Last of the Old Year

A new year has dawned, 2018 has come so at a slight delay I introduce some of my last bit of work for the year. The main area for the Dwarven fortress was the start, so with time today I looked into refining the elements which could apply to the rest of the structure. Which have given me a chance to look into how the UV editor has changed since 2016 extension 2 (turns out a fair bit, not least of which the arrangement of the UI).

  The stairwell was an interesting concept to work with - it needed to fit the hall, but also be shallow enough to plausibly allow carts to travel up and down it. Holding the whole structure up will likely be large columns that extend the whole way up and down.

  Some geometry cleanup, a ceiling and a tweak to the length of the tunnel and the model is taking shape. The next likely stage is to block out the rest of it with simple geometry - clutter might not come until most of the structure has been blocked out but one of the really fun elements I'm looking forward to is that the site within the Dwarf Fortress playthrough sits inside a huge deposit of marble but also shale, feldspar and some microcline.

While the structure is predominantly white, this means that there could be plenty of opportunity for other colours that add variety like warm greys, teals and either rose or terracotta.

Seat of Power Progress Stage Two

  Over the past weekend I felt sorely tempted to continue working on the throne room I had been building. Parts of it are coming together but I feel that while colouring has definitely brought out some of the design, there is still more to do.

  One thing I felt particularly inspired to do was ring some real colour to the scene. To demonstrate this was the seat of an empire, the room needed colour. It needed vibrancy so I thought to myself perhaps the ceiling is painted or frescoed.

  Perhaps in the final design, along with some decoration to bring out the pillars the ceiling will be decorated with all manner of paintings and murals. When you look above while walking though the room you should get a significant sense of the history and pride written onto the walls. To celebrate their client's glory, the builders of this room would surely decorate it to be the most beautiful in all the land.

  The whole room's purpose is to frame the grand throne in its very centre. Everything about in view needs to draw the visitor to the grand seat, and display it or whoever sits upon it as the most important thing in the entire room. The banners, the stairs, even the alcove at the back are all designed to focus the eye on the grand seat.

  I'm thinking leading up to the throne would be a large carpet, not as wide as the stairs but covered in pretty embroidered patterns.

  My plan for these banners is they would display the crest of the royal family that sits on the throne on the lower half.

Seat of Power: Progress Stage One

  The other night and tonight I got a little experimental again after rewatching some of the older episodes of Game of Thrones. I've sort of concluded that designing environments is one of the things that got me hooked into design so I've set this and the Treacy city as long-term brush up projects, something to let off some steam.

  Thinking on it I've always had a soft spot for the grandeur on display in places that are courtly and the elegant, places of power and majesty. If things are getting difficult to realise in reality, there is always the digital world where almost nothing is impossible with the right plan and a few tricks.

With this design in particular I've particularly enjoyed experimenting on how to make a vaulted ceiling, a staple of cathedrals and grand halls throughout Europe where stone slopes elegantly to meet the ceiling to provide something much more fascinating to the eye than a slab of concrete, stone or marble that can themselves be decorated a variety of ways such as painted murals or intricate stone carvings.

Four: Progress on the Corridors

  Some work continues on the biolab. While the door and most of the corridor could be signed off on, they need their UVs fixed. The more distant sections of the corridor give me a good idea of which models to create normals for the more distant sections of the scene.

After changing the bracing I believe the door looks a lot more plausible now. A console to open or lock the door is planned ot go inside the indentation in the centre, which can help give an indication of the size of the room.

   To keep up the pace, the biolab was next on the list. The door to the isolation unit feels complex due to the unconventional shape, and I wonder if the indentation can be done with a normal map for more distant instances. I need to enlarge the room a little and decorate the walls.

  I will need to do research into locaations for potential lighting fixtures. Progress has been a little slowed as the deadline for my dissertation draws near.