My WIP Ages

[Sirius]

Hello everyone,

As you may know, when I'm not modifying existing Uru Ages, I also enjoy building Ages in Blender.
Since I'm spending less time on Blender nowadays, I think you might be interested in seeing work-in-progress pictures of them. This could give inspiration to some builders amongst you (plus, I like to show off sometimes...).
I updated and made public all these pictures on my Photobucket album. Accidentally, I had the idea to post this the day before Tweek released his own awesome pictures, so I delayed a bit (which also gave me time to update the pictures and descriptions).
Ages are often textureless, some of them are just really basic drafts. I don't build many "nature Ages" either, because modeling organic objects is much more difficult. Still, I think they are a cut above the average Fan-Age quality, especially since they use Blender's rendering abilities.

It contains pictures from the following Ages/projets:
- the Mechanical Age, those pictures I posted a while ago
- a Dynamic Maze, inspired by Karkadann's excellent Walking Maze
- one of my first works, the "Water Pillars" Age (I'm not really creative when it comes to names )
- and the biggest one: renders from the Terahnee Maze Age. These look quite good IMHO, even though I didn't even model the maze itself.
- the Canyon Age (I started it not so long ago), which is still very much empty, but the lighting is really good
- the very first Age I thought of the very first evening after installing PyPRP. A weird reverse-gravity planet.
- the very first Age I wanted to build after playing Myst I, a clockwork above the sea (dates from looong ago, I was quite young).
- another maze (yeah...) made of Inception-like skyscrapers.

And random uninteresting stuff...
- my old Myst V test screenshots, when I was attempting to get them working on Uru (not of much interest though)
- miscellaneous 3D models and hacks (getting Ahnonay on Unreal, a WIP export interface for PyPRP, or vertical wavesets )

Don't forget to read the description of each folder/picture, it can give some insight on the Age structure, or even technical details if that interests you.
UPDATE: in my browser the folder descriptions are all messed up/not showing when I'm not logged in. Sorry if that happens to you as well.



More info:
I've been modeling in Blender for a long while, but recently it seems I don't have much motivation for it. Why ? Well, mostly because building something fine with Blender and PyPRP is insanely stupidly hard compared to modern engines, and the result is limited to Plasma's many but outdated features (no offense to Cyan or PyPRP devs). I would love to see my Ages completed, but currently I simply don't want to generate a single lightmap anymore. Plus, I'm kindof in a lack of inspiration right now.

I will attempt to continue work on these in the future, but I'll probably be targeting them for Unreal (once I get the hang of the engine). Don't expect it to be on Plasma, it's just too much work, sorry.

However, right now I'm working on a top-secret project of mine, and I'm going relatively fast. It might be out soon (in a few weeks, although maybe more). It's a Plasma and Uru related projet. Hopefully you'll like it
(oh, and I also have something even better planned after that... but this will take time !)

[janaba]

Pretty awesome stuff, Sirius, so much potential seems to be lying idle resp. resting there on your machine by now, waiting to be completed ...

Of course, I can understand that after so many years of having constantly, painstakingly worked on getting the most and best out of everything, means the Myst games and worlds, all the Uru versions, Blender versions, Plasma, PyPRP and your own age visions and creations etc., and that with much passion and dedication to this tedious labor of love, while again and yet again hitting limitations and boundaries all over, the motivation and inspiration might at some point drop considerably or even vanish for a while, esp. as it's becoming ever more obvious that those old ways of creating awesome worlds and stuff are becoming outdated and aren't necessary anymore, and so many folks, even Cyan, are moving on and are almost easily and effortlessly creating gorgeous, beautiful, realistic worlds and 3D worlds etc. almost in the blink of an eye ... One has to learn that too and one has to just 'have it', the creativity and passion etc., but then only the sky's the limit as it seems ...

Yeah, I'd say go for it, the Unreal or any of those new engines, and let your passion and inspiration rise once again and to even new heights, Sirius ...

Besides that, I wonder what that new top-secret project might be, some enhancements for developers or sth exciting for all of us ... Thanks however for sharing your many treasures and insights ...

[Dulcamara]

Thanks for the wonderful photos.
Only those who work themselves with Blender or similar 3D programs, know how much work you've
invested in these projects.
I hope someday you will again find the motivation to finish one of this enchanting projects.

[Sirius]

Thank you both for the kind words !

Yes, I will probably switch to Unreal once I get the hang of the engine. Problem is, it's a bit harder to redistribute fan made content, and it's not massive multiplayer. Still, all these things the engine can do with dynamic lighting, physics, particles, and image distortion, it makes me want to try them ! I may not be a professional modeler, but I have many ideas I'd like to experiment, if I can just get the tedious work out of my way.

That said, it's Myst, Uru and Plasma that got me into modeling and programming. I'm currently studying computer sciences, and I guess I wouldn't be doing this were it not for Cyan and all they created...

Besides that, I wonder what that new top-secret project might be, some enhancements for developers or sth exciting for all of us ... Thanks however for sharing your many treasures and insights ...

You will see... I think you will like it. If not, you might like the second project (that said, I won't know if the second project is at all feasible until I actually start it).
You're most welcome anyway

[Yali]

Now that's f***ng Myst! Beautifull just beautiful! I just posted a thread on the Cyan forums asking why Myst fans don't get together and make a new Myst spinoff game in Unreal 4. The tech is begging for it. Your ages are simply exactly what the Myst universe needs right now. Bravo.

I want to see this textured and in UE4 as soon as possible. I can't wait.

[Sirius]

Thank you very much, Yali !

Yes, I hope I have managed to get the Myst spirit in these Ages... Finding a good, interesting layout for the scene, along with original, detailed meshes for each object can prove tedious...
In some cases it's hard because I started the Age with shapes that are too blocky. For instance, the plazza of the Tehranee Maze started with uninteresting meshes, while the console area is more detailed.

Also, I'm still impressed by how easily people like Tweek or DenDwaler can model complex objects and organic meshes such as plants

Anyway, it's a shame there aren't more (well, any) Ages built on Unreal... They would really look incredible.
I guess that's because Uru is already setup to easily create and redistribute content, without the need to set up the whole engine and tools...
Plus, people really enjoy exploring together, and Uru (and especially Deep Island) is all setup for massive multiplayer, with existing Ages.

I know Unreal can handle multiplayer, though - I'm just unsure if it could handle a large number of connections at once like MMOGs do. It would probably be a headache of setting up anyway...

[Tsar Hoikas]

Unreal isn't an MMO engine--I think it only supports like 16 concurrent players max? That's a fairly busy day in Uru, but Plasma supports a whole lot more than that, despite the client's lag problems.

[Yali]

Apparently a bunch of new MMOs are in the works using Unreal as indicated on the Unreal Wikipedia page.

[Sirius]

Interesting... So Unreal can handle mass multiplayer in some way. I guess this wasn't the core feature of the engine when it was first developed. But it seems they never cease to add new features to the engine anyway.

It looks like Unreal was most commonly used for first person shooters, in which you and your friends can merrily shoot each other to death in small groups (so indeed something like 16 or 32 ppl on those games)...

It would be cool if we had some sort of Unreal shard dedicated to playing fan-Ages, with all the new graphical features the engine allows, while still allowing to play these Ages together. But that's not a piece of cake to setup...


Anyway, I've been doing some modeling recently (some misc models and a city template). Not Uru-related, though.

[belford]

This week I went to a presentation (at MIT) where an Unreal person demoed making a simple game from scratch. Run around, shoot zombies, third-person camera. Got it running in a little over two hours using their visual scripting language. Pretty cool.

It's an engine. If I understand correctly, you can rip out the provided multiplayer code and insert your own, or hack it however else you like -- it's just a matter of how much work you want to do.