Are the buildings Believable?

[Sigurd]

With great thanks to Pyrandon, here is a big city. I am still struggling with size vs population etc.... so I don't know if this will ever finish.


The question on my mind however is: Do the buildings look believable?

The coastline and beach is unfinished. I'm concentrating on the 3d aspect and the buildings.

Any Constructive criticism?


Sigurd

[RPMiller]

Without a scale it is a little hard to judge, but for the most part they are believable. A few may be on the big side, but again hard to tell without some sort of scale of things. I'm assuming you'll be doing shadows on the buildings later?

[Sigurd]

I'm assuming you'll be doing shadows on the buildings later?

Either that or colour code them by function.

Torg's comment about not doing each building individually got me thinking.

I exported a bunch of buildings from the city generator and then pasted them in irregular groups along the lines of the road. The drop shadow on the layer works a treat.

Now I'll probably set up a square brush and make a second layer for 2 and 3 story buildings on top of the first.

I hope the spice the mix up with some notable buildings, palaces, keeps etc... Its just that for cities with 500+ homes you need to be able to automate some of the filler buildings.


Thats the method I see now anyway.... I'm looking for other options....

I'm guestimating 350 homes\buildings so far. That sound good?


Sigurd

Edit - Here's the same picture with highlights on the north west. It adds interest but they all sort of look like monopoly hotels....

[Torq]

I think the buildings do look realistic in terms of their layout. I think you get added realism when you add lots of smaller buildings because it mimics sprawl. They only look like momopoly hotels becasue of the colour. Another thing that adds realism is the illusiong that the buildings are all different heights as well as sizes. This can be achieved with varied shadow levels (with some buildings casting shadows onto others that are lower). Great job, keep it up. I look forward to see how it turns out because I'm also using a very similar method.

Torq

[torstan]

The buildings look good. However I'm not sure about the wall. Firstly there are some great big holes in their defences! I assume that was meant and will be filled in later. However my concern is a little different to that. Walls are usually built pretty early in a cities life and usually only contain the core of the city. They are expensive and difficult to build. Once built, the citizens all want to live inside. Therefore I would expect the city wall to encompass a smaller area than you have, and for the are inside to be densely populated, with a sprawl of smaller buildings (after all, those outside the wall are poorer) outside.

I guess everyone has to have a bugbear (RobA with his rivers and RPMiller with his toilets), and I suppose this could be mine. There have been a few examples recently of city maps with truly enormous walls - almost as if the generous government has decided to build some walls that give the city room to grow into. I doubt this was ever the case as walls are expensive, and the larger the wall, the more area you have to patrol. On the other hand I don't know (I am not an historian) for sure and I'll be happy to be proved wrong if someone can find an example.

[Sigurd]

Torstan, I completely, completely agree.

The wall is a random bit from the City Generator based on Pyrandon's Tut. I'm mostly trying to figure out a style for buildings right now - Squeezing them inside a wall\road structure.

The wall is unattended to, as is the rendering of the ground, road, river, and the general defenses of the city. I just needed a framework to consider buildings against.
I haven't even considered the sewers (or not), drainage and water use.


I'm thinking now that the above is not the optimal way to do this.

1. Throwing random components together is fine but they have to stay vector drawings or the rotation and cut\paste makes them mush. I'm not sure exactly how to do this and if I have the memory\machine to do it. Perhaps, realistically, I have to stay raster, but work at a higher pixel count.

2. Torg's point of multiple layers and colour shifts is bang on.

3. Some of the buildings (30%?) should be much more carefully placed and chosen to lend focus to the city.


I appreciate all the comments. Thanks guys.


Sigurd