Guys, feel free to build some models!- they can be shared around the forum here can't they. I've got a lot of fantasy role playing material detailing site maps of towns, buildings, fortresses, castles, etc. There's some refs in those, but you can find refs of buildings on the net. Sketchup already has a bank of models. You might find something in the boards of the Minas Tirith project, dunno.
I reckon Sketchup would be best- but I'm speaking from a layman's point of view. That's the app I'd use- and in fact if I wasn't so tied up with the terrain I'd dive right in there and build some too.
You could go two ways really. Build re-usable buildings that will occur a lot. Or build from site maps- and re-use the individual models for other areas. There's lots of stuff knocking around on the net. There is a Minas Tirith model but it's nowhere near the detail of the one they built in Minas Tirith project. I think that's pretty much dead anyway and they didn't want to share their assets unfortunately.
One of the models I'd love to see is Carn Dum- I built the surrounding site for it a few years ago. You can see it here:
http://www.me-dem.me.uk/galleries/Quad_02_CarnDum/gallery.htm It just needs the fortress. But feel free to build whatever you like.
If you register on ME-DEM we can talk about it there, but I'm happy to hang here too.
I tried a new workflow using real terrain data. I think the mountains look fine now when viewed from orbit..
http://www.skindustry.net/medem/files/Phase2/Terrain_1.0/NASARun/2011/Screens/AlpsView.png The need a fair bit of work though because the valleys don'tt naturally fall into the surrounding terrain. I can do that in something like Leveller manually. I've pretty much been doing that anyway with the old method, so it's not actually any more work.
The Alps tend to fall away in height to the south, so I'd have to apply to some height offsetting in that area to beef up the mountains around Isengard.
We could also extend this idea to hills too as we have distribution maps for those. We might even be able to extend it to every part of the model synthesising the real world terrain with the underlying surface. I've got an idea that uses watersheds- build the terrain via watersheds. That would create the most believable river systems.
monks
