# Mapmaking Discussion & Philosophy (WIP/Critique) > 3D modeling (map elements and height maps) >  3d WatchTower

## SilenBlade

As I promissed here is a next project for you. Watch Tower. Enjoy and give some feedback 
regards

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## ravells

Beautifully textured and rendered. It would make a really good icon on a map!

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## Steel General

Nicely done!

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## Ascension

Can you do us up an ISO shot? And maybe a line-drawing shot (no colors/patterns).  Looks really sweet, man.

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## SilenBlade

Here, I hope there is everything that you need  :Very Happy:

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## jtougas

Again awesome work.  :Smile:

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## torstan

That's seriously lovely. Great stuff. Repped and rated.

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## SilenBlade

Thanks guys for reps and opinions, i hope i will find some time to do more objects  :Smile:  if you have any request or want something in 3d  from your sketches just send me a msg and i will see what i can do for you

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## Redrobes

The lighting on those B&W ones is sweet. Is that Modo doing that ? Very nice work overall. If your interested in doing anything for middle earth we would be interested...

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## SilenBlade

No, it's my job  :Smile:  But to be honest, modo is realy great renderer but only for 20 days more, after that had to reinstal it and start trial again :/. About doing something for middle earth I can try just send me pictures, sketches etc. and i will see what i can do. But please do not ask for minas tirith  :Very Happy:

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## Katto

Nice model, but I don't like the textures. They are too clean, sometimes repeat e.g. at the stone stairs and you can see seams e.g. the ground floor (just my humble opinion). Texturing a model can be very stupid work and it can take as long as building the model, but the result will be worth it.

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## SilenBlade

You are 100% Right Katto, texturing is hardest work in 3d. I'm new in 3d modeling and texturing just like I'm new i cartography. Also with texturing the problem is to get really good semless texture with realy good size. But i will do my best to get better and better in it

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## Katto

Glad you are not offended from my post. We are a very polite community here and normally you won't get harsh criticism until you ask for it. But IMO this is the only way to improve...
I am also relative new to modeling and texturing, but I've learned a lot from the things build so far. Have you textured the tower inside Modo or did you use UV maps? The best resource for materials I've found so far is here.

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## SilenBlade

thanks for link, if some one want to offend you, you can feel it. But i can't agree with your opinion at 100% that textures are to clean. It depends what do you looking for. If photorealistic - yes to clean, if game type-  like settlers 2  :Very Happy:  it look good except not to good semless textures . Anyway - thanks again for your opinions - you can't learn anything without good criticism, and thanks again for texture base

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## Katto

You're right. I'm the realistic guy  :Smile:

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## SilenBlade

Tribute to Katto. Thanks for texture link - I'm working now with stone textures, I'v discovered how to make UV Normal maps and now i hope it's not to clean. Next i will work with wood and roof tiles. What do you think Katto?

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## Redrobes

> ...But please do not ask for minas tirith


Were looking for anything at all. Right now we have maybe a tower or two but we know that some of the classic places exist in some kind of object form out there. But places like Bree which are made up of lots of small houses and towers not unlike the one you have posted would be very useful. So just more of the same like these really. That would be a great help in itself.

Minas Tirith was mapped in some considerable detail in the "Minas Tirith Project" but that has since faded away. There are still some YouTube videos of it tho.

Oh and your new textures look great. If your looking for something to make seamless textures then there is a post on this guild about them I made with a script which will generate them from any image. Also RobA turned that script into a Gimp python script to do automatically in that app too.

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## arsheesh

Wow, that's pretty cool alright!  Kudos man, it looks great.

Cheers,
-Arsheesh

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## SilenBlade

Redrobes - ill try to make something for you. I have my own method for making seamless textures, maybe its not perfect as scripts but... when youhave no script you waste o time for searching it  :Smile:  Tomorow i'll try to make a little tutorial with it  :Smile:  But thanks for info

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## SilenBlade

a quick one is here 
1. Get image that you like to make seamless 
2. Open it in PS (Photoshop, GIMP, sumopainter, etc.)
3. Divide it to four identical squares (photoshop rullers)

4. Select one of sqares and move it to opposite corner, and do that same thing with the rest of them like on a picture below

5. After that you should get something like that 

6. Doesn't look so good ? Here is hardest part, take a stamp tool and fix it, take your time, if you spend more time with it, it will look better at the end 
7. You should get something like that 

8. It tooks no more than 7 min with writing this short tutorial, it's your seamless texture. 
9. Well done, hope you like it  :Wink:

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## Redrobes

Yup that is half of the same way I do it. There is another part tho which is where you flatten the image so as to prevent the repeating pattern effect even when its seamless around the edges. Ill edit in the thread...

This is my similar styled tut with a script for doing that 7 min job in about 10 seconds  :Very Happy: 
http://www.cartographersguild.com/sh...ut-of-anything

and then there is Robs thread...
http://www.cartographersguild.com/sh...s-texture-sets

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## SilenBlade

I'm really proud to be member of this Guild  :Smile:  Is a mine of knowledge  :Smile:

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## Redrobes

Well I think I can speak for the masses when I say that were getting a kick out of your work too. That tower is great.

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## Katto

You're on the right way. Looks very good.

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## Telarus

> Tribute to Katto. Thanks for texture link - I'm working now with stone textures, I'v discovered how to make UV Normal maps and now i hope it's not to clean. Next i will work with wood and roof tiles. What do you think Katto?


Tower's looking pretty good. Are you aware of Specular and Normal mapping? 

Also, you do want to have some type of overlay texture to break up the even color tone from top to bottom (the stone), breaking up the bottom edge where the building is "grounded" by using a mud splatter or moss overlay would be a good idea.

I'd recommend that the vertical stone be slightly darker than the horizontal (such as the steps) to allow the steps silhouettes to 'pop', and to show that the steps are worn by use.

Hard Edges are where textures break down, so you can also "lighten" over the hard edges (use your UV maps as guides) in order to simulate a "worn" look (basically we are faking a specular highlight off of a curved edge, instead of a hard sharp edge). Use a layer on 20-40% and paint in white on the edges, then adjust to taste (blending layers can get fun).

The wall stone in the quoted image also seems to have a Gamma problem when compared to the wood of the door (as a some-one new to 3d, you may not be aware of Gamma issues). Gamma takes a while to explain, but no time at all to understand if you're looking at the same image vs a copy which has been Gamma corrected. Gamma problems manifest as a "gray tone", like a grey layer @ 20% transparency over your texture when compared to textures in the "correct" gamma space. (Compare say, the upper stone to the lower stone in your first post, or the stone to the wood door as I said.)

If you post your stone texture, I can gamma correct it in no time. You'll appreciate the difference.

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## SilenBlade

Thanks Telarus  for your words and informations. I'm begginer with texturing with uv maps and never used spectacular maps here is stone texture with UV maded by myself, but i don't have really good software for imac to make uv maps also don't know how to make spectacular maps. 
 i don't know why i can't upload secont file with uv maps so for now only stone texture if you can improve it, it will be very great

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## Telarus

Cool, I'll see what I can do. Can you post an image of just your UV map (on a black background) So I can get an idea of how it's laid out?

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## Telarus

Cool, that was good practice for me.

Ok, here's what I've done (in order). 1) Gamma corrected. 


2) Gamma + Colored corrected. 


3) Item 2 + Cleaned up your tiling edges (seamless now with less hotspots, the white lichen, to give away that it's a tiling texture). 


4) Comparison original gamma/color vs new.


These are 512x512 (you had an odd image size).

Here's a link in the attachments on this post to the final seamless texture @ 1024x1024 in case you need that detail.

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## SilenBlade

Holly Cow.... i'v messed my project, i was working with uv textures and making some new meshes and my software hangup :/ Now I can't open source file so i have to start everything from begining. Telarus do you know any software for mac/pc to make normal textures? But not nvidia plugin for photoshop

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## Steel General

You can try Genetica...

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## Midgardsormr

Defining some terms might be in order. 

A specular map determines where the bright reflective highlights on your object occur, as well as what color they are. Metallic objects have highlights that are the same color as the object. Most other substances have white highlights. The specular pass is usually added or screened onto the diffuse pass, so in order to achieve white highlights, you must usually make a specular map that has colors that are complementary to your diffuse (color) map. In Photoshop, you should invert the image (Ctrl+I) to get your starting point. From there, modify the image such that areas of the texture that should be matte (non-reflective) are very dark, and areas that should be shiny are bright. 

A normal map instructs the renderer to create simulated lighting on a surface and allows you to add apparent detail without additional geometry. It's similar to a bump map, but instead of just indicating variations in surface height, it actually dictates the angle of a pixel with respect to the geometry's normal (a normal being a line perpendicular to the surface). Not many people paint normal maps by hand or in Photoshop. They are usually created with 3d sculpting software such as ZBrush or Mudbox. I think that Modo has a sculpting mode built-in, but I don't know how it works. 

Anyway, as regards your corrupted file, you've now learned one of the great important lessons in 3d: File versioning. Save new versions frequently, so you can backtrack if an approach isn't working or save yourself if something gets corrupted. I usually have 30 - 50 scene files by the time I'm done modeling something in Maya. If you need to save disk space, you can delete the excess at the end once you're satisfied with your results.

edit:
Any chance you might share the geometry itself in .obj format? Does the trial version of Modo even allow that?

Btw, if you're not opposed to trying a different piece of software, SideFX offers a free learning edition of Houdini that watermarks the renders, and a non-commercial but non-watermarked version for only US$100. Houdini is often used in the film vfx industry for its superb dynamics and simulation capabilities, but it's also a solid modeling and rendering package. I've been learning it slowly, myself, although I still use Maya for my projects.

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## SilenBlade

Good Lord ! Midgardsormr thanks for this great piece of info  :Smile:   I like to learn enything new about 3d, but at first i have to improve my modeling skills bcause sometimes i have real problems and I waste few hours for that what probably can be done at few minutes. Here are obj  files for tower and windmill Archiwum.zip

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## Ascension

We've got more than just map dudes here at the guild - between all of us we probably know most of everything worth knowing.  We're our own wikipedia.  Great info Midi.

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## Telarus

Great clarifications!

"Roadkill" is a free, simple, UV unwrapper. "Headus UV (v2)" is a much more robust one, but does have a price tag of $200 for 'hobbyist' level and $300 for professional.

Here's a link to Roadkill: http://www.pullin-shapes.co.uk/page8.htm

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## Midgardsormr

Thanks! Both for the geometry and the utility. Looks like the tower might be corrupted; it doesn't open in Maya, but it does in Blender. The Windmill opens in both.

I should add something about normal maps. They're typically used when you need to be able to render very fast. So video games use them more than visual effects or still art. If a few minutes of render time is not an issue, it's usually better to go ahead and use the high resolution mesh rather than extract a normal map to be applied to the low res model. Unless, of course, your modeler crashes under the strain of a million polygons, as happened when I was trying (unsuccessfully) to model brain tissue.

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## SilenBlade

I'v tried to build tower from single stones  :Very Happy:  After few hundred my mac said - "Stop you supid bastard! and restarted modo without saving :/" So I decided to make simple model. The first ide of creation was to make some models that could be used on your maps, so there is no need to make high detailed model because in final work on map the tower or the mill will be no bigger than 1-2cm i think  :Smile:  anyway you are great people with your knowledge and help. Thanks to you i want to learn more and more about 3d modeling and texturing  :Smile:

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## Telarus

Haha. I did the same thing starting out (it was a brick brewhouse and Maya crashed after I had 1/2 of the facade done and tried to mirror it to the other half).

Your models have just the right level of detail to add in those super-fine details with normal-map tricks. The fact that you have detail poly meshes around certain areas of high interest (the door & the windows have individually modeled bricks near them) shows some really good instincts as a modeler. (Also _very_ useful as in an in-game situation, those are the parts the player would be approaching, and a simple normal map would break down).

As a Lighting & Environment artist, those are the type of assets I like.

Here's a tip: don't make each stair the same width if the texture you're using on the model shows unevenly interlocking stone. That will help break some of the 'unnaturally straight' lines that the eye gets drawn to.

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## RecklessEnthusiasm

I am veeeery very new to 3d work, but I'd love to make a recommendation. If you haven't heard of Genetica, I would really recommend you check it out. It is a texture program that generates nice seamless textures either from images (I think they call it synthesis) or through various effects maps, and it comes with oodles of presets. I think they even have a free version where you have access to a nice portion of their library, though most of the neat features are disabled. It generates some different masks and maps too, which I imagine would aid one in knocking out different maps. Here is an example of a floor texture it just kicked out for me, along with a height map/mask it spit out.

I mostly use it to get nice seamless textures and patterns for photoshop, but I think it is designed for 3D guys.

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