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[monks]

Hehe...I've heard some horror stories about Blender too...I suppose it's what you get used to. But yeh, Max is pretty amazing these days. I've never tried Blender. Modelling is for people with patience and poor eyesight and maybe no life.....:-D ...you can't see what's beyond the screen in front of you. You go deeper and deeper into the tiny details- until you have hands like shovels eh?...or disappear into a pixel singularity.
 Yeh a hut would be great...we could use a really large one for Minas tirith I suppose 

monks

[PytonPago]

Modelling is for people with patience and poor eyesight and maybe no life.....:-D

Then i better not reveal my real life hand work "modeling" stuff ...  ... doe, i have to do in blender my vision of a future-society house i would like to have someday.

You go deeper and deeper into the tiny details- until you have hands like shovels eh?...or disappear into a pixel singularity.

... dont speak about singularity whyte a chemist pal, or i blow your mind whyte a few hours of stuff and possibilities of our reality that will make you watch stuff like the original Star-trek series at days and crouch under your bed from terror at nights (dont worry, you get the full philosophy-psychological safety and precaution seminar before i start  )

... Minas tirith is fine ... but ... im an child of Edoras. The 8.-15. century times like wood-work city of craftsmanship and nature-based life (not to mention my favorite hills in the scenery) makes me wont to live like that. Im pretty sure, if i would lived there, i would be a magic/alchemy interested black-smith or wood worker. I probably start working on that city when i get to contribute. Doe, some mapping stuff i have to learn, didnt do that like ewer, and those would be the most important things to do in that wood engraved city. And i would wont it in the greatest detail as possible - probably cinema style - then we can remake the film in OT, together whyte the other books of Tolkien. (word by word by the book)



As for the programs, if you want some serious work being done in the future, than Max is definitely the right choice. Blender is more artistically based than technical (thats why its so "user friendly" and its free what i like so much, that such kind of project gets a name for itself (like the linux endeavor)). The pals that have made Max are a real peace of right workers, if i would be a programmer, i would dream of their kind of work - i respect them and their users greatly.

[monks]

Yes, Blender looks pretty amazing. It looks like a professional job all round and I may be using it at some stage or other. But for now, I'm with Max.
  It's a nice place- living in harmony with the landscape- and I'd like to see more of this in the world http://rohan.untererde.de/ROeowyn.gif :-D

 Nice map!...where did you get it?

 The map...that's how I see the first stage of building. collecting together maps of the different sites, Minas Tirith, Edoras, etc. From these I think we need to model the terrain so that the site will better prepared for models.
 Our plan was for the first modelling pass to simply extrude those building shapes. People who wanted to do the second pass could improve the model from there. As an approach, it will be a good way to learn Max too.
 In the past I modelled a site from a similar map- for Carn Dum. the map had contours with the heights so I vectorised them and then interpolated the contours to produce a 3D model. It was quite fun. I wouldn't do things like that now though- it's too time consuming, especially if the map is not of a real place (ok for real places and technical work). I would simply paint the heights now.
 Do you know of any map and reference resources from the Peter Jackson films?

monks

[PytonPago]

Just found on google ... aldoe, there are groups of fans - cartographers too, witch do this kind of Tolkiens books research to make it as much as possible realistic and by the books writings - have seen a number of such in the years (should not be such a problem to find that folks if on right forums) ... so the details: would be good to look on the films detailed motives look and compare to the books descriptions, little talk white a friend historian, how such motives are done (and how they folklorely arise) and make the right approximations for the final model and textures ... may not seem so, but many art-designers that paint such kind of stuff have some research periods and a lot knowledge about this kind of stuff.

This is the part of work that always makes me happy - a lot of interesting new stuff to know and find out.

... actually, some changes are needed to the terrain to make it realistic as for the usage of the city perimeter, doe, white the terrain-tools you can just lay down the objects and do the details by taking pressure(usage by the town folks)/erosion/waterways-rains in mind. And certain specialties must be vectorized (height-mapped) like the white-city rock - would be too complicated to do by the tool ... still have to wait a little for caves and  overhanging cliffs for OT (i think they could be done in a years time of Camenys and co. work), but till then, many info can be collected for the project - sketches made ...

[monks]

Yeh, it's a loooong term project. Our core data is stored in a GIS program so it's possible to create the site maps with GIS vector tools and accuracy. Then when OT has vector import tools, we could directly import them. That's what I'd like to do- it would make for better accuracy over the long term, but practicalities might mean that doesn't happen, or not in the correct order- ie we might make the sites, then import the min to the GIS program which supports 3D vectors. Reverse workflow. It's not a priority at the moment thinking about these things, but it would be cool to have everything in one app, a GIS database.
 Underground structures is where things would be most fun for me. That's where all of this project started- I was digitising paper maps, then wanted to build them 3D, and the scope of it just got bigger...!....I fell down the rabbit hole :-D...10 years on.. Then I was looking into the possibility of using real world workflows but for fantasy maps and...models because the ones I knew about for building fantasy maps didn't seem very good really, and anyway I kinda thought (in my naivety then)...well why shouldn't the Games industry use workflows that are used to make, map the real world. It's starting to happen with some things anyway.
 Ever since those first days of "reverse engineering" speliological files to create a fantasy map with some free software from uiniversity of Austin, Texas, I dreamed of a good interface and renderer that could take vector input (either from such files or from Illustrator for eg) and procedurally bring them to life. No such workflows exist because we've never had the large enough scales in Games to make using vectors and tool development worthwhile. SG doesn't support z info anyway so it has to be a specialised format like .shp. Anyway....I digress...:-D Yes, loads of knowledgeable people around to seek advice/info from!

monks

[PytonPago]

Man of vision ... like that spark if life. Well, OT will make the shift to real-sized environments - and technology goes forth. Soon, laser 3D scanners, 3D printers, garage extruders and much much more will become all-home reality (kinda sad, that modeling will get a twist in this - returning to clay jobs it seems and downed industry papers will be there at hand). The workflow will come one day - just if the world would be more focused on progress, it would be sooner. Well, making the Tolkiens vision come OT-style will certainly take a decade or two - still worth it - i just hope the Hobbit books dragon will be made, and be friendly white me. : )

Vector-data importing capabilities are planed, doe now they have some side spec.projects and biomes white weather is the actual priority (can actually well understand why). So no problem there, models can still be made - if done after the same scailing, then theres no problemo. Making the vector data files is so no bad in advance. (maybe playing white erosions in specific progs. and than export those more realistic data would prove interesting - in local village-settlements terms i mean)

In fantasy maps, OT has great future, if the great ending result will have a simple and intuitive creating way, there will be more than just middle-earth re-made digital. Maybe even the Elder Scrolls world.   ... but it would be interesting to remake the world in 15-17 century - a massive medieval world and all our 200 + castles of our little country would be there ... Making armies like in Rome-total war would be some show then.  ... and yes, the great anti-Sauron war. 

[monks]

...not vision more blind naivety. But yeh I do love it. Return to clay modelling? I think that's true and all the traditionalist craftsmen will celebrate...The Occulus Rift might be used for modelling too- software is already being written.

 Weather and biomes should come first yes. Real world scale is pretty important in our project yep...

 :-D...Elder Scrolls would be wicked...playing Skyrim at the momment...I  can think of loads of old pen and paper rpgs too...like Glorantha, GreyHawk, etc.
 What country are you from Pyton?

monks

[PytonPago]

...not vision more blind naivety. But yeh I do love it. Return to clay modelling? I think that's true and all the traditionalist craftsmen will celebrate...The Occulus Rift might be used for modelling too- software is already being written.

 Weather and biomes should come first yes. Real world scale is pretty important in our project yep...

 :-D...Elder Scrolls would be wicked...playing Skyrim at the momment...I  can think of loads of old pen and paper rpgs too...like Glorantha, GreyHawk, etc.
 What country are you from Pyton?

monks

 ... no ... it is visionary - you would be amazed what things were possible 30 years ago, and isnt applied even today ...

Well, oculus would be interesting for modeling indeed ... Slovakia that is. ( no, not CzechoSlovakia anymore since 1991  )

[cameni]

... Slovakia that is. ( no, not CzechoSlovakia anymore since 1991  )

A fellow countryman

I didn't know until recently - actually, the way you consistently used "whyte" in place of "with", I thought to myself - that must be an ancient root of the word, or some dialect. An old Welsh guy, or a Celt maybe

[PytonPago]

... the way you consistently used "whyte" in place of "with", I thought to myself - that must be an ancient root of the word, or some dialect. An old Welsh guy, or a Celt maybe

 ... maybe my medieval fathers once were. And the grammar just as a common resistance. I cant let Štúr go high RPM by him self. 

[monks]

  ...I prefer Czechoslovakia...it just sounds better sorry. It must be the Cz- not everyone can have that in a word- sl is dull, we have that- why drop the most interesting part of the word?? Whyte sounds kinda Anglo Saxon or something like "Withywindle" or as you would say Pyton Whythywhyndle. :-D

monks

[PytonPago]

...I prefer Czechoslovakia...it just sounds better sorry. It must be the Cz- not everyone can have that in a word- sl is dull, we have that- why drop the most interesting part of the word?? Whyte sounds kinda Anglo Saxon or something like "Withywindle" or as you would say Pyton Whythywhyndle. :-D

monks

... well, there are many telling that it wasnt the brightest choice to split (and its actually SVK, not sl cause slo has slovenia - witch also is a very interesting country in terms of geographic profile) ... Wythywyndle ? (like the sound of it - definitely has to be an easter egg one day ) I just prolong my protest against Y-lon i started, arguing whyte a teacher.


Anyway, back to topic.  ... i just wonder, how many people were involved in making the OT/ME terrain ?

[monks]

Mainly two, but currently 3-    but we've had major input from other folks who've been involved and moved on. Over the years I'd say 5 people. We've also had help from devs too, not least Cameni and AngryPig. Robes does the textures, I do the terrain and the GIS side of things. We have another (qualified) GIS guy Skystrider who hosts an online map.
 The problem is, is that you can't cut the terrain up into small parts so that many people can model it. We used a top-down approach, and also the base dem (which creates the water flow) could only be done by one person. But of course with architecture many people can model stuff- and there can even be more than one version of a place.

monks

[PytonPago]

fine work indeed ... would be interesting to have several approaches to places and let the LotR fans/folks pick the best.   

[Redrobes]

I kinda do the textures for the 2D view of the terrain but in Outerra, the app does all the texturing - at least until we get some programmable biomes. The main thing I do is to make the script which allows us to process all of the tiles and put it all back together without having to do that by hand.
I think the M.E. terrain will always be done by a very small group of people but that the buildings and 3D models anyone can help out with. I also think we will have more than one model per location and it will be up to users to pick the ones they want to include.