Hi all,

I finally want to share the results of a project I've been working on for some time and abandoned several times in between. So here it is, the royal kurgan, a burial mound for a wonder for the scythians. Two main difficulties: (1) somehow make look interesting, what in references is just a bare hill and make it look built by humans (2) let an organic building blend in with the surrounding topography.

Concerning (1): It might look too busy, there might be better options for prop placement, player color is difficult to add, maybe too many different/ not fitting stone colours, maybe add flora?

Concerning (2): The underground part consumes a lot of tris, but the gravel stones blend in nicely with the ground also on uneven terrain. I don't know if it goes deep enough though.

Further references:

Some CC0 models I used:

Feel free to test from the zip I added and let me know. I also added 7 different steles and two stone heaps of different sizes:

This is how it would look without the reddish stones:

What is left to do: Choosing the final layout; maybe some colour adjustments; deleting all those hidden faces from the stones on the inside, tthen bake ao; checking on naming conventions, actor files and materials. Also the foundation is just prototype.

Edit: I played around with the colours a little bit, turns out that adding some warmth to the gravel base helps a lot, so the contrast between the grey and the reddish stones isn't that harsh. @wowgetoffyourcellphone do you think you could work from here? My skills with colours and picture editing are very limited.

862891456_kurgan0_28.1.zip

There is the contribution for today. Way harder than I though it would be. The result in low poly up close is really funky. But at distance I seems fine. Added a proof of concept animation as I had that idea of using span pose and use a deform bones to make the swimming/walking/chilling pose. Happy that it seems to work, maybe add a third wing 'layer' that would scale during closed wings poses so that it would be invisible the rest of the time. Kinda of out of the box idea, don't know if it'll work.

What a odd little bird. The animation is bad mind you, a lot of the weight painting is to be tweaked. I was mostly interested about the idea of using that technique to have the same model walking and flying or if it's not necessary because it will never happen in game?

Also I learn that the males change their colors during something called eclipse, and look a lot like the female (texture is next by the way). Soooo... I saw that there will a season system that could be implemented, I got some ideas to add texture season specific to the animals that have low variation in general. Using the alpha as a mask for snow for example (there were a lot of bisons like that). I digress.

As always feedback and critique are welcome. 

https://streamable.com/jmuluh

The files:

Note: It's late and i saw that the texture has the artefacts of before topology cleanup in the low poly version. It doesn't affect the texture because it's out of the uv zone but I'll see to bake something more clean.

I'm writing this just to see if anyone would like to draw more portrait icons for the heroes.

In the following section I explain the composition and guidelines to be followed.

consists of basic knowledge of painting, photography and video game industry.

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Rossi starts with an existing 3d model in order to add features.

then defines the facial features of the subject, as well as his age and facial characteristics based on the history and archetype of the face, this means that it segments the muscles of the face to define the facial features. 

uses different layers of black and white shadows very different from how I do it but based on the principle of light and shadow composition, think in black and white before venturing into color.

the shadows are taken from the tridemensional object typical of the first techniques of painting with realistic illumination elaborated in the Spanish baroque and post renaissance.

the theory of light-dark.

https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penumbra

This is defined by the origin of the light or the light source.

the guide for composition is Standard I give to Rossi. was pure commercial.

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Really impressive. I made  make a topic with commercial art.the yours is really desirable.

Conceptual art work is welcome. but not much relent right now.

Can be nice finish the Heroes icons.

Campaigns sadly we need the help of Programming team.

so basically we talk about make and standar Illustration technique.

composition is 3/4 or 45 grades from object perpective.

is a technique of portrait photography.

you can see this in google for more examples.

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There are several ways the term 3/4 is used in photography. They have various different meanings. Sometimes an accompanying word, such as portrait or view helps to provide some context, but sometimes the context of the entire discussion needs to be taken into account to identify exactly what is being referenced by the term.

In portrait photography a 3/4 portrait usually means the subject is pictured from the top of their head to somewhere between mid-thigh and just above the knees. This usage does not depend upon what angle the model is facing with respect to the camera, just that the upper three-fourths of the model's body is included in the photograph.

A 3/4 facial view, on the other hand, refers to the direction the model's face is oriented with respect to the camera. It is called a 3/4 facial view because about 3/4's of the model's face is visible in such a pose. The model is pictured facing about a 45º angle to the camera so that the far ear is just out of view. The exact angle will depend upon the physical characteristics of the model's face. In contrast, a 2/3 facial view turns the model's head a little further from the camera so that the far eye is very near the edge of the face with just a small border of flesh between the eye and the space beyond the face.

A 3/4 view portrait may be the same as a 3/4 facial that is a tight framing of just the face and neck, or it may include the model's face at about a 45º angle (far ear just out of view) but also with more of the model's body visible which may or may not be facing the same direction as the model's face.

The term American shot or American cowboy shot originated in cinema but is now also used in still photography. It is both a 3/4 angle shot where the model is turned about 45º from the camera and a 3/4 portrait shot that makes about 3/4 of the model's body visible. This allowed both the actor's face and the six-gun on his hip to be visible to the camera. It can also be used in a context without the model wearing cowboy attire or a six-gun. (Interestingly, the phrase was coined by French filmmakers as a derisive term associated with the American cowboy movies that they detested.)

Other photographic subjects besides human models are often photographed in 3/4 view which means the subject is facing about a 45º angle to the camera. Photos of railroad locomotives, classic cars, airplanes, etc. are often shot in 3/4 view so that both the front and sides of the subject are visible. Sometimes an elevation is also used so that the top of the subject is also in view. The elevated 3/4 view is often used in product photography as well

the the frame is called a bust shot.

there are two version of this technique.

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3/4 portrait can mean two different things. It can mean 3/4 length portrait that shows the upper 3/4 of the body, or 3/4 facial portrait where the head is turned slightly away from facing the camera.

but Im refering the angle was this way as I learn this composition.

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 A medium closeup (MCU) is a shot cropped between the shoulders and the belt line. Also called a bust shot.

is desirable use Hero actual clothes or helmet. but not necesary.

Why baroque?

was characterized by realism, richness and intensity of colors, as well as a strong contrast between lights and shadows.

So this mixture of feature are ideal to make portraits(relistic)

.

is less realistic than Medieval ones.

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In Greece and Rome, wall painting was not considered as high art. The most prestigious form of art besides sculpture was panel painting, i.e. tempera or encaustic painting on wooden panels. Unfortunately, since wood is a perishable material, only a very few examples of such paintings have survived, namely the Severan Tondo from c. 200 AD, a very routine official portrait from some provincial government office, and the well-known Fayum mummy portraits, all from Roman Egypt, and almost certainly not of the highest contemporary quality. The portraits were attached to burial mummies at the face, from which almost all have now been detached. They usually depict a single person, showing the head, or head and upper chest, viewed frontally. The background is always monochrome, sometimes with decorative elements.^[20] In terms of artistic tradition, the images clearly derive more from Greco-Roman traditions than Egyptian ones. They are remarkably realistic, though variable in artistic quality, and may indicate that similar art which was widespread elsewhere but did not survive. A few portraits painted on glass and medals from the later empire have survived, as have coin portraits, some of which are considered very realistic as

and is less cartoony than ctual digital art.

we can said is kind of mixture techniques.

and more natural than other digital one.

isnt dificult if you are familiar with technique to paint in photoshop - like program , kripta or even gimp.

Erechtheion and carytids from the acropolis in athens

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erechtheion

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caryatid

https://www.artstation.com/artwork/lxY91a

1228892164_erechtheion0_28.1.zip

licence

(Specifically, we, the developers of 0 A.D., have made the code and data of the game available under the GPL license, version 2 or later, and released the art, sound and documentation under CC-BY-SA, version 3.0.)

Briefly, this means that we allowed anyone to reuse components of 0 A.D. for any purpose, redistribute them and remix them without having to ask us for permission. They are free to make new games using the 0 A.D. engine, they may create remixes of 0 A.D. music, you name it.

We did this, among other reasons, because we believe free, open-source software like 0 A.D. encourages sharing, learning and creativity, and we want to encourage people to remix, mod and tinker with 0 A.D. in the future.

---

But there's an important condition that comes with these licenses. The main condition we ask from anyone who wants to make their own works derived from 0 A.D. (or parts of it) is that they release those derivative works only under the same licenses we did, or under similar ones.

In other words, let's say you want to take a 3d elephant from 0 A.D. and you want to add a funny hat on its head and show everyone on the internet that you made a funny elephant with a hat.

If you do this using an elephant from 0 A.D., you must allow other people to reuse the "elephant with the hat" image as much as they want, to redistribute and to remix it, etc., and even print it on posters and sell them if they want to. If you remix an elephant image from 0 A.D., you cannot legally tell people, "you can't use this 'elephant with hat' image without my permission", or require money for the permission to print it, etc.

In this way, the creator of the "elephant" image makes sure that the "elephant and hat" work, the "elephant in a dress" work etc. all remain free cultural works. Nobody can legally rip off 0 A.D. works to make their own proprietary art. Rather, the 0 A.D. artwork and all its derivatives will remain forever free for everyone to share and enjoy.

---

For many reasons, it is important that we make sure that everything that is bundled as a part of 0 A.D. is released freely.

From the codebase and development tools, through the unit statistics, the artwork, the music score and the sound effects, to the stories of the scenarios and campaigns - Everything must be free (as in "freedom").

We must be very strict about this, or we risk disappointing some people who really want to make sure everything they use is free and trust us to keep tabs on these matters. This helps us maintain effective ways for 0 A.D.'s distribution and our public image.

So, if you want us to bundle your art contributions with 0 A.D., we ask you to post in this thread to release your artwork under CC BY-SA 3.0.

To do this, please copy-paste the following sentence and post in this thread:

I am the copyright holder of original works I post in the Wildfire Games 0 A.D. Art Development forum. I hereby release all original works I uploaded to this forum in the past, and those I will upload in the future, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

Please remember this action is irrevocable - Once you release a work under this license, you can never take it back and say, "I don't allow you to remix this 3d giraffe without asking for my permission".

---

Thanks in advance from all of us.

Feel free to post in this thread if you have any questions.

And may your contribution to free software and culture be everlasting.

Some pictures of the models I made are attached.

After 21 years since it was modelled, finally got around to getting @play0ad's easter egg dragon some anims using @scottpetrovic's mesh2motion
Took me three attempts (kept pressing the back button accidentally)
Probably too many bones for a RTS though #gamedev #OpenSource pic.twitter.com/0QC58P2hui

Finish the Cimbri faction (early Germans)

• New Market model
• Make the building models looked more "lived in" with props such as vines, etc.
• Commission an artist to create portraits for the Heroes, roughly in line with the portraits of other heroes already in the game.
• A new Wonder model.
• What else?

Create Ramming animations for Ramming Ships

• Essentially just need to "reverse" the walking animation for a few cycles, then go forward again. 
• Can this be done programmicly or will it actually require new dae animations?
• There are several Ramming Ship models in-game.
• Add a "dust" or "debris" particle upon collision?

Terrains & Biomes

• Fill out the "Italy" terrains more
• Fill out the "Steppe" terrains more
• China biome?
• Need to replace the chief hunting source on Steppe maps (horses) and expand our Asian animal list a bit
  • Saiga
  • Mongolian Gazelle
  • Goitered Gazelle
  • Wild Ass / Onager
  • Bactrian Camel
  • Yak
  • Przewalski's Horse

Persian Wonder

• Apadana of Darius

Perhaps a few more "Wonders of the World" to go in conjunction with a new "Capture the Wonder" game mode?

• Re-top Athena Parthenos model from DE to reduce number of triangles by half for inclusion in the game.

Battering Ram models

• Chinese
• Kushites
• Carthaginians

Add garrison flags to all Ship models

Hero Portraits

• Find someone to remake all our hero portraits at a higher and consistent quality?

More Statues, Shrines, Artifacts, Eyecandy

• Would like to introduce the concept of Cultural Artifacts to skirmish maps in main game.
• More Shrines, at least one for each civ in the game.
  • Greeks and Persians are already covered.
• Statues and other similar eyecandy objects for all the cultures in the game, not just Greeks and Romans, although more Greco-Roman stuff would be nice too.

right now all civilizations use a carthagian actor for formations, though especially the romans had their own, very unique standards, e.g. Aquila (eagle), Signum and Vexillum. I put together 4 standards, which I'm adding as a mod here. Alpha for player colour still needs to be added.

@wowgetoffyourcellphone @Stan` @real_tabasco_sauce  maybe someone could take a look on it and make a PR?

we could also put together a standard bearer unit, similar to the gaul trumpeter, as a scenario unit or upgradable legionary in vanilla? They used to be called "Aquilifier" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aquilifer) or "Signifier" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signifer).

references:

wikipedia links:

standards.zip

I just came across and wanted to let you know in case you want to fix: It appears like the expert kushite cavalry spearman mount actor has the advanced rider actor:

binaries/data/mods/public/art/actors/units/kushites/cavalry_spearman_e_m.xml

<prop actor="units/kushites/cavalry_spearman_a_r.xml" attachpoint="rider_R"/>

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artemision_Bronze

https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/zeus-or-poseidon-from-the-artemision-d4876aa609304682945145debedfc77e

https://open.smk.dk/en/artwork/iiif/KAS2100?q=Poseidon eller Zeus fra Artemision&page=0&filters=has_3d_file%3Atrue

That statue showed either zeus or poseidon depending on the weapon in the hand, so I just made both. It was kind of difficult to find a representation for how the ancient greek imagined a thunderbolt, but I certainly didn't want some harry-potter-kind zigzag thunderbolt. I made two separate meshes, but we could also add the weapon as a prop if that's better. Both models can use the cover prop. I'm not sure about the colours though. I added eyeballs, so when we have the final colours I'd like to add this (with gimp?):

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The empty eye-sockets were originally inset, probably with bone, as well as the eyebrows (with silver), the lips, and the nipples (with copper).

@wowgetoffyourcellphone maybe you could have a look and tweak it a little? Also I just used a brightened diffuse as spec map for now, but I could bake something if needed.

poseidon_cover.dae statue_poseidon.dae

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitoline_Wolf

https://open.smk.dk/en/artwork/image/KAS837?q=*&filters=has_3d_file%3Atrue&page=7

Ready to be committed I guess? @wowgetoffyourcellphone

capitoline_wolf.dae

Right now I'm using Kush champ actor/icon for regular Gaul axe man 

https://github.com/Emacz2/Historical-rebalance-patch
https://github.com/Emacz2/Historical-rebalance-patch/releases

https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Colossus_of_Rhodes#/Posture

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A relief in a nearby temple shows Helios standing with one hand shielding his eyes, similar to the way a person shields their eyes when looking toward the sun, and it is quite possible that the colossus was constructed in the same pose. While scholars do not know what the statue looked like, they do have a good idea of what the head and face looked like, as it was of a standard rendering at the time. The head would have had curly hair with evenly spaced spikes of bronze or silver flame radiating, similar to the images found on contemporary Rhodian coins.

• Royal Yurt (xiongnu) : This is supposed to be a larger and more decorated yurt that would house the leaders of smaller subgroups within the xiongnu people as a whole. Each royal yurt will allow for 3 warlord units and provide 10 pop just like a house.
• Dock (xiongnu/scythians): This should be a very simplistic building. Its completely ahistorical, but a necessary structure for the nomads to fit in. It could basically be a yurt on land with a rope ladder serving as a boat ramp. Possibly some scrap wood could be added, or the 'skeleton' of a small canoe or river boat.
• Stable (xiongnu/scythians): This should be a simple cover for horses and/or equipment, possibly tarp-based. A small fence would complete the structure, making it rectangular.
• Ovoo (Scythians): The scythian ovoo is currently the xiongnu one, where it was actually built differently with mostly wood piled up and an ornament at the top.
• Wonder (Scythians): Kurgan (burial mound).
  • https://www.cam.ac.uk/stories/gold-of-the-great-steppe-exhibition

Some help on these items would be awesome!

So I created this little blender addon for blender 2.8

What it does is it loads all the files used by the actor recursively (it picks random variants like the game does) and place all objects on their respective prop points using constraints. (Do not forget to disable constraints before exporting, else you might get into trouble)

It also assign a diffuse, norm and spec material to the object

@Syn I believe this will be way better than the explanation I gave you by e-mail, as it's a one click business

@Alexandermb @LordGood @Enrique @Trinketos

@The Undying Nephalim I believe you only use blender as a proxy, but it might be helpful for you as well.

Here is an example with a model with a lot of props

You can test it here https://github.com/StanleySweet/blender_pyrogenesis_importer/releases/download/1.3.6/io_scene_pyrogenesis.zip

EDIT: Textures are assigned in the link above.

EDIT2:  The importer may edit files, to remove materials, effects or images that might have broken the import otherwise

EDIT3: Update version.

Question 1: How are units assembled? I've seen Props > Helmets & Props > Shields, but helmets and shields do not a unit make.

Question 2a: Are there body meshes for units? (e.g. if existent, I would like to find the body meshes for the Iberian and Kushite units)

Question 2b: (body meshes cont.) If applicable, where are these body meshes located in trac browser?

Question 3: Does this forum have a comprehensive collection of screenshots / pics of completed units for each civ / faction / empire?

Thank you very much in advance! Kind regards, ttm

what am I doing wrong here.

here is a screenshot showing the comparison: