Guild of Writers

ah, ok... but I just had and Idea... how bout we have the door [i]behind[i] the waterfall, not on the left of it? it'd probably be more hidden that way... although, it'd have to be some distance from the water, so that the explorer doesn't have water in their eyes when trying to solve the door puzzle perhaps the area with the door (in the very middle of the brick wall, behind the waterfall) should be a bit further from the water, sort of... indented further into the wall...

and about the Island, that sounds great keep up the good work.

Oh, It's been a few days and I haven't posted anything new here.

Sorry if you've been waiting, Justin.

But I've been busy with the closing down of MOUL and getting good looking water working for pyprp.

So, just wait a bit more. I'll post as soon as I have anything.


~Lontahv

ok I don't mind if you don't post for awhile, as long as you're doing a good job

I've been playing around with the Yinfara tree design a bit ever since that great concept art. Here's the best thing I've gotten so far.

BlendFile:

http://lontahv.googlepages.com/Concept_yin_tree_4.8.08_4.blend


Note: the modeled leaves are going to be changed before it's put in the game(at the time of texturing)--for now they're ok and give a good since of how it'll be.

This is meant to be a pretty big tree, the box on the ground is a person-hight.


~Lontahv

it looks good a bit too geometric though, is there any way you can make it look a bit more organic?

Well, I'm thinking this will be the tree non-posed. Since I'm going to have lots of different ones, I need a base-one to work off of. I'll bend the branches twist the roots shorten the stem, break the stems etc. when the time comes.

I'm planning for the stems that hold the leaves to be fleshy and green--not woody like the base. Think salad-greens stems.

~Lontahv

Ooo sounds great

Hey guys - been a while. Looks like things are going pretty good 'round here. That's good
Lontahv, I like what you've done with the tree - can't wait to see what the finished, organic product will be Great work you guys.
I'm still on hiatus from writing (and drawing - I seem to have hit a mental block... more like an enormous wall, actually), but I couldn't help stopping by and posting.

Wishing all the best,

Your work is inspiring... Thought I'd throw a few ideas at you, not sure how written in stone any of your current stuff is, but...

With your waterfall its way too rigid. What I would do is build up the wall using small blocks. If you are looking for the manmade approach remember bevels are your friend... What I would do is try to push your wall back so that its more of a curve than a flat face. Both in nature and in man made dams there is a ellipitical shape to the retaining wall. I have an 5 minute sketch that will sort of illustrate what I mean.

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Atleast I think I understand what it is your going after.

The other stuff I was impressed with was your trees. I wanted to impart some of my own ideas about those, but hey... they are your trees so do what you want . Remember that CYAN had the biggest probelm with trees in the original MYST game and there is a reason. Getting that organic look is NOT easy to do. IN fact its tricky. When I was in school years ago learning the ways of MAYA 3D, we cheated using nothing more than Nurbs and Artistic effects. Unfortuneatly Blender isn't so easily manipulated. Really the only way to improve the look of the tree is to ramp up tesselation... which will also decrease performace in the game... and it can decrease it alot. I think this might be one of the many reasons why URU only has one tree that has that organic feel to it. ELDER KEMO I believe it is... the rest look less than real. One idea would be to raise the trees up away from the users feild of contact. Putting them up on a hillside or cliff away from direct contact, that way you can take a mesh then put a really good quality PNG image of a tree. Its cheesy I know but it works. Otherwise you run into issues, atleast in my experiance.

Show Spoiler

If you are dead set on having your trees look organic and have people play amoungst them then I would make them really big so that you only have 2 or 3 in a given area... maybe have more Meshes hanging off of them with vines and flowers to help hide the klunky spots.
/shrug

Anyways... If you find any of this helpful great, if not hopefully the post is easy to pass over.

Uh.......WOW!

5 minute sketch?

You are quite talented there ABguy!