If you need somebody for the wilderness, just PM. This project looks more and more interesting to me after I've seen the movie yesterday

Here we go, first quick concept model for landmesh. What I'm planning to do:

I will create a bunch of floating isles, one larger on wich most of the jungle will be placed and it will have a rather flat walkable terrain on numberless different terraces. The other isles a bit smaller and you will have to acces them on different ways like jumping, climbing, walking across giant roots, walking over floating stones and so on. The large mesh will feature exterior caves (moving in without changing cell), small lakes and pools of water, waterfalls, complex rootwork to travel across (hopefully with light at your every footstep, stonetowers for climbing, stonebridges, evtually a kinda tree village (depends on free time).

This is just the vague suggestion of the final mesh, but whatcha think? Any suggestions, other ideas wishes, critics? At this stage I can make changes easily, lateron when the mesh is more complex it will get a pain in the youknowhat!!!

http://pic.leech.it/i/e5c2e/b510d19concept01.jpg
http://pic.leech.it/pic.php?id=fd105daconcept011.jpg


TheDaywalker :rock:

Beta testing is about all I can contribute to this project as well, but when you're ready, I'd also love to help. By then, I will have actually gotten to see the movie. This will be the second time I've had to go see a movie specifically because a mod looked so cool... ^_^

What was the first one?

hehe, i am looking forward to this. Seen the film 3 times already and i am draging my mates to see it as well later on tonight

I cant really offer to help in anyway with this (modeling and textures not my strong suit) but i can offer advice, critic, scripts and testing
Apart from that i can also offer my support, good luck.

Oh and to thosethat keep shooting the mod down for legal reasons, please can i refer you to http://www.gamesas.com/bgsforums/index.php?s=&showtopic=1063473&view=findpost&p=15453031 and i hope that you respect it enough to just let things be.

=MA=

Now that I've seen the movie, I'm really excited for this!

I have some mesh resources I could share for this.
http://i118.photobucket.com/albums/o90/plutocruel/cliff2.jpg?t=1261575290, http://i118.photobucket.com/albums/o90/plutocruel/cliff3.jpg?t=1261575291, http://i118.photobucket.com/albums/o90/plutocruel/cliffisland1.jpg?t=1261575294
They are large, and could be used for mountain building.

I just have to finish them first.

@MA: I could indeed need a special script. I need script that I can put on a floating rock (activator) which should make the player glued to that rock, depending on activating/ deactivating or equiping/ unequiping a special item. I want to make animated floating rocks, on which the player can stand still and be transported. Vertical is easy to do without script, but horizontal transportation doesn't work without a script I guess???


TheDaywalker :rock:

Yes. I've thought it over quite a bit more. I intend to use FootLightLeft and FootLightRight (and the other corresponding sounds for each armor class) to determine which foot the player is stepping with, and place an appropriate mesh there. So the mesh used I think should actually be quite a bit bigger than I originally wanted, but more of it should be invisible. There should be one for each foot, with the glowing portion only on the front right/left corner.

I'm not too familiar with what can be done with animation, but I wonder if the mesh itself can handle the fade out? If not, then just having several variations of the mesh with smaller amounts of glowing areas will work. I can just replace each one with the subsequent next mesh.

As far as slopes go, there's not much that can be done. I think that so long as the glow cannot be seen from the sides at all, it won't be too much of an issue. For all those who play first person it's a non-issue. And the camera isn't free enough from third-person that it can be seen from other than above for the most part.


So who's going to scale up a cliff racer and add a second set of wings? :hehe:

@Fligg: Animation can do fade outs, think for example of Almalexia. She has a NiVisibleController inside her .nif. I sadly can't export that Controller from Blender, but a max user could I suppose. I don't know yet how to set it up completely in NifSkope from scratch. You could also use a texture-flip animation with different alpha textures declining from opaque to invisible. There are several ways to do this.

Here an update on the main island. I made a small canyon, some terraces and other kinda stuff. I'm working fast and I think I can go into details tomorrow. Making the roots, some caves, some smaller isles and rocks...

http://pic.leech.it/i/abea4/65b56344picc1.jpg


TheDaywalker :rock:

The model looks great so far, however keep in mind that some of the trees are going to be the size of a fairly large redwood tree. And to try to create the feel that the player is in a deep thick jungle with massive tree's we will need some rather large surface area.


A few images to give you an idea of scale.

http://botit.botany.wisc.edu/toms_fungi/images/redwood.jpg

http://lifekills.files.wordpress.com/2009/03/redwood-logging.jpg

http://www.agatecove.com/images/redwood-wagon.jpg

http://www.mdvaden.com/images/redwood_photograph.jpg

@AOF: No problem, the main island will almost fill an entire interior cell. I can scale it as big as I like if needed!!! I could even make it bigger in an exterior cell, but I don't like the idea of having it out there in Tamriel. Should rather be a univerese of it's own.


PS: At all who make models, please cut down the vertice count as much as possible, else we will get really bad lacks of performance with all that vegetation and other stuff going on. My entire Island has about 5000 vertices now, just as a reference!!! And please do also use textures that match the size of the model, meaning no 2048x2048 texture on an object as big as a mouse, LOL!!!


TheDaywalker :rock:

Well I suppose if we need more surface area we could always create some secondary models to expand things out a bit.



The second part is a good point, this will probably bog down a lot of systems no matter what we do but it would be best to keep things to a minimum.

Ok, next stage, I have added the main root. It's a giant beast and you will be able to travel on top. There will be lots of smaller roots spawning from this big one. Those roots were originally made for a "Skyrim" concept of mine, but as we can't avoid having roots in this project, I just took them away and I will design something completely different. I will add a lot of smaller isles now, which all will have a flat surface, so there will be plenty enough space for all the trees!!!


http://pic.leech.it/pic.php?id=2bdd4929env01.jpg
http://pic.leech.it/i/722e5/7f9b383env02.jpg


EDIT: As this has become somewhat like a community project, shall we showcase the whole "making of" until a certain level of detail or should I work behind the scene from now on?!


TheDaywalker :rock:

Nice, now make a gigantic tree growing from that root haha, only partially kidding.

Anyway, looks like it will be a load of fun to map (sarcasm.)

Mapping??? - Me?!! :facepalm: Damn, that hurts, but I guess I have no choice!!! Work is done sofar. this is the base mesh, vertice count 10.000. I will do some minor tweaks, but I should stop now, else I'm going to make this a TC once again. I will make all the smaller isles, roots, trees as single statics, so each of us can decorate the base mesh after his own imagination. I will make a colored map of the mesh, so that anyone who is working on it has his own little claim and we should not conflict with each other.

Btw, we should agree on some base textures, which will be used for rock, jungle ground, roots, trees 'n other stuff!!! Will we take handpainted textures, will we make them ourself or ask for permission to use existing ones, will we take fotorealistic textures from free texture sites... You see, a lot to think of before. We also need a generic naming of all meshes and textures like Tx_tdw_rock_01 (tdw would be my shortcut).

http://pic.leech.it/i/ddbd1/efd81d8eenv03.jpg


TheDaywalker :rock:

I don't really like the claim idea. Doing it that way will be rather messy and things will not flow properly, I want this to be one "piece" if you know what I mean. I think it is best to have only a couple of people doing the world building.

As for textures, I am using photos for what I am working on. I most often use cgtextures or google if I cant find what I need at cgtextures. Cgtextures is a free site with a dowload limit for free members, the textures can be used for anything even commercial work. There are also many other sites that supply free textures. I really only hand paint textures when trying to find what I want is impossible.

As for prefixes, I don't think having a set prefix for textures is to important however it might make finding the models in the CS easier. Maybe we can come up with a name for the project other then Pandora and derive a prefix from that for the models....Any ideas?

Why not the Pandora Mod? It's simple and has been successfully argued from a legal standpoint in two threads already. Something equally esoteric like Arcana/Arcaea or something would work too. With Pandora Mod you could add the prefix PM_ which I don't think is used by anything.

@AOF: I also want only a few hands working on the model, but even if it would be just us both, how will you solve the problem that we don't collide with what we are building? Should one person do the whole main island, I don't think so!!! Any suggestions?

Yeah, a new name would be the best, maybe TheModFormerlyKnownAsPandora!!!


TheDaywalker :rock:

I can not understand why that name should be such a big deal??? It isn't a trademark or something, it comes from the greek mythology:

Check this out:

Basic Story: Zeus, upset with the brothers Prometheus and Epimetheus for having successfully brought fire to humankind, making for all those annoying sparkling lights on the ground at night, decides to even things up by introducing disease, death, and sorrow to humankind. In the original tale these things are held in a jar, not a box. He orders Pandora to be created and gives her as a gift to Epimetheus, brother of Prometheus. She is told to never open her jar, but the gods and goddesses have also made her curious. Eventually, she opens the jar, which in some versions was not given to her by Zeus, but was instead kept locked up by Epimetheus,who did not want humankind to suffer. But in either case, the vessel is opened. Pandora realizes what she has done, but cannot slam the lid back on fast enough. The only thing left in the jar is Elpis, or Hope.

There are several variants to Pandora's tale, more than the usual for Greek myths. In one, Zeus actually sends her with great gifts for mankind rather than evils. In most tales, she is also considered to be the "First Woman", brought into a world inhabited only by gods, goddesses, and human males. In this aspect, as an original woman bringing trouble into the world, her story is similar to that of Eve.

Maybe the name is no problem, but will it make the mod any better? No!!! It's just our work, which will make it unique, we don't need that name as a brand!!!


EDIT: I wanna say hello to all the anonymous viewers of this mod, hey Mr. Cameron, you know I'm a big fan of your work!!! :foodndrink:


TheDaywalker :rock:

The second Hellboy movie, thanks to your Nuada and Nuala mod. ^_^

Well somebody is going to have to start it off, the next person follow the direction of the person(s) before them. Alternatively we could try to find somebody willing to do the world building as we chug along making the assets.

Well, if you're really worried about using the name Pandora, you could always use Pangea. Similar. Just as good, I think. And I doubt you have to worry about copyright issues, since its been in the public domain forever...

That might could work.....



Anyway, here are a few plants I have made so far, all based on real life plants as strange as they may seem.


http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v217/AnOldFriend/Rafflesia.png

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v217/AnOldFriend/Sarracenia.png

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v217/AnOldFriend/TitanArum.png

Those plants are beautiful, good work!!! Maybe we can set up some of the plants in the CS as lights, so that they emit light at night!!!

About building the interiors I must say, that I won't like to give it out of hand to a 3rd person. All the designs I made were thought through to carry certain plantings. Somebody with no clue of that would be useless. So I think I will do at least the main island myself. You know I am a master of creating that kinky faerytale style environments, LOL!!! Maybe I can give you some surrounding islands and if you don't change the position, we can merge the cells lateron and everything should fit.


TheDaywalker :rock: