Particle's Projects

[caddienoah]

The top ones look like solar panels and the bottom ones look like glass.

I like the idea of buildings with solar panels, they make the zoo very current.

The "glass" ones could be used for buildings that contain exhibits...or buildings that have a two story foyer.

Dr. Rick made a wind generator awhile back...it would be a nice addition to your solar powered buildings.

I 😷 appreciate all the energy you are putting in your many projects for ZT!

[(Designer)Particle]

2 hours ago, caddienoah said:

The top ones look like solar panels and the bottom ones look like glass.

Yes that is the problem.  They are both supposed to be solar panels, just 4 different views of them.  The bottom ones, they don't look very good because all you are seeing basically is the frames of the solar panels.  This is what makes isometric art (or dimetric to be more precise) so challenging and fun because you need to have strong shapes as well as textures for things to look right.  But this is the first time I've done Isometric in a long time so I'm just trying out things to see how it works.  Well I'm not sure if I'll use these solar panel graphics, but buildings with solar panels is what I was thinking about, so you will see that. 

[Fern]

5 hours ago, Particle said:

You can see that although the rotations are correct (the bottom of the building lines up correctly) the roof is slightly off where it meets in the middle.  That is what I will be fixing tonight.  Also this building piece will probably be redone at 1 notch higher, because after playing with it in game, I'm sort of thinking it is too short.  So that is my progress report for now, basically no progress has been made in 2 days due to real life work and my failings with roofs.

 

In moments like these you also start to question your whole process.  What I think I will do from here on out when making a modular set, will be to make mock up pieces first, and play with them in game, to get a feel for how they fit together, and then after that I will design the look of the pieces, once I already know what size and shape pieces work best together.  Hopefully this will save me time, because by doing the pieces first, then putting them in game, I have wasted a lot of time redoing things that took hours to do in the first place.

 

Now you know how I felt when I did CDL's first set of Color Coded buildings. They had to meld from 4 different directions - roofs and walls. At the time I did not even have Zoot to use.

[(Designer)Particle]

1 minute ago, Fern said:

Now you know how I felt when I did CDL's first set of Color Coded buildings. They had to meld from 4 different directions - roofs and walls.

Yes this modular thing is not as easy as I'd thought but I will get it figured out!  I have a new roof now, and I'm redoing the main building...

[Fern]

Have a look at the colour codeds. I think from memory certain areas have to be slightly wider that one tile or sitting on the grid lines for a smooth transition/meld.

[(Designer)Particle]

4 hours ago, caddienoah said:

Dr. Rick made a wind generator awhile back...it would be a nice addition to your solar powered buildings.

I just checked this out.  His is actually really clever, by turning his animations 45 degrees, the blades face directly towards the camera, and also a perfectly flat side view.  That sort of thinking is what I love.  But at this point I have a dream of an animated version of a 3d model in isometric view.  It would be something like this one:

 

https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/wind-turbin-animated-low-poly-version-3675841a62b1417eb15b08f03864d72f

 

Anyhow back to the boring topic of roofs, here is what I came up with, believe it or not this roof is only 8 colors:

And so then I stuck it on a box building to see how it lines up with the curved roof, and this is what It looks like in game:

And that looks pretty nice so I'm just going to keep working on doing pieces that have 8 color roofs that fit together into buildings with unique shapes, until I get the whole set, and then I'll fill in the details afterwards.  :)

[YoungerPrinceLothric]

7 hours ago, Particle said:

What have I been doing instead?  Roofs.  Roofs are a pain in the ass. 

Oh, man, I used to have almost the exact same identical thoughts back when I was modding elder scrolls games. It's fun, but frustrating. Satisfying, but soul-destroying as well.

You are making incredible progress, regardless. 

[YoungerPrinceLothric]

21 minutes ago, Particle said:

And so then I stuck it on a box building to see how it lines up with the curved roof, and this is what It looks like in game:

This bit here is reminding me very much of those shelter/annex exhibit ideas you guys were talking about several pages back. I'm interested to see how this turns out.

[Fern]

The shelter annexes were a pain to get right too.

[(Designer)Particle]

I feel a lot better about these roofs!