Odema - Concept Art and Ideas

[jordd]

wow, amazing artwork

i love the concept but i am wondering where the puzzle is.
maybe you could elaborate on that some more. (?)

[Nadnerb]

Um.. don't ask me, I'm just the modeler.

Anyway, just to let you know that I'm not dead yet... the first initial preliminary export of the willow area to plasma:

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[Yali]

Wow! Neat.

Two little bones to pick at: I think the door should be a little smaller and lower - more sort of buried within the tree, and slanted at the angle which it rises. Maybe the frame should be either made a lot smaller in terms of protrusion and wider in terms of width, just to give it more of a real rustic feel. What I'm envisioning is something akin to the door of the village hut in Riven, where the door is rather square and crudely embedded into the tree.

The second thing I wanted to point out (appologies in advance, I feel really lousy commenting like this) is the proportion of the symbol to the rest of the door. Basically, assuming the door is square, it should be in dead center, big enough to be eye catching, but not too big to overpower the rest of the door. I think my sketch illustrates what I mean pretty well. Also, albeit not really necessary, the symbol is supposed to be a grid of sorts - where one can kind of peer in through the spaces between bars. That's not a priority for me, but I would like the symbol to be a separate metallic entity from the door - a golden medallion that would stand out right away as "the symbol". I saw the pic you sent Nad, where it looked just like that. That's the right way to go.

Sorry to be a nitpicker, this is still a total dream come true.

(Oh, Nad, would you mind sending me the most recent version? I've been showing off the hollow to all my friends like a crazy nerd , I need more ammunition )

[Nadnerb]

Well, in response to "the pic" you said to make it smaller. heh. Modifications shall be made. Also, it's hard to tell in the still pictures, but the symbol should actually look more gold than it did before, since it is now environment mapped. (Shiny, reflective)
The door, we can do, and please don't 'feel lousy' about making corrections. If anything, do it more. It's the only way anything can get done.

Finally, the actual prp isn't really very... presentable at the moment. Still pictures can lie, and there are a few issues that spring to life once you actually start moving the camera. (mostly some nasty z-fighting on the ground, and rather sparse grass) Sooo, hopefully you won't mind waiting a little longer for a plasma version. Perhaps it'll even have those fixes to the door.

Also, as a note, my plan is to move to the 'glow shroom hill' after getting this area to some level of mediocrity, so if you could, perhaps, draw up a nice plan view of that area so I can start with the right general layout, that would be great.

[Aloys]

Very nice work Nadnerb! That's one atmospheric place, especially with night setting and the smooth lighting you did.
Now since you're asking for (constructive) comments here goes (I'm note sure how far you are in developments so some of those might be obvious or irrelevant)
- The texture on the light flare is a tad too strong IHMO, but maybe that's just me.
- The trees all seem to stand in the same position. Rotating them to various amounts would do the trick.
- The earth texture on the ground is nice but a little repetitive, especially in that first pic you can cleary see some nice straight lines.
- You say the grass seems a little sparse, if you want to add some, it can only look better; but remember that past a certain amount performance might suffer ingame on smaller computers.

Also I'm totally jealous how you have all those alpha mapped texture on the grass and the light flares but you get no surface sorting issues..

Those couple nitpicks aside nice work, I look forward to more development on this Age..

Yali: the amount of work and attention to detail you put in those is great. The more you put in, the easier it is to develop the Age later on. (Although that's sort of obvious it's easy to forget it.)

[Nadnerb]

Well, I've finally reached a point where I think I'm going to pause development on the willow area for a bit. On his request, I've already given the age file for the hollow area to Yali. I am now posting the files for both the hollow and the willow area, and, in return, asking for comments on the composition of both areas.

First off these areas are clearly incomplete, so:

• The mushrooms, as the newest elements, do not have textures yet. I realize this.
• The "filler" trees, as the "most likely to change drastically" elements are mostly there to approximate the look of the area. Feel free to comment on them, but I'll most likely be replacing them with something closer to Yali's designs.
• On the light flares (@Aloys): I do plan to fiddle with their transparency, once the plugin supports alpha paint.
• Oh yeah, the whole thing is suspended in the middle of a starry expanse, of which I had only a ... little time to set up. Will be connected to other areas as they become available.

Everything else is fair game. Tear it apart.

The Hollow (8mb)
The Willow Hut (14mb)
(apologies about the host for the second one, it was rather large, and I seem to have lost my own ftp space somewhere)

Some recent screenshots for those not set up to run these age files:

KIimage0051.jpg (28.94 KiB) Viewed 5182 times

KIimage0052.jpg (39.51 KiB) Viewed 5182 times

In other news, I'm starting to look at the hut for the "glow shroom hill" for which I am re purposing the hill shown in the earlier Willow Hut screens. Nothing presentable, as of yet, but still moving forward.

[Jennifer_P]

I don't have time to say too much, but firstly...good job on the "atmosphere" of the place. It has that nice "myst"erious feel to it! I'm quite looking forward to taking a jaunt through this Age and exploring.

Now some comments:
1. You might play around with the look of the moon some--there's no good reason it couldn't be Martian red or dark grey, or whatever color of rock you like your planetary bodies. It looks pretty earthly at the moment though.

2. That hill in the left background is unnaturally smooth and flat-looking. Might want to roughen it up, and more verdure to make it more wild-looking.

3. There's a little grey slope area just to the left of the mushroom with a grey rock texture. The form of the rocks is very smooth, and while this works for some rock formations such as those carved by wind, it doesn't fit too well for a forest setting. Can you give these rocks some more individuality and character? Or if they're artificial, how about something to make that more clear, maybe some carved petroglyphs?

4. The texture of the brown ground seems rocky/gravelly, while in a deciduous forest one would be expecting forest soils and dead leaves. I can see the ground being artificially created like a gravel lot, but the texture looks a bit too natural for that somehow. Also the darkish lines between the largish looking rocks make the ground look kind of cracked with dryness I think... You might try lightening them up a tad and see how that looks.

[belford]

This is a totally pedantic point, but Earth's moon *is* dark grey! Really -- about the reflectivity of charcoal. It looks bright because it's in full sunlight. Our eyes perceive colors relatively...

If the moon were ice, it would be about six times as bright. Still look white, of course. Moonlit nights would just be a lot brighter.

[Nadnerb]

Well, since It may be a while since I implement any of this, I'll respond to these points:

[1]: I'd never really thought about that at all. Aside from making it look realistic, and fit with the atmosphere, it was mostly a physical justification for the bluish lighting outside the range of the lamps on the shroom. I will look into this.

[2]: You have a point here. The large scale terrain of the area used to be a rather large hill. It seems, though, that the concept calls for small hills closely packed hills. My plan, however, is to make the forest dense enough so as to keep the explorer confined to the paths. I'm not entirely sure how to go about this though.

[3]: I really don't know what you mean at all. There are no rocks in this scene. Either way, with the polycount I'm looking for, I'm taking the route paved by the rest of uru, and trying to make the textures do most of the visual work, rather than having busy-looking meshes.

On second thought, it seems that you're referring to one of the tree roots attached to the willow, which has the same texture as the rest of the tree.

[4]: Also a good point. I do have some deciduous leaf floor textures, but they're rather brightly colored. Working on this, so look for improved ground texture in the future.

Good comments.

[Tweek]

I think the trees really need some variation, different thickness, branches etc.