WIP: Age 2 - Eh'ko

[D'eux]

Motivated by the success of the small Age I wrote in order to test the Remote Age Viewer, I have embarked on the writing of my second Age, Eh'ko. Things are going well, with a stable atmosphere, landmass and water described and I am happy that the fabric of the Age is robust enough now for me to make longer visits, with a view to establishing an eventual residence.

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-: D'eux :-

[greendragoon]

That's an excellent start! You have a solid mastery of both texturing and light. Two very valuable skills. What are your plans for this age?

[Robert The Rebuilder]

Very impressive, D'eux! Interesting artifacts that the inhabitants have left behind. I wonder what their purpose is?

...

If you like, you can chronicle your Age Writing experiences in a journal like the other explorers have in the Developer Journals section. To obtain a journal, just PM Kato with your request.

[D'eux]

Good idea Robert... probably best to do it now before I progress further. A request has been submitted.

Greendragoon: Regarding plans - well I don't really have any definite ones to be honest. I have always wanted to write an Age where I could spend some time in solitude - somewhere restful, with just the sounds of the environment around me. Something like Eder Kemo I suppose. However, after writing the basic fabric of this Age and subsequently visiting it to test for stability, I have found there are a couple of elements in existence there that I did not write that would indicate some other presence or intelligence within the Age...

-: D'eux :-

[Aloys]

Very nice! The lighting i especially well executed. I assume those are ingame screenshots and not renders, right?
If yes, how many lights do you have in the scene?

[D'eux]

Oh yes, definitely in-game shots - I wouldn't try and pull a fast one
There's actually only two lights: A main Sun and a Filler light opposite it.

-: D'eux :-

[Aloys]

Oh yes, definitely in-game shots - I wouldn't try and pull a fast one

Haha, of course not; that's not what I meant. But since you started dabbling into Age creation again only 'recently' I thought you might not have yet bothered with fully exporting an Age, and you were just posting renders as a first taste of things to come; like with the Age viewer model.
Again, nice job. I'm curious to see more of your work to try and analyse your lighting; I have no idea how to get such smooth lighting with only 2 lights.. (I totally suck at lighting, this is one of the reasons I only did vertex painting in Ahra Pahts and no actual lighting )

[greendragoon]

Yeah, lighting is hard to do. And when throw in Uru's three separate methods of shading, it becomes all the more difficult to wrap your head around. I've had professional training and I'm only moderately good at it.

D'uex, your work is truly impressive!

[D'eux]

Again, nice job. I'm curious to see more of your work to try and analyse your lighting; I have no idea how to get such smooth lighting with only 2 lights..

Thanks Aloys/Greendragoon, appreciated. I have to say that I try to approach the using of Blender & PyPRP to write Ages in perhaps a little different way to most people and see them as complimentary tools rather than the only and primary way to develop an Age. When you give people the means, they often come up with their own method and in the specific case of Ahra Pahts you have just chosen to do it in your own style - neither right or wrong, just different. In fact, it is primarily the effort and quality that has been put into AP that has inspired me to return to Age writing.

you were just posting renders as a first taste of things to come; like with the Age viewer model.

Well the viewer is fully 'in-game' now and has it's very own small Age to operate in - but I'm sure we'll see it appear elsewhere from time to time

-: D'eux :-

[Aloys]

I'm curious about the soft shadows.. Did you bake the ligthing into a lightmap? Or did you do some vertex painting over a high polycount?

In fact, it is primarily the effort and quality that has been put into AP that has inspired me to return to Age writing.

Thank you! AP is a very large and difficult to maintain project; comments like this make me keep working on it.