A fortress

[jnddepew]

here's a fortress I'm working on. you can see the one house inside so far. but i plan to add other buildings. this is still in its very early stage.
a note: I'm not going really for photorealism just a beginner and I'm hopefully going to make a short animation involving this fortress.
crits and coms welcome.

[archijam]

Can you change the lighting a little? Can't really react on all of the modeling as I can't make out the shelter.

j.

[jnddepew]

here's a slightly revised edition with more on the model as well as a different view.

[jnddepew]

and here's another with that horrible gradient background.

[jnddepew]

here's a pic from up on the wall.

[ice_blade_za]

Not bad at all, keep most of the edges beveled, even if only slightly. I would suggest extra support columns in the walls just to get rid of the flatness.
Keep going, I'm keen to see the result, I haven't worked on a castle in years. Merhaps' this would be nice catalyst to kick me back into action (a break from fighting with IKBooster would be a good thing)

[archijam]

The basic structure to the model is good.

Regarding textures:

The mirrored wall texture sticks to the eye, I would suggest taking it into photoshop, expanding the canvas to say 4x4 of the same texture, flipping a few and then cloning texture over the joins. Cut it into 4 equal rectangles, then shirt these four pieces to the opposite corners. If you then clone over the new joints till it looks correct, you will have a perfectly tiling surface, at a scale (compared to your model) which will not be recognisable.

The ground is also suffering a bit from this, I try to avoid mirroring in textures as it can emphasise the edges through doubling, the human eye is very sensitive to this. (Perfect for the cut marble in the barcelona pavilion though ;) ...)

An overall procedural will also help, on the specular and bump channels to create an even wear on the stones. 2 scales of procedural will help, one fine, as in the nice detail you have in the wood storage area, and one at a much larger scale. Especially on the ground, dirt LOVES procedurals. Eats them for dinner.

Regarding modelling:
Smoothing combined with micro-bevels is also your friend ... as the bevels will not look too sharp, as they do in the detail on the parapet.

The roof of the shelter is a little too perfect, if I guess where you're going with this, slight imperfections in the model will help build a believable structure. Again the wood could use some microbevels, and the grain should run with the direction of the wood.

Is the alien from the other animation going to make an appearance in this one? Hope so ... :)

j.

[Matt Buxton]

you doing this for fun or do you have a poly limit in mind?

oh and i think its a sweet little castle

[colkai]

To me, the first thing that sticks out is, the scale seems all off.
Granted, if it's cartoony, then scale is somewhat subjective, but for a test, set up a low res human standing and move them around to ensure things line up where you expect them to if you're having trouble on relative scaling of items / geometry.

[Darth Mole]

My only issue is there's this great bumpy wall texture and then all the edges are dead straight and level - like they've been cut with a laser. Any chance of adding a bit more geometry and distorting them a little?