Fantasy World Map now with Cities

  It's been an interesting divergence lately to work on maps for fantastical locations. After my last posting I had two key ideas to make the map more authentic.

  The first was to create a more thematic-looking set of icons for the various locations. Instead of Ordinance Survey like set of icons I had the idea of shorthand visuals: One hut for hamlets, two for villages, three for towns, a mage's tower for an academy, castles, castle-towns and do on to better fit the more old-time mythical style of the rest of the map. The sits sit much more neatly than the original black marks, and I have a few brushes for future projects of a similar style.

  The second idea was partially inspired by how some fantasy maps embellish a representation of an important site. A recent example being the stand-out representation of Erebor on a map from Peter Jackson's The Hobbit. On this map, that focus was given to the capitals: The port and temple of Kirstan, the royal citadel of KharKanas, the fortress-gates of Drongo and the marbled spires of Istri. While KharKanas is much larger compared to the others, I figure it justified as the Conglomerate Empire has a whole continent to itself.

The client was certainly happy with the end product and it has got me thinking about the environmental or architectural side of my creative ideas.

Four: David's Desk Part One

  With some of the larger models out of the way, I had the thought that while the camera needs installing, some smaller models could be made, mainly for things I feel sure would be seen in the world. David's desk will take some focus at the very least so at least I have some assets to experiment with when setting up cameras.

  This was all after designing the finer details on David's computer terminal. To give some authenticity when in a close-up view, I took to modelling the keyboard key-by-key and arranging the UVs to correspond with their arrangement on the board.This sort of arrangement will make it easier when creating the texture maps for the keys. Once complete I designed a low-resolution "cover" that would display the keys' definition as a normal map and maybe extrapolate the textures so at a distance the solid block looks like a convincing keyboard. Drawing from how I designed Four's mouth,  an indentation was created to provide for an area for the keys to be set into, The edge can be just-about seen so it does not look like the keys are simply phasing into the surface of the computer's keyboard extension.

  The size of the computer terminal necessitated the need for for more space on the desk. Geometry was pushed forward slightly and the UV maps were re-adjusted accordingly to square out the stretching.

There might be some way to go, and before I get into science equipment like microscopes, centrifuges, test tubes etc. I have some experience with college-level genetic science, experiments included, I have some understanding already of the kind of equipment that might be practical for microbiological research (Alfonse's field of study in the story) and DNA sequencing. Although a combination of camera-work and estimates on what to focus will determine just equipment to keep, as some devices and equipment I understand might not be recognised by a general audience.

Four: Corridor Semi-Completion

  The key components for the tunnels around Ceti base are ready for textures and lights. The essential elements assembled are a blast door, a tunnel, a straight intersection, and a T intersection. I might be able to build the focus corridor with these. Although creating an X-intersection will only take me an hour or two to build, it is more a question of whether such a section can be mimicked with camera-work and the T-section..

Because of the number of models involved I am thinking of creating a system where at a far enough distance, the leather panels and the pipes along the bottom are replaced with panels that mimic their look. The same would be the case for the flourescent lights in order to save complexity during renders.

  I feel I can sign these models off for now, and will come back to these for textures, normals and so on at a later date.

  The models are kept symmetrical by mirroring. I create one quarter of the section and then mirror the geometry, then I mirror the UV maps and sew contiguous sections together so that just because the geometry is mirrored does not mean what's on the surfaces has to be. This is also the case with putting UV shells on top of each other. I'm moving away from this to experiment with more varied appearances.

For easy importing and instancing, each segment has been given its own scene file under a special asset folder..