New still : modelling and texturing sidewalks
More texturing and detailing.. And, who knew ? making good looking sidewalks is hard !
In general, at this point, judging the results always gets confusing .. you have ‘finished’ pieces next to clay or basic materials ; there is light and comp , but it’s far from final ,etc.. So you just have to keep working ..and know where to suspend judgement ..
In the pic below the progression of sidewalks .. took quite a few iterations ! first i ‘slapped on’ some tileables ..and the result was so bad i realized this element would take some serious work .
So i dug into my library of tiles textures for the better ones -those with hand sculpted bumpmaps .
That wasn’t enough : just using bump looked horrible on the left sidewalks , so i added displacement .. But in the end i modelled and placed individual lowpoly tiles (with bump tex) : it takes time but it’s better looking and lighter on rendertime than displacement.
Next some tweaks to the sidewalk shape (for composition reasons.. ) and added some pebbles using particle scattering .
And finally tweaking the color so the sidewalks don’t stick out that much (they were definitely too bright)
Pfff.. that took a while 🙂 Next the road ..
Ni:Zu vault 
hi nizu,
things are really looking nice here!
Which are architectural influences? I cannot understand if it looks english, american, french..
I notice you made the road section with the central part lower, it looks strange to me, making rain collect in the center in street pools instead of flooding along the borders.
I love the entrance of the garden!
August 19, 2013 at 4:08 pm
“making rain collect in the center in street pools instead of flooding along the borders.”
This is common in medieval urban planning. A lot of European cities still have those in the small aisles (though you don’t really need a “tall” curb as the one designed here). It’s actually more economic and efficient some times.
Anyways, I’m an architect myself, so couldn’t help :p [hey 2: I just noticed I was addressing you Riccardo 😉 ciao! ]
I really liked the style, great work Nizu 🙂 And thanks for the sharing the wip images. I love to see how the ideas evolve.
August 20, 2013 at 3:34 am
Thanks !
Riccardo : I haven’t stuck closely to a single, precise ref . As art style i’m looking a lot at “Dishonored” (so French ) and Bioshock Infinite.
As real world ref … it’s Torino ! ok, not so much in the detailing/decor but the layout (the background building , the raised garden and short wall) is based on some corners in the city center around giardini Cavour.
https://maps.google.it/maps?hl=it&ll=45.061973,7.693648&spn=0.028706,0.066047&sll=44.406316,10.28595&sspn=1.858118,4.2269&t=h&z=15&layer=c&cbll=45.063808,7.691078&panoid=19vV8MU9Bem7bBzPGt1sqA&cbp=12,274.99,,0,-11.99
Riccardo , Dalai : Yes.. the road indeed .. lots to do/decide : i have plans for rain puddles .. as a way of making that big flat area more interesting.
That makes it quite a complex 3 layers material (mud, stone pavement, puddles )
For now , i’ve started layer 2 , the pavement :
https://nizuvault.wordpress.com/?attachment_id=1166
The cross section .. i made it sinking in the middle mostly thinking of lots of mud accumulated on the sides, and -yes- thining of a central drain /puddles ..But i guess this kind of medieval design is generally used for pressed mud/soil streets , not sure it makes much sense with a stone pavement ..
Also i realize now it’s too steep (yes, especially the sidewalks being too high over the street plane )
I guess , the most realistic/correct layout would be to have not 1 but 2 “stripes” of stone plaques (for carriage weels ) and mud/puddles around them..
Technically .. let’s see if i can get a good enough 3d model of the road to get the puddles just by cutting it with a water plane or if i’ll have to paint in the puddles (.. as i did for the mud )
August 20, 2013 at 1:32 pm
Hi Dalai!
Yes, medieval roads could have a central river but usually had an inset stone-carved course.
Anyway, it ssems that Nizu added other things to the road by now!
August 29, 2013 at 5:15 pm