Borgund Stave Church

[Ramseus]

So after just sitting around doing nothing for a while I finally started a new project. It's pretty much just the coolest wooden building in the world. I eventually want to get it in some game, probably Oblivion.

The exterior is mostly done, just a couple details (mainly doors) and then a lot of clean up. Currently sitting at 14,304 tris.

http://tyler.brenot.ca/wip/borgund/wip01.gif
http://tyler.brenot.ca/wip/borgund/wip02.gif
http://tyler.brenot.ca/wip/borgund/wip03.gif
http://tyler.brenot.ca/wip/borgund/wip04.gif

[Marcus Dublin]

I love stuff like this and can't wait to see the interior when it's done. Keep us posted!:thumb:

[BuroKun]

are those gun turrets on there? O_o.....nice work so far.

[Ramseus]

Working my way from top to bottom on the interior. Also added doors to the outside (oooh, that's so exciting). Now if only I could figure out how those big windows connect to the inside... all I remember from seeing the replica in real life was that it was really dark inside... unless they just look like they let in light and they really don't...

http://tyler.brenot.ca/wip/borgund/wip05.gif
http://tyler.brenot.ca/wip/borgund/wip06.gif

[Marcus Dublin]

I built a medieval church a couple of years back like this and it was a bit of a pain so I'm glad to see you cranking away on this, keep up the solid work.:thumb:

[scedric]

Nice work! What is your maximum polycount for this church? Don't forget to optimize the hidden/dark sides of the beams, the medieval churches often are dark and only lit by some candles.
I can't wait to see the textured version, keep going Ramseus.:)

[Ramseus]

Oh, good idea on optimizing the dark areas. I'll have to do some sniffing through Oblivion's files to see what kind of numbers they had, but for the interior I'm thinking 20k-ish with props. And of course, since I'm going to put it into Oblivion, the interior is an entirely seperate cell from the exterior so I can go higher than if it was all one piece.

[kirilot]

Im curious how you will aproach texturing this.

[Ramseus]

Yes, texturing. Well other than spending forever and a day unwrapping, I'm going to texture it the same way that the Oblivion environments are textured - meaning lots of small individual textures instead of a couple huge sheets.

I figure I'll need about 15 textures for the outside, as shown by this picture (man, it's hard to get 15 different colors to all look definitely different, and I failed at accomplishing that)

http://tyler.brenot.ca/wip/borgund/wip09.gif


And the interior. Other than props it appears to be done... but now I'm going to have to weld my chamfers and redo them because most of them are way too small... gah! Oh, and the funny looking things at the top of the poles are supposed to be carved faces.

http://tyler.brenot.ca/wip/borgund/wip07.gif
http://tyler.brenot.ca/wip/borgund/wip08.gif

[Ramseus]

The texturing progress is going vvvveeeerrrryyy sssslllloooowwwwllllyyy. Just quick one step unwraps right now. I spent all of monday just on the roof texture (which is basically the same as the higher wall texture), trying to get it to read like wooden shingles. Bah, it'll look better once I get it all nicely parallax mapped.

The blue poles (staves) and the doors come last as they'll be carved up, I'm doing all the generic stuff first.

And the bottom of the outside wall, past the top of the three boards, that's just the extra bit so the building doesn't end up floating (in otherwords, ignore)

http://tyler.brenot.ca/wip/borgund/wip10.jpg

[East]

It's refreshing to see some environment work. Funny how it plays such a huge part in games, and yet everyone just seems to want to do character work (me included). The interior looks very well done, but for some reason it kind of reminds me more of a tavern of sorts.. I think it's perhaps because I'm not getting the scale. If it's not too much trouble, could you include some kind of human reference comparison in your next update? :)

[Ramseus]

Heh, yeah I'll put a little scale reference in as soon as I figure out what the scale is. I saw one picture that would suggest that the doors are twice as tall as a person... which would make it far larger than it looks... :think: Props will probably help too, not many taverns have pues and altars.

It is kind of ironic how environment art doesn't get enough love, yet it takes an army of enviro artists to make games nowadays. I'm still amazed that Forza 2 had like 6 car artists for all 300 cars and 30 environment artists to make super low poly boxes and call them buildings.

[Ramseus]

Nearing pre-game completion of the exterior. All that's left is the carvings around the doors, which will take me a few days. The staves and little posts along the wall are going to have a little bit of carving on them too. Plus I put in a self illuminated plane to hide the underhang, should've thought of that one sooner.

http://tyler.brenot.ca/wip/borgund/wip11.jpg
http://tyler.brenot.ca/wip/borgund/wip12.jpg
http://tyler.brenot.ca/wip/borgund/wip13.jpg

[Matroskin]

good job Ramseus! Textures look cool from close.
But the ornament on roof columns is too evidently the same as the one used for roof tiles. I would suggest make it more different. Otherwise it looks like u just took tiles texture and changed color.

[Vailias]

the roof pillars are really like that
Big Image of the Church (http://i36.photobucket.com/albums/e28/vailias/Borgundstavechurch.jpg)
also here's some more archetectural ref. not sure what you've got already, but its certainly looking good.
http://i36.photobucket.com/albums/e28/vailias/Cut-Away.jpg
http://i36.photobucket.com/albums/e28/vailias/Side_Drawing.jpg
http://i36.photobucket.com/albums/e28/vailias/Front_Drawing.jpg

[Ramseus]

Otherwise it looks like u just took tiles texture and changed color.

:lol: that's exactly what I did.

Vailias is right too, it's all the same shingle-type style but just two different types of wood, ergo two different colours. Plus the log texture doesn't work very well up there, it looks totally out of place. And thanks, Vailias, but I already have all those images (yay for wikimedia commons).

[Beartastic]

Looks really great, and the textures are fab up close (particularly the wood). What stands out the most from a distance is how much the textures repeat, pretty much just the roof tile though. Looking forward to seeing this one finished.

[makoa]

nice work! as mentioned, textures look great! tasty! i'd suggest playing with the colors a bit, everything's roughly in the same value range right now, might be cool to make one darker, one lighter. cool though!

[Frozan]

man that is lookin great! keep going.

[Ramseus]

blah blah blah

[kessler]

thats looks very cool.

[tef]

Wow.. looks great. Allthough it looks a bit plain and simple it will probably change when you add lamps and what not to give it some mood.

[Ramseus]

And now back to work on this sucker. You probably can't see it yet but this is the door frame deco. This is the heightmap that I'm painting right now, btw. Just blocked out the shapes for the most part. Looking at it now I think I need to add even more snakey things.

http://tyler.brenot.ca/wip/borgund/garr.jpg


and just so this post isn't completely useless, here's a photo of the carvings on taken by either me or my brother at the replica in South Dakota (only difference is that the wood is all clean and new). Yikes.

http://tyler.brenot.ca/wip/borgund/100_3151.jpg


edit: that's downsized, of course

[hobodactyl]

Yaaay for stave churches! This is looking really nice, please finish it so we can see it with some awesome lighting ;)

[Ramseus]

Yarr. Just have to do the door, slap some a couple snakey dragons on some of the other textures, and then the exterior (minus props) is done.

http://tyler.brenot.ca/wip/borgund/wip14.jpg