The Memorial Age

[Doobes]

Question: What's the name of the Age supposed to mean?

Loosely translated, it means "cherish the people". My attempts at D'ni are usually rather poor, so I hope it works.

Looks good Doobes. Just a couple of suggestions, I'd reduce the star count on the skydome a bit.. the sheer amount of stars makes the sky a bit too busy and actually seems to make the skydome somewhat claustrophobic looking.

Reworked things a bit and here's the result:

Show Spoiler

I'd also mix up your textures a bit, there is a lot of the same grey texture everywhere might be worth breaking it up.

Agreed. Most of the textures are stand ins at the moment. I'll be trying out different ones over the course of development.

Thanks again for the feedback, everyone!

[Yali]

I'd seriously work on the textures. Right now they're very busy with a lot of grain while not being distinct enough to stand out and be pretty. The stone looks more like cardboard or sandpaper because it lacks a distinct textural motif that would give a physical sense of surface. Busy texturing reminds me a lot of 90s Myst clones when the technology was fairly new. One thing I'd suggest is getting a good look at how Cyan does texturing and you'll notice they tend to highlight specific textural motifs, whether its a rust material on the Noloben pipes or the smooth grey stone of Gahreesen, their textures are beautiful because they stand out. K'veer is probably their crowning achievement in Uru for me from a textural standpoint. I could look at that dirty, slightly reflective tiled floor for hours and not get tired of it once.

I'd suggest checking out http://www.cgtextures.com for a good dose of very good materials. I personally used it in my 3d scenes here and here. Although pre-rendered, my scenes give a good example of material use in an attempt to match Cyan's visual beauty. I went through dozens of materials before I found ones that suited the tone and palette of the scene I was envisioning. I also heavily photoshopped my textures and avoided tiling unless necessary. Also its good to make circular textures by using the offset tool in Photoshop and blending in the edges to avoid the dreaded seams and tiling effect.

Actually, the best texturing I've ever seen in Uru is actually in Vothol Gallery. Between the repeating geometrical motifs, the color coordination of black and rich red with the grime and reflectivity its simply a feast to look at. Its detailed without being busy or confusing. I think contrast is key, like Tweek said, I'd change some of the coloration between the pillars and walls and also add in some very distinct D'nish motifs to help draw the eyes around the room.

Otherwise, the layout of the age is great and traditional Myst. I'd also experiment with some ambient occlusion on the surfaces edges to help create the illusion of depth and higher polys.

Anywhoo, that's about all I have to say.

Looking forward to your progress.

[Sirius]

Very interesting post, this is valuable information for Age building. (Doobes' textures aren't great right now, but as he said they are just placeholders and I'm sure he will manage improving them )
I find it particularly useful because I'm not really good at quality texturing, and have a hard time finding how to create nice textures by just experimenting blindly.

Although I don't have a great knowledge of image editing, I can give these advices to builders who aren't very good with texturing either:
- choose your texture according to their patterns, not according to their color or contrast. Those can be modified in a few seconds with tools like Gimp to change the hue, saturation and contrast curve to get the "mood" you want.
- when it comes to CGTextures (which is now called textures.com, BTW), don't always download the lowest resolution image available "just because it's tileable". While they do a great job on tiling their textures, most of the time you can achieve something almost as good with the higher resolution textures by making the image seamless by hand - in Gimp, that's the Filter->Map->Make Seamless filter. Not as perfect, but in most cases it's enough.

Yeah, ages like Vothol are very good example of quality texturing, but it's also a good showcase when it comes to lighting and models.
- Lighting, because while it has a nice dark red hue, it also has very bright cyan lights. This is enough to make it colorful while avoiding the claustrophobic feeling of a single color. Using only two colors (one dark and one light) is simple enough to do, and yet is visually pleasing and gives the location most of its feeling. And if you look carefully, this is used in most video games nowadays.
- Models, because the whole geometry feels smooth and flowing, some objects like the columns are not made of a single mesh, and some other are damaged to break the repetitiveness.
Clever balance between those three are what makes it a masterpiece, IMHO.

[Korovev]

Loosely translated, it means "cherish the people". My attempts at D'ni are usually rather poor, so I hope it works.

As it is now, it’s “I cherish the (ov)s”. “Cherish the made” is shetenemah rebahreltahv, so I guess it should be Shetenemah Rerovtee (Setenema rerovtE in Dnifont).

shetenem(ah) is singular, though...

[Doobes]

Loosely translated, it means "cherish the people". My attempts at D'ni are usually rather poor, so I hope it works.

As it is now, it’s “I cherish the (ov)s”. “Cherish the made” is shetenemah rebahreltahv, so I guess it should be Shetenemah Rerovtee (Setenema rerovtE in Dnifont).

shetenem(ah) is singular, though...

I suppose one could chalk that up to the name being shortened and merged over the course of thousands of years. Certainly not my mediocre D'ni language skills.

As for the textures, they're far from finalized, as I said. They'll be shuffled and reworked continuously over the course of development (as they were with the Pub). The only thing that's officially "done" is the ocean waveset.

Also, I've been using CGTextures (and love it!)...and they changed to http://www.textures.com recently too. I'm guessing so people could find it easier?

[Korovev]

Oh well, as long as you don’t name it revovtee...

Anyway, looks good so far!

[KathAveara]

Loosely translated, it means "cherish the people". My attempts at D'ni are usually rather poor, so I hope it works.

As it is now, it’s “I cherish the (ov)s”. “Cherish the made” is shetenemah rebahreltahv, so I guess it should be Shetenemah Rerovtee (Setenema rerovtE in Dnifont).

shetenem(ah) is singular, though...

I suppose one could chalk that up to the name being shortened and merged over the course of thousands of years. Certainly not my mediocre D'ni language skills.

As for the textures, they're far from finalized, as I said. They'll be shuffled and reworked continuously over the course of development (as they were with the Pub). The only thing that's officially "done" is the ocean waveset.

Also, I've been using CGTextures (and love it!)...and they changed to http://www.textures.com recently too. I'm guessing so people could find it easier?

Possibly, it might be R'rovtee (but the rules of contraction aren't 100% clear)

[dendwaler]

Doobes,
give this texture site also a try:

https://episcura.com/textures/

Its new, fast growing and 15 MB free daily and has good content
The same policy as cgtextures.

[Doobes]

A little time off and I've been busy. Here's the temple with a bit more added and some restructuring:

Show Spoiler

Still working on things, but it's starting to shape up. And yes, that pedestal is already wired (although the KI slot is still "broken" like the Pub's...damn, those things are fragile ).

[Sirius]

Looks good The shadows are a bit too sharp in my opinion, but oh well.

Still, it's incredible to see how much we're used to seeing lightmaps in Ages nowadays. Cyan rarely used them, but now it's an affordable luxury, with people having better computers now than a few years ago...