nifa

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

the scythians are meant to have one too, though it's ahistorical, but the art is still missing lol, never realized it looked like a volcano. There is an entrance under it, with a sacrificial place inside, where the fire is burning. I used this model as hp: https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/anta-grande-do-zambujeiro-5f328a5d7cdd4f96b9a4dcacb426348e I can get rid of the fire and add a stone that covers it so it looks more like a cave. What would you think? And I'm also planning to darken it. The original model as bad lightning from the sun in it. It's an attempt to deal with the problem that there are not really many possible props. Otherwise it would be just a plain hill and look kinda naked. The positioning is of the steles and the props is definitely up for discussion. I'm not saying I'm completely happy with it. Same with the colors. The other major problem with this task was the part where the mesh touches the surrounding topography. It's an organic building, so it can't just have a foundation. That's why I decided to go with gravel stones around the base. They will look cleaner in the final version.

nice work, I have a completed a kurgan wonder in the meantime, that I can share with you soon

does it solve your problem if you do it?

Did you use Ctrl - A -> Apply all transforms before exporting?

Did you export both the prop points and the mesh as .dae? Select the prop points first, then the mesh and export. I'm on my mobile so I can't check the file :/

i guess it should have an underscore, so prop_oar_1

Alright, I'll just leave like that, maybe someone wants to pick it up in the future :) I'm not sure I could do it myself

ok nice cool, i didn't know. If there's a wish to implement roman standard bearers (Signifer, Aquilifer or vexillarius) I would be happy to make meshes with less tris. Here are some references

np, thanks for your answer. Primarily use I designed it for was as formation banner like in this picture, so once for every formation. Secondary use could be for a standard bearer. There are two carnyx (the trumpets) for the gaul trumpeter, which both have around 1.500 tris, so I figured to aim for a similar polycount. Don't get what you mean with the last sentence?

cool stuff, a lot of nice references at the end. The museum is close to where I am from. I'm thinking about modelling a draco standard according to the one they found there. It's roman, maybe too late for 0 AD timeframe, but possible to use it for persians or scythians? Further references for other civs are very welcome

Hey, thanks! Yeah, polycount is higher than the carthagian actor, which was basically 2d. The first three standards have 1.5 to 1.9 k tris, the last one only 800 tris. The most consuming are the items on top (eagle 1.5k, hand and wolf each 900 tris). I tried saving geometry where I could and baked a lot to normals, maybe the eagle could spare some tris though. But I think all in all it's not unreasonable high, or is it? Btw everything is baked on one texture. Anybody who wants could easily combine the parts to make more or different standards for variety or ones with less geometry.

Hi all, 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

the possibility to add pictures in between the texts, e.g. when the instruction says click on the house icon, show it in the window and when it says hold ctrl show a graphic of the ctrl-key

Thanks for the great work! small bug I found, the tooltip for the spartian Syssition (phase 1 building) says you can train heroes there, but they are actually trained in Gerousia (phase 2 building), tested with rc1

good point, I missed that in the reference! Will look better for sure.

I think the cover mesh didn't have a second UV map, that was the reason why it crashed. And @Stan` wasn't happy with the uv layout so I made a new ao map with less black space and higher density. I found out remapping isn't that difficult, since I can bake from old uv layout to new uv layout without having to rebake all maps from hp to lp. works locally for me. Are you sure you are using both the two new meshes (cover and statue) and the new ao map?

I started working on an olive oil mill building using the references provided by @Lion.Kanzen and this is to get a first impression of how it could look like in the end. Any ideas about the general setup of the building? How many wings and roofs and in what directions? I tried to keep it comparable in size but distinguishable from the farmstead, storage and corral.

assets for discobolus including second uv layout and ao map, see here: https://gitea.wildfiregames.com/0ad/0ad/pulls/7315 discobolus_cover.dae statue_discobolus.dae

looks somewhat like olympic breakdancing they'll go crazy when venus steps in!

Good luck! I'm looking forward to the outcome

@Toma400 you might want to check out this thread and the links in there

next one, a well known: Discobolus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discobolus https://open.smk.dk/en/artwork/image/KAS1074?q=*&filters=has_3d_file%3Atrue&page=7 Including modesty prop again. @wowgetoffyourcellphone ready for commit? You might want to tweak contrast, brightness, saturation etc. again Could also make a new spec from the diffuse if you want the cover to be shiny too. discobolus_cover.dae statue_discobolus.dae

How can I download and install a pull request to my nightly build with tortoiseSVN for testing purposes? I've tried this https://tortoisegit.org/docs/tortoisegit/tgit-dug-patch.html but it doesn't seem to work.

I don't get it, what's the connection between olives and metal? If someone would provide references I could see what I can do about a model