Sovereign Hall Area

[Doublefelix]

Alright, so to summarize, this issue deals with Sovereign Hall exterior appearance as well as the buildings surrounding the plaza in front of it. Since this area belong to the richest folks in the city, it's to be expected that their houses reflect that. I took Coltrant Mansion as inspiration behind the design.

To make a new building I took the left wing from Thalmor embassy as well as some bits of the roof and mirrored it. Done some minor texture and wall adjustments and finally placed a chimney from winking skeever to break the symmetry.

Ignore missing part of the beam in 1st screenshot, that oversight will be fixed. Also the placement is just for preview purposes, I trust that someone else will take care of placing the mansion properly. When done with this one I will move on to redesigning the bridge house (the original design will stay and might be used somewhere else) and then on to the castle.

Bad news is that interior will require remaking, even though I tried to stay faithul to the shape of previous building. Good news is, previous bulding was 13K poly, this one is only 7,5K! : D

Still no progress on collision (didn't do any of that today) but I will get to that.

[Arkaash]

That's looking great, Felix! Good job :) From what I remember, the interior for that house wasn't really up to scratch anyway, so a re-do won't hurt. I'll set Morgan on it, perhaps.

One thing I would maybe like to change is, in the last screenshot, the roof on those two protruding dormer windows. The lines where the roof tiles go round the 'corner' at the front of the window look a little unnatural. Maybe you could put something there to smooth the transition a little? I'm not sure how noticeable that is in game, mind you, but it is fairly apparent in the screenshot.

[Doublefelix]

Alright, I fixed the roof slightly, might revisit it later but it's low priority issue (with ingame camera those roofs are barely visible). Today I have finally conquered collision problems and applied a collision mesh to the house from above update.

Now for some eyecandy! I redesigned the bridgehouse to be a full blown mansion like it's neighbors: Above house was created almost exclusively from parts of the Coltrant Mansion. Shiny windows are the effect of ENB I'm using. Tomorrow I will be doing minor fixes to the mesh, then create collision. If you see any problem, please let me know. After this is done I will be moving on to the castle which will slow me down considerably. This house took me few hours to put together so a castle is on a wholly different level.

[Arkaash]

That looks really awesome Felix. I'm not sure what is there behind the bridge in the third screenshot but it looks like you could have a little balcony there overlooking the bay below - seems like it could be fairly cosy :D

[Wheeze201]

Damn fine job felix. Keep it up! :open_mouth:

[Doublefelix]

Work is progressing steadily.

The castle is set up with five towers and four walls with flat roof on the middle section. For the purpouse of redesigning the castle I took windhelm assets and textures. Arkaash told me that city is or at least was supposed to give a feeling of verticality so I'm creating the castle with that in mind. Unlike previous design, the towers will look different. The two at the front, smaller ones will be much more detailed while the rest will be simpler. Similarly front wall will have considerably more detail than side an rear walls. Another important thing to note is that the castle should be pushed back a bit to make more room between it and the plaza. There is enough space on the island to allow that change. This way where now is the entrance to Sovereign hall will instead be a gate leading to small castle courtyard.

I set my poly budget on this project to ideally 50K and 70K maximum. For reference Windhelm palace is 48K poly as a whole.

So far I have one wall of the front towers finished: This side has been design according to this simple concept:

[Wheeze201]

Oh god that looks so fucking amazing. Awesome work Felix this is properly great.

[Go0nzy]

I am just speechless.

[Yoppish]

Thats some grade A work there man.

[MorganRobinson]

bootiful :D

[Doublefelix]

Work is still in progress but I got some WIP results I would like to share

The entrance to the castle is past its initial modeling phase the shape is directly influenced by the interior that Morgan created. While the castle is supposed to be super old and it's safe to assume it was recostructed/expanded at least once I still have to modify the looks to better suit the towers established architectural style.

The grey area above is what remains to be done until I can say that the front part is complete. It is only a blocking in and the shape does not stand for the finished model.

As for the wooden doors, they won't be a part of the model, they're there just for reference sake.

[Go0nzy]

oh my fans self

[Doublefelix]

Modelling process ongoing, I have completely redone the front section leaving only windows and doors intact so they fit the interior. The new design fits better with the rest but I might still make some changes. Maybe raising it's height so the front outline of the castle won't be an "|___|" but more like a "| /\ _ |". With a structure so complex there is bound to be problems with texture mapping here and there but don't worry, I am aware of them all.

The castle is getting to big to fit on my screen in it's entirety :P It is so far ~ 19K poly pre-optimisation Raising the entrance to second floor is so far the biggest brach from original design of the castle, yet I find it crucial to the current one. Gate on the base floor for this structure just isn't working well for me. Another solution would be to ditch the base entirely resulting in a shorter structure but that would make the castle look less like a fortress and more like a palace.

It all looks great in 3ds max but the export to creation kit engine will most likely produce buggy results. Oh how I dread the thought of hours spent on setting all the textures correctly in Nifskope, which is why I don't post any ingame screens yet.

[Yurtex]

The front part is best IMO, don't change it.

[Doublefelix]

Proposition for the second row of the towers. Small details are moved aside to implement decoration of larger scale. The top aches are borrowed from Sovngarde which textures have been carefully replaced with Windhelm ones. I might still do something with the base of the towers since they look rather dull compared to what's above them. At this moment the towers look the same from every side, and I still have to differentiate them a liitle in order to place doors that lead to the flat roof of the castle, and delete any unnecessary elements from rear side of the towers.

Towers are scaled the same way as they are in original design. Bear no mind to segments between the front towers and the big ones, they are simply placeholders and will be replaced with a more suitable wall module.

Please share your feelings : )

[Arkaash]

This is starting to look incredible, Felix - there is so much detail in this. I have a few things that I want to comment on, though, that I will spread between this thread and your new one regarding city fortifications.

The first thing is that the Keep is something that has been built on and improved over time. This is similar to most mediaeval castles, which often tend to have areas of very different style. Since the keep here is a very 'dense' building in that it doesn't really have wings or anything, this doesn't make a lot of sense. However, I do think we could convey this in the stonework somewhat by having different styles and quality of craftsmanship in certain areas of the keep. I admit that this may not make it look as good, but it could be something to investigate. It's not a necessity, but something that could enhance the immersion somewhat.

[Arkaash]

On a similar note, having the keep as grand as this will make some of the houses nearby seem a touch bland and out of place in comparison. Much as with your comments on the city fortifications in the other issue, the houses around the keep now match the old style more than the new. This is fine for most of them - they haven't been upgraded as much since the people living there don't have the money. That being said, some people would have money and would make sure that their houses match the more advanced architecture and style of the keep. Two examples that I think would be good candidates for the new style are the Coltraine mansion (the one directly opposite the keep), and the bridge house.