WIP: Tavern

@TigerOla Nice progress! I loved playing Sid Meier's Pirates! too.

Can't wait to see more! Great work

Nice work! Can't wait to see more.

Woah I didn't expect much traffic and replies even at an early stage like I am now. :) Thank you guys!

Thanks for the link RmDirSlahsF! I'll have a look at it :)
The first one is Modo, where I do all my modeling and UV's. The second is Zbrush, where I take things up a notch to add details and break things up to look worn and torn. I've never done wood work like this before, and frankly I'm pretty new to Zbrush even though I sculpted rocks, stones, reefs and mountains for a couple of months at work. Soft materials like wood is quite new to me. :)

Thanks Clumsy George, I'll look for Aaron!

I added some more info and introduction about myself to the opening post. Thought it might give some more substance to this little 'showroom', who I am and in general the progress of this little tavern piece :)

Ahoy! Very nice job! I cant tell you are extremely talented sir. I am sure RARE already saw this! The stairs look like they can easily be a part of the game design!

What an excellent start to a great build. Since you put so much effort into that (admittedly beautiful) woodwork, are you going for a high-poly design? Will you be doing atmospheric work?
I love this. I can't afford ZBrush and I'm always to busy to learn Blender. Fantastic job. Keep us updated with progress shots. :)

True, @TheAaronLeigh :) The gamedesign process has little to do with the 'physical' modeling of things. I learned that the hard way the year I studied game design. Basically the brochure was a bit off, and I imagined I'd be learning how to make assets and make them come to life in games, but it was merely designing the games, what rules apply if this or that condition is met etc.

Don't get me wrong - it was very interesting and it opened my eyes to game development, and I want to get even deeper involved in making games at some point!

I'm not a designer. I can't draw for the life of me. But I love making 3D models and textures. :) I can show some other things I've made at a later time. I've mostly done realistic models, never done anything stylistic or cartoon looking stuff really. Not sure yet how this is gonna turn out.

And thanks for the encouraging words you guys! I really want to make this tavern great!

I'm making this as a high poly mesh first, and in the long run I may retopo the meshes to make it as a low poly game-ready project and set it up in Unreal Engine. That would be fun!

Perhaps you guys want to help me find a good name for the tavern? To an extent that may also help inspire me on how to shape the exterior or some central piece in the tavern's deco!

A bit of a setback. I encountered some pieces that were hard to fit together. I'm going back to square 1 and will make it modular.

I did game dev studies, and I didn't even consider making this modular from the beginning. Time to give me a real beating. (:

I'll be back when I can show you some modules, all lining up to the grid! :)
And I will for sure make it game-ready from the get go and bring it into Unreal!

Just letting you guys know I'm not dead, nor have I abandoned this little side project. I'm just super busy with work, packing and soon, moving to a new apartment. Barely have any free time.

After the move I will hopefully have more time to do things like this after work hours. :)

I have investigated a little, tested and made some thoughts on how to make this modular. Some pieces can be done modular, others not so much. A lot of thought goes into making things that seem simple!

A far too long wait for those of you who had hoped I'd be done with the tavern by now. But no, I've not had time to continue!

After the move, we started crunch time at work, and there's been months of overtime to get the movie done on time. It's not pirates, but at least it's boats, water and digging for treasures.

After seeing more videos and art from the game, I'd like to pursue this to fit more with the style of the game, and leave that 'hyper realism' I was aiming for in the beginning.

Until then and for what it's worth, here's a trailer of the movie I was part of completing recently.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N3-MheueUc8

@katttruewalker @shadoukenxtm

Thank you so much! :)

I have an ArtStation, but it's VERY outdated because I've been working on this animated movie since June last year. I hope I am allowed to update my portfolio when the movie is released, with all the stuff I did on the movie, ranging from modeling to textures, to shading, lighting and rendering. :)

Here's my artstation profile.

Ola Haldor Solvik Voll

Interested in all things visual 🎨

@shadoukenxtm For low poly work it's REALLY important to have a strong silhouette. The shapes must read well and mostly be unique so it's easier to see "that's the windmill", or "that's the bakery" etc.

I'm not much of a low poly modeler myself though, as all my work goes into render engines instead of game engines.

I really want to be good at low poly too though. :)

The pieces you show in your post is really charming! Most of the stones and roof tiles can be done as textures, so save those polygons!

It's funny you picked that house in my artstation, it was modeled by a classmate, but textured by me. At work I've been texturing a single building for almost a month now. Iterating a lot, adding tiny adjustments and details. It takes time to handle 50+ texture sets, which is why it takes so much time. But I love it. I wish I could show off the result right away, but I'd have to ask my employer for that. Hopefully I can share in about a year after the movie has premiered. :D

@tigerola Hey!
Really love this, and I'll wait anxiously as you model that tavern!

I cannot help with much, but I can provide you with a playlist of pirate music (I put it together, I know much more could be added to it, still..), including Sea of Thieve's: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLCQpPK8DpSwNycTfPixRhO_sIEV67os-h&disable_polymer=true

Also, I can provide you your own pirate flag, if you want to: https://www.seaofthieves.com/forum/topic/15496/personalized-wallpaper-with-your-flag

Keep up the work!

Soon-to-be Captain Andrew Valiant

@shadoukenxtm

Haha, yes, 50 texture sets is a lot. All of them will be at least 4K or some up to 8K to get all the details from wood grain to detail in metals and glass. I started on the interior of another building today, we're up to about 120 texture sets on that one. :D Brace yourself!

Silhouette: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/yB0vR
Look at how the iterations become the result. There are plenty more like this on Artstation. Say, a fishermans house can look like an upside down boat, a bakers house can have two chimneys, and a residence can have a flatter roof to make use of the second floor. All of them would have different silhouettes, and believe it or not, making black/white doodles like that can help shape and inspire a lot :) And it's way faster to iterate and figure out the 'ground rules' of a single, or multiple buildings, weapons, characters, vehicles, props..

I don't know where look, to go from 'easy' to 'advanced'. It comes with practice. There's no recipe except practice and patience. :) Look at tutorials, not only for Max, but also for other 3D apps. Perhaps a concept you're struggling with in Max but is covered in a different tutorial gives you an idea of how to solve in Max?
Or perhaps Max isn't your thing after all? I spent 15 years learning LightWave, then had a year of Maya during my year at a 3D school, and in the end I purchased myself a license of Modo - it was cheaper, and it sort of just clicked with me. The best of LightWave and Maya in one app. Yet I still watch tutorials for Blender, Maya, Max, and Modo of course, because different artists have different styles or ways to solve the grand puzzle which 3D modeling really is. You can learn so much from it! :)

Star Citizen, and other games like it, rely heavily on normal maps carefully textured to give it all those details. Here's an example. This is only a normal map on a simple plane: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/WvY5y

Powerful! :)

Thank you @Andrew-Valiant ! I'll check the playlist and your flags! Perhaps I could add one to the tavern!

@tigerola Looks brilliant so far! I love doing 3D modelling as well, trying to make some SOT stuff but struggling with the hyper stylised look.... realistic is easier!