15 - [Inner] The Ward of Erahum [Mouse]

[- JO -]

Very good fort, there !!! I can't wait to see more !

[Josiah VE]

Those 3d models look wonderful and add another level of depth to the maps. I'm really looking forward to seeing how this turns out.

[Greg]

What you're achieving here with yet another program is marvellous, Mouse! I can only concur with what's been said about the really wonderful details you're capturing in these 3D models.

(Equally, I secretly agree with Kacey and would love to see another Mouse hand-drawn masterpiece! )

[Mouse]

Very good fort, there !!! I can't wait to see more !

Thanks Jo

I just hope you don't have to wait too long!

Those 3d models look wonderful and add another level of depth to the maps. I'm really looking forward to seeing how this turns out.

Thanks Josiah

Thank you both, and Kacey, for all your kind encouragement

[Mouse]

What you're achieving here with yet another program is marvellous, Mouse! I can only concur with what's been said about the really wonderful details you're capturing in these 3D models.

(Equally, I secretly agree with Kacey and would love to see another Mouse hand-drawn masterpiece! )

Thanks Greg

Its only the buildings I'll be doing in Sketchup. Although I will build a terrain just to cast the right shadows, the rest of it will be done in GIMP.

You aren't the only one asking me for another hand drawing. Maybe I will do a couple more then - but only after I get this model building thing out of my system

[Mouse]

What I've done here is imported a badly sculpted Blender terrain to Sketchup, and rendered an image of the fort set on the terrain from Sketchup.

Sketchup Version 09.jpg

To look at it you would never think that this has taken me nearly a week to achieve. I feel like I've wasted so much time messing around with this to no avail, but I have learned a very important lesson here:

Compared to Sketchup, Blender is infuriatingly slow where building things is concerned, but is a far better tool for sculpting terrain. Blender fails to import Sketchup buildings (you only get part of anything you export from Sketchup), but Sketchup seems quite happy to import terrains exported from Blender as COLLADA models, and will even let you edit them as if they are native Sketchup terrains (a pity Sketchup terrain editing tools are so backward in comparison). More importantly, Sketchup shadows and shading are horribly cartoonish in comparison to those rendered by Blender, or drawn by hand, and since the shadows were principally the reason for doing this in a 3D environment I would say the experiment has failed.

From where I'm standing right now I see Sketchup as an architects tool - excellent for planning and illustrating individual buildings, while Blender is more of an animator's tool that just happens to let you do models if you try really hard to figure out how to do it right. While both these tools might be perfect in other cartographer's hands (thinking here of Ilanthar and Falconius), they really don't suit me.

I'll be returning to CC3 and GIMP - but at least I finally know where I'm going with this map, even if I've just decided to go backwards by about 2 months.

[kacey]

I wouldn't call this a failure, you obviously learned a great deal from you're experiments, the buildings look great!

[Mouse]

That's so kind of you, Kacey

I'm not having a terribly good time with this map. I am, however, determined to stay on task this time instead of wandering off to do other things - no matter how many juicy challenges I might have to pass up

[Mouse]

Here is a record of a possible method of processing Sketchup TINs (terrain objects) using Blender to produce a smoother result.

Sketchup Version 10.jpg

It was frustrating not being able to shape the land beneath the buildings both accurately and smoothly, so I used a TIN with 10m spacing and moved each point of it individually to create the blocky terrain shape on the left.

This I exported as a COLLADA object from SketchUp, and imported to an empty Blender file.

Once I had it in Blender I put the object in edit mode, selected all (hit 'A' on the keyboard) and used the following buttons in this sequence:

1. 'Remove doubles' (because COLLADA objects have a lot of doubled up vertices which really mess up the subsequent operations if they aren't removed)
2. 'Subdivide' x 2 (increases the mesh LOD to preserve the shape ready for smoothing)
3. 'Smooth vertex' x 2 (this gets rid of all the pointy bits)

Then I exported from Blender and back to Sketchup as a COLLADA object.

EDIT: If I wanted to leave some of the terrain blocky, like rugged rock, I would probably have deselected some of the mesh across the rock faces after removing the doubles and subdividing. The ruggedness could have been increased at the end of the process by re-selecting only the rock faces and using the 'randomize' button.

And here is a similar view with the vertices and faces of the original TIN smoothed as much as possible so the comparison between the two terrains can be judged more fairly:

Sketchup Version 10.jpg

I hope you can see here that the definition of the shading is of a higher quality once the terrain has been processed in Blender - almost to the level that I could use a render of the terrain in multiply mode to transfer realistic shadows into a GIMP file on top of the buildings layer.

[ThomasR]

Holy s*** ! Your district is gonna put all of us to shame !