August/September 2017 Challenge: O'Gray's Pearls

[Mouse]

Aw thank you ChickPea

I'm not feeling so great at the moment, and I haven't left myself a lot of room for a key, but I hope its all right where I've put it.

This is the last but one WIP. I've tidied the edge of the city pearl, and I've added the labels, but I haven't erased the stars that interfere with the text just yet. I might change bits of the story before the end, and then I will have removed all the wrong stars if I don't leave it till the last possible moment.

Let me know if you see any bloopers

### Latest WIP ###
OGrays Pearls 13.jpg

[aeshnidae]

This is amazing and the smaller layout looks really good. I was lucky enough to be involved (tangentially) in a Mars rover mission and Mesa brings back memories of watching the rover visual imaging team conjure awe-inspiring photos from raw data.

[- JO -]

Great job, Mouse! You have really managed to make an advantage of a difficulty : with less bubbles, it puts much more value on the beautiful work that you have done on the city: the elements stand out much better and above all, you can really contemplate the details! In addition, you have kept the other bubbles already realized, so there are no losses ... Only advantages! Sometimes Plan C is the best! Congratulations!

[Mouse]

This is amazing and the smaller layout looks really good. I was lucky enough to be involved (tangentially) in a Mars rover mission and Mesa brings back memories of watching the rover visual imaging team conjure awe-inspiring photos from raw data.

Oh my! That is enormously flattering to know that you think so. Thank you

Mesa and Dragon Rock were created in Vue Pioneer - the free version of the software. I also have the purchased modules 'Render Up' and 'Advanced Graph', which allow me to export at high resolution, and directly edit the terrain and material nodes.

However, I think I actually used one of the standard terrain functions for the form of that terrain, though the rock material is all my own creation.

Great job, Mouse! You have really managed to make an advantage of a difficulty : with less bubbles, it puts much more value on the beautiful work that you have done on the city: the elements stand out much better and above all, you can really contemplate the details! In addition, you have kept the other bubbles already realized, so there are no losses ... Only advantages! Sometimes Plan C is the best! Congratulations!

Aw, thank you Jo

I quite often get to plan E before something works, but you're right - C is very often the best plan.

[ladiestorm]

Mouse, where did you get those buildings in the center?!? This map is spectacular!!! I love the view, I love the bubbles especially!

[rdanhenry]

The text is mostly clean, though I can't say I'm thrilled with the font.

"the city guarda"
"the Pearl" (capitalized in one instance for no apparent reason)
"the prof" (used as a name-equivalent, should be "the Prof" - and I would question whether that level of informality is suitable to what is an official record)
"Guarda" -- maybe a future-historical reason for a non-English term here when everything else is in English? Even if their own service is the Guarda, I'd still use "guard(s)" for general use
"11. Principle Graythorpe's House" -- you almost certainly mean "Principal" here

The pearls themselves are looking fantastic! As far as the level of technology goes, if the influx of new residents is moderately high, they likely have a somewhat inconsistent technological base, possessing items of technology beyond their ability to replicate (or repair). Such advanced technology brought in from outside could be highly important to their quality of life, while providing another source of concern, as they have no way to deal with a breakdown except to accept the loss of whatever capacity the technology gave them. That would be another factor pressing them to want to emigrate, and it could provide other narrative complications. If the current leadership rose on the basis of technology that they had brought in with them, it would be even more critical to them, as its failure could easily trigger a revolution.

[Mouse]

Mouse, where did you get those buildings in the center?!? This map is spectacular!!! I love the view, I love the bubbles especially!

Thank you, Storm

I made all the buildings myself in Sketchup - though they aren't really much more than basic blocks with a few deceptive textures on them to indicate doors and windows. The doors and windows are textures I created for the city using Genetica, which is a seamless texture editor I think you have heard me mention before.

Arch windows.jpg

The high rise buildings are little more than basic blocks with Sketchup textures to give the illusion of complexity. It works fine at a distance, but close up is shockingly disappointing.

High rise.jpg

I had to do away with complicated and detailed textures for the most part because they were taking up too much memory, though the textures on the priory church managed to survive. There is also a lot more structure work on the Priory than anywhere else in the scene - it was my first real building that wasn't just a set of cubes thrown together and textured in a hurry to fill the city up! Those windows and all the buttressing exist as modelled 3D entities. The texturing here is only the stone and tiles of the roof.

Church.jpg

Close up, the greater part of Nexus is a bit disappointing I'm afraid. It lacks the detail and variation of reality. Making more complicated models like the temple takes a huge amount of time, and time was something I didn't really have. That's why the texturing of the temple is totally basic, and doesn't even include doors and windows.

Temple.jpg

The onion dome was created in Blender by deforming a sphere and modifying the geometry to create the diamond pattern. Something like that is nearly impossible to just draw in Sketchup, though the circular array of columns is all done in Sketchup.

Onion Dome.jpg

The bubbles were created in Blender. There are 3 bubble renders in my free texture album if you want to use them at all.

As I've already said the other two portal traps/bubbles were created in Vue Pioneer, but the landscape around Nexus is texture painted in GIMP, which is to say that I have created a basic landscape in GIMP and sat a rendering of the Sketchup city of Nexus into the centre of it, then painted a whole load of trees and cultivation textures over the top of the green bits.

One thing I really don't like about Sketchup is the shadows. They are horribly basic, but Francissimo showed me a way to make them work a lot better by exporting them separately from the textures in Sketchup and then putting them back together again in GIMP in a far better way.

All the various strengths and shortcomings of each piece of software is why I've started using a combination of many different kinds of software. This is only the third map I've created without CC3, but that is only because Sketchup... as a 3D modelling app... is currently better than CC3 when it comes to making medium sized modern ISO cities. I'm hoping to improve the situation a bit when I purchase Sketchup, by using it to generate a lot of ISO city symbols that can be used in CC3. That way, it should be possible to build vast metropolis in CC3 (impossible in Sketchup because of the memory requirement) using ISO renderings of individual buildings like the priory church to build a nice large symbol catalogue.

The text is mostly clean, though I can't say I'm thrilled with the font.

"the city guarda"
"the Pearl" (capitalized in one instance for no apparent reason)
"the prof" (used as a name-equivalent, should be "the Prof" - and I would question whether that level of informality is suitable to what is an official record)
"Guarda" -- maybe a future-historical reason for a non-English term here when everything else is in English? Even if their own service is the Guarda, I'd still use "guard(s)" for general use
"11. Principle Graythorpe's House" -- you almost certainly mean "Principal" here

The pearls themselves are looking fantastic! As far as the level of technology goes, if the influx of new residents is moderately high, they likely have a somewhat inconsistent technological base, possessing items of technology beyond their ability to replicate (or repair). Such advanced technology brought in from outside could be highly important to their quality of life, while providing another source of concern, as they have no way to deal with a breakdown except to accept the loss of whatever capacity the technology gave them. That would be another factor pressing them to want to emigrate, and it could provide other narrative complications. If the current leadership rose on the basis of technology that they had brought in with them, it would be even more critical to them, as its failure could easily trigger a revolution.

Thank you, rdanhenry

I really appreciate your sharp editorial eye, since I am not feeling very well and I don't seem to be able to focus my mind on the text well enough to find all the errors myself right now. You have been a huge help! I like your red pen

You're very right about the technology situation - hence the windmill powered pumping station - a basic technology that is relatively easy to maintain. The high rise sections of the city, while they are necessary to preserve the agricultural area required to feed so many people, are nevertheless relatively small, since the only steel they have is whatever comes in with the new arrivals. They are built the same way as brick or stone 'high rise' buildings of the early 20th century, while he steel they have is used to make ploughshares and scythes to till the earth and reap the harvest more efficiently.

The Guarda of Nexus are armed with anything ranging from spears and swords to blaster guns, though the latter tend to belong to the dictator him or herself - for really obvious reasons

As for the large windows and all the millions of bricks.... I haven't thought this one through really well just yet, but I think part of the reason the current attitude is defensive and secretive, is that there must have been a time in the past when trade with the interloping natives was rather more open than it is today, but something went a bit wrong. Probably there were too many visitors for the city to support. Maybe some of the natives decided they wanted to stay, and had to be kicked out through lack of space...

[Azélor]

Some of the buildings are pretty nice. It must have taken you a lot of time to do all this.
Did you use duplication?

My map has 21 buildings and some are not visible, they are just grey boxes.
Your map must have over a 100 buildings.

[Mouse]

Thank you, Azelor

The buildings are all 'components' to keep them nice and separate from the ground. The component menu on the right of the screen shots above shows the church and several of the onion domes I didn't use in the end. Its difficult moving things around if they are an integral part of the ground, without accidentally tearing the ground, or only partially copying the building, or copying other things besides the building. Components are also reusable, so yes - there are many copies of the same building all over the map.

I think I made about 70 variations of small buildings, though half of them were just colour variations on a theme, then there were the special buildings like the church, temple, windmill, and dome. If you don't count the large flat roof buildings which are all unique, since they are the exact shape of the urban theme map, there are probably no more than 40 or so physical models involved.

Its amazing what you can do with just a handful of variations. What took longest was the modelling of the church and the temple, and then the pasting and accurate placing of all the little ones. Its almost impossible to fudge a join between two adjacent buildings. You either have to line them up exactly, or keep them all separate from one another, which can look an even bigger mess unless they are absolutely lined up properly with the imaginary building line down each side of the road - the line that describes the frontage of all the buildings in any one road. In the end it was easier to have them all as long terraced lines so that the roads were nice and clear and it didn't just look like a picture of a city instead of an actual map.

If we are talking numbers of buildings in the city, I think there are about 300 in all.

[Mouse]

I'm off sick from work at the moment with some kind of hayfevery-cold-flu thing that isn't responding to any of the usual over the counter treatments, so you will have to forgive me for not amending the text and finishing the map right away. I can hardly see the text to edit it right now.