me there really isnt time to test it out.



Thank you!

http://i274.photobucket.com/albums/jj265/zackgwin/Untitled-2.jpg

Maybe new architecture style with a little back story. The Kothringi were weaker then most land dwelling creatures of Argonia, so their homes were hoisted up high with a middle hollowed out cylinder as both the support beam, and a wall around a ladder they used to get to the top. The twisted part of the structure was once an amplifier for certain spell effects. The Kothringi would plant (untitled plant) on those ledges that jut out from the structure. When the plants vines would grow they would travel up onto and around the twisted plates creating a drain magicka forcefield. The Kothringi, not being very magical creatures, were unaffected, but any invaders or hungry creatures were. The Kothringi could the launch spears from atop and in the vacinity of their own home.

(its an unfinished design btw)

love the new architectural concepts, as well as the thought being put into them. can't wait til the day when we can check it all out in-game.

Nice idea for the architecture!!! :thumbsup: Why not make a spiralstair that winds around the inner cylinder and another half seethrough cylinder above that as a forcefield and than wrap some ranks around that. The workflow in blender isn't that difficult. Concerning your first design, I won't use those bridgeparts, which only consist of a plane, because when you look from the side, they will not be seen or causing odd effects. I'd suggest to make them more solid!!!


Greets, TheDaywalker!!! :rock:

As I noted at the bottom, they arent the finished product. The plates will be mor ethan a plane, in fact Ive got about half of them completed now. Thanks for tips and keep the ideas coming.

@quixoteugly-Youll be able to alot sooner than you might expect

Well, speaking about architecture styles, I could help with Stormhold and Gideon. These cities were founded by Ayleids, so had a great influence of its architecture style. I could draw some concept arts and make some models. Here are pictures of archs for Gideon:

http://i626.photobucket.com/albums/tt346/rhymer1987/MGEScreenshot12.jpg
http://i626.photobucket.com/albums/tt346/rhymer1987/MGEScreenshot8.jpg
http://i626.photobucket.com/albums/tt346/rhymer1987/MGEScreenshot9.jpg

Hey rhymer, thanks for showing interest in Argonia. As I understand it the Ayleid architecture of those two cities has long since been built over and is no longer present. However, I strongly recommend you continue to create ayleid architecture and concept art. The concept art and perhaps one or two Aylid ruins for me, but more importantly for this project http://s1.zetaboards.com/Province_Cyrodiil/index/
Its called Province:Cyrodiil, not sure if you've heard of it yet. While I am in need of a modeller and concept art, as far as Ayleid ruins go they would have a much more appreciation than me for these models. Sign up over there and post a screenshot of what you got. Thanks

As far as I understood, the Ayleid architecture is still present there: "Scotty had never been to Gideon, but he knew what to expect. A large settlement more or less laid out like an Imperial City, with more or less Imperial style architecture". And Imperial city was built in Ayleid style. So I supposed it still could be present there. So, I'll post some concepts of Gideon this evening if you are interested, and than they may be reworked or accepted.

Well, I visited the site of Province Cirodiil and I think I'll do some work for this project. Thank you for directing me.

Well when you look at the Imperial City, it looks nothing like any other Imperial City. The majority of Imperial cities have a Medieval Times European style. Yes, please do post concepts and we'll see where it goes from there.

don't forget, haplo said that was cutting edge, so pretty much everyone had worse specs than that, and this game didn't just have to run on those pc's, but had to run well, with no lag, or else no one would want to buy it
when i was playing morrowind on a crappy comp, i used to have a lot of lag, and higher res textures would lag the game a lot more for me than a high poly item

textures actually have a big effect on fps in any game, like quarls texture pack 3 for oblivion, it lagged the hell out of a lot of peoples computers when it was released due to the high resolution of the textures, and though i suspect the effect is worse with oblivion due to normal maps, the computers back when morrowind was made were immensely slower, so just imagine what would have happened if they had made high res textures for morrowind back then?

anyway OT: so you went with the twisting idea, looks awesome, how big is it going to be?
have you got any other ideas for other structures in this style?

the story sounds good, but are there gonna be magicka casting predators, cause then i could understand why they would be affected by the magicka field
and will these magicka fields still be active? would be pretty cool if they were, maybe you can disable the plants creating the magicka field if your alchemy is high enough

edit: oh and about daywalkers suggestion of making the twisty parts less planar, you could probably just bevel or evtrude them (beveling usually looks better)

They will probably be a tad shorter than the smallest tree. To give some sort of scale, the inner circle would be about three- four feet in rl measurements.
The creatures are more a reason to have the living quarters up high, the drain magicka field is aimed for more evolved creatures, such as aggressive Argonians, Nagas, and swamp elves.

Well, I'll quit my rant for now, it's just that I'm REALLY REALLY picky with textures, they gotta be top notch!

I promised to make a little sketch of Gideon Architecture. So, here is a wall and the Main gates.
http://i626.photobucket.com/albums/tt346/rhymer1987/GIDEON.jpg

Thanks rhymer, these will come in handy.


In other news, worked on my own grass meshes today.
http://i274.photobucket.com/albums/jj265/zackgwin/MGEScreenshot84-1.jpg
Utter fail lol. Back to the drawing board.

OUCH!! better luck next time, bud.

haha, not good... the textures look nice though
just use someone else's grass meshes as a reference to create your own

While visiting the TR site i found there a wonderful sketch of argonian treehouse. I was charmed by it, but still had no time for realizing it as a model. So, finally I started working on it. It is about 50% ready and still lacks textures and foliage. I would be grateful if someone could help me with texturizing. I'll try to finish it in a day or so...

http://i626.photobucket.com/albums/tt346/rhymer1987/MGEScreenshot11.jpg
http://i626.photobucket.com/albums/tt346/rhymer1987/MGEScreenshot10.jpg
http://i626.photobucket.com/albums/tt346/rhymer1987/MGEScreenshot5.jpg

P.S.:
It would be 3 separate models - one for door, one for lantern and one for the tree itself. Then I plan to make an interior and continue my work on Ayleid and Gideon set.

haha hopefully the next batch will look better



I loaded Valitys meshes in blender and studied what he did before I did anything. Those meshes are the same file size as his but have more planes...and look like crap.




I saw that picture a while back also and was considering doing something similiar for argonia, except I was going to use a tree making program to create the tree and just add a door. Then I could use the same tree without the door to make the treehouse blend in better. This model looks good though and Id be happy to have it as a resource. You know, if you are a modeller looking for work I may have a few things that Id like created...=-)

I suppose making just a door in the tree is not very good idea - it is necessary to use a special model to make a complete illusion of the "magic hut in the roots". However, there will be several different models of such houses to make them look not like the clones. And maybe I could make some trees of the same style to blend this "house in roots" better when the models of the interior of treehouse and Ayleidic set are ready.

By the way, I need someone's advice: what is the best way to add foliage? And I am not very good at texturing of complex models and would be grateful for any help.

P.S. I will be glad to take part in modeling for Argonia. It is my favorite province since Arena. However I have a lack of spare time at the moment, so it could take me a long time to make a model, because I have only few hours a day for it...

Best way to add foliage, if you already know what foliage you want to use, is to import the nif of the foliage in while your model is already loaded. Place it where you want then make your model its parent.

The models that are needed right now for Greenway coast are:
Kothringi Ruin Set
Soulrest Unique Architecture
Argonian Grassland Fishing Village
Argonian Furniture & Clutter
Kothringi Clutter


Im going to be doing the Kothringi Ruin set myself, and unless you have some inspiration for the fishing village's clutter and architecture I was going to use retextured ashland yurts (I wouldnt mind seeing unique models for htem though).
Soulrest is going to make use of a few imperial models, the shack models, but I want a few unique things such as house boats for poor fisherman, a large mansion for the higher ups.