Good news everyone! It is I, your friendly neighbourhood 3D-artist here at Colossal Order. I'm bringing you a sneak peak to two of the landmarks that will show up in the upcoming Cities In Motion London DLC: Westminster Palace and Big Ben!
These are the first two landmarks finalized for the London DLC. I will show some of the progress shots that I gathered along the way and give you a bit of insight into the design and modelling philosophy behind them.
**We use 3ds Max and photoshop as our main tools of the trade while modelling and texturing assets for CIM. They are versatile programs that allow us to create pipelines that help us plan the work. It is somewhat important that everyone uses the same basic guidelines when creating content because that way it is relatively easy for anyone to jump in and help should problems arise.**
Like always the design process starts with getting to know the object you are going to model. Luckily Westminster Palace and Big Ben are so famous that there are more than enough photographs on the internet to choose from. While gathering the necessary visual data you must also keep in mind the basics of the physical dimensions of the object (building, vehicle and pretty much anything you are going to model). However the real physical size of the building isn't always the key aspect of modelling but rather how it fits with the other buildings in the game and also how the ingame camera works around them. This is especially important with tower-like buildings and skyscrapers in general.
Because of certain limitations (mainly polygon count and the maximum size of buildings in CIM) the buildings are usually needed to be reduced in size to actually make it in the game and keep it running smoothly. We have devised a general limit to building polycounts but sometimes when it is justified we can go a bit over the limit. Westminster Palace is one of those exceptions and so far the largest building in terms of polycount. Added to that the Big Ben's clocktower it is without a doubt the largest.
The physical size of the largest possible building in CIM forced me to reduce the original size of the Westminster Palace to roughly half of its width. So I had to come up with a way to shrink the size but still keep the main features of the Palace intact. The main features include The Victoria tower located in the south-west corner of the Palace, the octagonal Central Tower in the middle and the Westminster Hall located in the west side of the Palace. Obviously there are many other smaller towers and wings but these in my opinion give the Palace its distinct form.
So, after I had decided what I need to keep and what I can put aside I started to design the layout of the Palace, traditionally with a pen and paper. I had to keep in mind the 40x40 cel limit and fit the newly designed version of the Palace on the square area and make the most of it. Very early on I decided to not include the Palace ground on the actual model but to make them in the editor to save all the space I could when I start to texture the building. Not only was the design of the Palace itself a challenging task but now I needed to think a way to texture it. After all, a building that size has more than enough surfaces that need to be textured. I noticed quite early that the Palace has a repetitive quality to it. Similar wall structures and window layouts were in a way cloned all over the building which helped me to squeeze the texture in place. In the end, completing the texture for the Westminster Palace was a mixture of using photos and combining them with painted work.
The Big Ben clocktower is a separate building because it is much better to have the freedom to design that kind of iconic landmark without the restrictions of other buildings that would limit the amount of detail I wanted to put into it. The design of clocktower was relatively straightforward really. I used the huge photos from Wikipedia to check how the details went in the tower and noticed a lot of small detail that I wasn't even aware of in the beginning. And since the clocktower is symmetrical in nature I only needed to model ¼ of the tower i.e. one side and clone it around to finish it. At first I was thinking of animating the hands of the clock but since time in CIM goes on a day by day basis instead of smaller increments I felt it was unnecessary.
The process however does not end when the final texture is ready and the model is done. There is also the need to check how it works in the engine itself since the 3D software has very different lighting conditions compared to CIM and the final adjustments sometimes are needed after we see how everything looks in the game.
Finally here are some WIP images that I rendered during the modelling and texturing process.
Here is the Big Ben clocktower rendered without textures.
Some progress shots of the texturing of the Big Ben clocktower.
Here are some progress shots of how I compiled the Westminster Palace from various individual parts.
Here is the final render of the Westminster Palace and Big Ben clocktower.
These are the first two landmarks finalized for the London DLC. I will show some of the progress shots that I gathered along the way and give you a bit of insight into the design and modelling philosophy behind them.
**We use 3ds Max and photoshop as our main tools of the trade while modelling and texturing assets for CIM. They are versatile programs that allow us to create pipelines that help us plan the work. It is somewhat important that everyone uses the same basic guidelines when creating content because that way it is relatively easy for anyone to jump in and help should problems arise.**
Like always the design process starts with getting to know the object you are going to model. Luckily Westminster Palace and Big Ben are so famous that there are more than enough photographs on the internet to choose from. While gathering the necessary visual data you must also keep in mind the basics of the physical dimensions of the object (building, vehicle and pretty much anything you are going to model). However the real physical size of the building isn't always the key aspect of modelling but rather how it fits with the other buildings in the game and also how the ingame camera works around them. This is especially important with tower-like buildings and skyscrapers in general.
Because of certain limitations (mainly polygon count and the maximum size of buildings in CIM) the buildings are usually needed to be reduced in size to actually make it in the game and keep it running smoothly. We have devised a general limit to building polycounts but sometimes when it is justified we can go a bit over the limit. Westminster Palace is one of those exceptions and so far the largest building in terms of polycount. Added to that the Big Ben's clocktower it is without a doubt the largest.
The physical size of the largest possible building in CIM forced me to reduce the original size of the Westminster Palace to roughly half of its width. So I had to come up with a way to shrink the size but still keep the main features of the Palace intact. The main features include The Victoria tower located in the south-west corner of the Palace, the octagonal Central Tower in the middle and the Westminster Hall located in the west side of the Palace. Obviously there are many other smaller towers and wings but these in my opinion give the Palace its distinct form.
So, after I had decided what I need to keep and what I can put aside I started to design the layout of the Palace, traditionally with a pen and paper. I had to keep in mind the 40x40 cel limit and fit the newly designed version of the Palace on the square area and make the most of it. Very early on I decided to not include the Palace ground on the actual model but to make them in the editor to save all the space I could when I start to texture the building. Not only was the design of the Palace itself a challenging task but now I needed to think a way to texture it. After all, a building that size has more than enough surfaces that need to be textured. I noticed quite early that the Palace has a repetitive quality to it. Similar wall structures and window layouts were in a way cloned all over the building which helped me to squeeze the texture in place. In the end, completing the texture for the Westminster Palace was a mixture of using photos and combining them with painted work.
The Big Ben clocktower is a separate building because it is much better to have the freedom to design that kind of iconic landmark without the restrictions of other buildings that would limit the amount of detail I wanted to put into it. The design of clocktower was relatively straightforward really. I used the huge photos from Wikipedia to check how the details went in the tower and noticed a lot of small detail that I wasn't even aware of in the beginning. And since the clocktower is symmetrical in nature I only needed to model ¼ of the tower i.e. one side and clone it around to finish it. At first I was thinking of animating the hands of the clock but since time in CIM goes on a day by day basis instead of smaller increments I felt it was unnecessary.
The process however does not end when the final texture is ready and the model is done. There is also the need to check how it works in the engine itself since the 3D software has very different lighting conditions compared to CIM and the final adjustments sometimes are needed after we see how everything looks in the game.
Finally here are some WIP images that I rendered during the modelling and texturing process.
Here is the Big Ben clocktower rendered without textures.
Some progress shots of the texturing of the Big Ben clocktower.
Here are some progress shots of how I compiled the Westminster Palace from various individual parts.
Here is the final render of the Westminster Palace and Big Ben clocktower.
