Guild of Writers

It's a shame to let these old files rotting on my HDD...








Figured you might like it .

Did you build these from scratch?

Yes. (that's why I posted this in "Building"). I'm not crazy enough to start converting realMyst yet !

I started this when I was learning Blender, to practice modelling... Gears, islands, animation (the fortress can actually rotate !), and stuff.

I started with a map from Mechanical, trying to get the middle building right... then modeled a few gears... etc.
I eventually got bored of it. I randomly add a few models to it, correct the existing ones...

I recently re-opened it while working on other Blender files, and thought it might be worth sharing pictures.

This is really great. It looks excellent so far!

Thanks for sharing.


I wonder if Atrus had ever been to Gahreesen before he wrote this one.

Very cool. Good work!

Nicely done Sirius! great job.
Plans to add some texures on it?

Excellent job Sirius. I took a single glance and thought you might have gotten the realMyst ages into Blender till I read on! You should finish it up and add it as an age to. Then we can have Myst and Mechanical in Uru.

Thank you all for the quick replies ! Glad you like it.

Deledrius wrote:I wonder if Atrus had ever been to Gahreesen before he wrote this one.

Well, the construction of the fortress started after the first link, but I'm not sure why he made it rotate...

dendwaler wrote:Nicely done Sirius! great job.
Plans to add some texures on it?

I think I'll try to focus on it in the next few weeks, but it's really hard to find good textures on the internet... I often search on CGTextures, they have a lot of good stuff there.


But keep in mind I have no idea how much time I'll spend on it, since I tend to simply put aside my Blender creations for some weeks (sometimes months) until I feel like working on them again. I will try to update it regularly.


I am thinking about bringing it back to Blender 2.49b so I can export it to Uru (that's usually now I feel disappointed, when I see how bad it looks textureless in Uru).
I started it on 2.49b, then used 2.5 when it came out, and now I'm on 2.63...
I'll also rig some logic stuff - when I have enough models - to rotate the fortress, put the code podium, ...
But right now I really want to improve visuals.


I've really been toying with a lot of Blender features here - I even rigged a camera so you can "play" the Age in the Blender GameEngine... well, just move around, jump, rotate the fortress, and admire the bugged physics - but still...

Ok, so I've been re-converting the models to 2.49 (had to export to Collada and reimport it). I reapplied a few textures, anim, added back lights, sorted all the old meshes (which I'm keeping on a special layer, very clever since when exporting in Collada all the meshes are put on a single layer).


And now I'm applying a few textures ! (and it gets quite ugly )


This is a Blender render, not what it will look in Uru. The lighting is all wrong, I probably should've kept the mist off...
Anyways, I UV-mapped and textured most of the gears, the island and some of the fortress walls (although you can't see them from here).
As you can see, I couldn't resist using normal mapping on the gear - just too cool !

GPNMilano wrote:Excellent job Sirius. I took a single glance and thought you might have gotten the realMyst ages into Blender till I read on! You should finish it up and add it as an age to. Then we can have Myst and Mechanical in Uru.

I'm happy it's close enough to the original game.
I used realMyst a lot to know the approximated size of some objects, but I also studied pictures from the original Myst (which I can't run on my PC anymore ), since the meshes are far more complex in it (the circular railing for instance). realMyst had to draw a minimum of faces, since it was real-time.
I hope I'll manage the texturing so that I can export it to Uru. I don't worry about the Python rigging, but I would really like a good visual quality.

Can we get the crazy roller coaster ride in the sphere, from completing the age? *pretty please*?
That animation is like my single favourite animation from all Myst games. When I finished the game for the first time, together with my browser, both of us could hardly keep their mouth shut while we rode though the age.

On a more serious note, this is awesome