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Offering help - Architecture

Ashinokami

Ashinokami

Freebooter
Coordinator
3D Artist
GUI Developer
Hello everyone,
This is my first posting on the boards, so I want to congratulate the team of Hearts of Oak on their very promising project. Being a fan of history and sail-ships since early age, it makes me squirm to think of possibility of playing such a game, a truly Holy-Grail. Now, what I could do to help it happen:
I'm currently working as architectural draughtsman, and I have to constantly develop my 3D skills, I also have comprehensive knowledge in historical european architecture styles and town planning, so I would be interested in making some 3D models for game's Caribbean towns - that would be great opportunity to solidify my polygon modeling skills as well as learn the kinks of normal mapping and texturing. I have spent years modeling in various CAD and BIM packages, also Google SketchUp, and now I intend to delve deeper into 3DS Max, so why not do it with some 18th c. church or town layout?

Before I made my mind on models to start with, could you tell me something:
How the project is moving, will you need such models?
Is the scale decided upon?
my humble opinion on this: 1:5 to 1:25 scale for landscape and towns would be VERY doable, I researched a bit on Havana Vieja (biggest city in the region) and to me it seems to recreate it on 1:4 scale would be an AAA title task, which would still make an awful lot of repetitive blocks. To my experience, building and public space scaling is easier the bulkier the buildings are, which allows to make towns with even important historical buildings look realistic. In this respect I liked Assassin's Creed cities, which looks pretty extensive while being small and made of very limited number of models. I just wonder, if there was a game that would treat it's history more faithfully?:)
 
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Welcome to the forum, mate! Assistance with architecture will be much appreciated for sure. :cheers

I'll leave the specific answers to your questions to the people actually working on the locations and such. They should know better than me.
 
Thanks Pieter, can you point out to me, who are doing locations these days?
 
Welcome to the 3D Artists group! :cheers

We definitely need individual models of buildings that can be placed in the game world, including interior details in most cases.
I believe the scale of each building should be 1:1, but the landscape itself may end up being smaller in some areas. As for towns, I'm not sure.
 
What Hylie said. :cheeky

Anyway, it should be quite doable to resize models later on if need be.
 
Thanks guys, will talk with JonV soon. As the cause for my zeal is a couple of free days ;), I already found good resources for my 1st building: Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Guadeloupe, Basse-Terre, Guadeloupe.

http://ti.racoon.free.fr/galleries/Patrimoine/Eglises/BasseTerre-1.jpg

That's pretty generic french baroque church, even for the Continent, might be used as a staple church for catholic nations. having nice plans, modeling should be a piece of cake, and texturing/normal maps for the challenge I seek.. feel free to dissuade me if you feel you want to see something else first.
More on scale: I feel making 1:1 scale towns would be near useless feat, as it would take 20 or more mins of sprinting from your parked tub to the city wall, and between rows of repeating 50poly houses.. Yet 1:5 towns could scale down pretty realistically, leaving most buildings real size, only with smaller blocks and streets - proportionate to building height. Would be nice if important towns had 1-5 unique historic buildings, which, being bulkier, can be scaled down easily. My experience tells, that one can shrink any building until your head hits the door-lintel!:ko
 
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Interesting choice.

I just checked the historical accuracy:
Built in 1736
The Seven Years' War was a war that took place between 1754 and 1763
Looks like you're good there too. :cheers

There's indeed no real point in making huge cities if there isn't equally much in there.
And naturally there won't be as there will only be a few buildings needed for gameplay purposes.
 
I'm pretty sure Bridgetown, Barbados is a favorite right now for the first town, but to my knowledge work hasn't started yet.
 
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