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[vellum]

Well I've been threatening to learn blender, so amon hen looked like it might be a good basic place for me to start.  I've see what I can do with this for you guys.

[Redrobes]

The watchtower seat on the hill ? That sounds cool. I was thinking that in time I might have a go at the Statues of Argonath guarding the Anduin not far from there. At the mo tho Outerra does not support rivers so our Anduin is not placed and the lakes are especially sunken so that they make mini seas so Outerra can render them with water. So it might be a little difficult to place the exact spot at this time tho it should be easier in due course.

[vellum]

Yep that would be the place, where aragon fought the orcs, helping frodo to escape with sam.  It has the four birds on top / stairs through middle / two base guardians.  I think as far as the landscape location goes, its kind of up in the air.  From the reference photos it looks like is more rolling hilltop with no great elevation differences, while a mat painting has it standing overlooking a great drop into what I suppose is the river.  In any case this will take me awhile as I'm starting from dead zero with blender. But you guys have worked on this quite a while so I hope you won't mind if it takes me awhile also.

[monks]

That sounds great vellum. Just remember whast we said about using the films as refs  That's probably the number one thing that will cause ip issues. All I say is if you're going to use use them, tweak them enough to make them only suggestive.
 I can look into that location for the next build. I think we'll have to release update builds as we go on- with new locations patched in. We'll need to do that for lake areas anyway, because the lakes will change their height.
 There's a few refs you could use. THe books of course...the films, paintings by Tolkien artists, Wynn Fonstad's Atlas of M-E, and the role playing resources, especially from I.C.E. I'll be posting a list later today with that short list of ref ideas.

monks

[vellum]

As I said on CG my kitchen project is really kickin my butt atm, so by the time evening arrives I'm beat.  that said I've gotten a rough, though really out of proportion block out of the stairs and pedestal and column layout worked up.  I'll post up a thumb sometime next week, this will be an untextured mass model of course.  As a complete blender newbie this has been a real learning experience for me, there are a ton of interface commands and procedures to learn, so this will be a slow moving target LOL.  In any case I will keep plugging away on it so we have a model to plop in for a test run.

I know you said you also where interested in learning blender so a new version of blender has been release in the past week which has apparently added some really nice features.  Go download it   

[monks]

looking forward to seeing your progress on this...and I have to rep you for wading in there!  If you ever need help, Robes has used it a fair bit as you know. Did I just pass the buck there? lol
I've not decided if I'm going to use Blender or Max yet...I also need to get this final builders version out before I can move over to the modelling. Beyond that, I suspect the terrain patch updates will have to be done incrementally. I'm anticipating the new stuff -should be fun. I pmed you btw I can get you some pics from role playing sources if you want...I'll try. Every little helps right? Well, let me know, maybe you've already made up your mind on sources.

monks

[vellum]

You might wait on the rep until you see what I made LOL !!!  this thing is terrible atm 
I think the way I'll approach this model is to use the photo ref so I can get somewhat correct proportions, then we can mod it to kill any obvious issues.  For my first try I think I need the reference help once I become comfortable with blender I can move on actually playing around with the development of new ideas / models. 

[monks]

hehe...well perhaps but you haven't seen mine yet either! :-D Hmm...I'm downloading Blender anyway. I'll certainly be taking a look at it even if I can't quite yet commit to fully getting serious with it. Oh yes, just realised I need a 3 button mouse. I'll try it with this thing- it's got a button but it's really a wheel.

monks

[vellum]

I'm using a wheel mouse, so far no issues with the wheel that I know, but then again what do I know, I've only had this loaded for a bit over 24 hrs 

[vellum]

Ok here's your laugh of the day, I present Amon hen LOL.  there is so many things wrong with this, but at least I'm learning blender a tad

[monks]

That's a good start vellum. Even with just some texturing and perhaps bump mapped detail (or whatever the latest technique is called these days) that could look passable. Like you said, at least you're learning it. Were the stairs going down into it hard to do?

monks

[vellum]

Actually the stairs where one of the easier parts for me. I found a youtube video which uses, insert plane, extrude 2 verts down z, array and it auto generated the stairs to the number you told it to.  I'll see if I can find the video again and link to it so you can see it.  This has given me more trouble with the top cap and column bases being linked together and I am unable to edit each individually.  Don't have any idea what I did to cause that, but is as if I joined them, but they lost all verts/planes/faces to edit, only the linework shows up  .

I will probably redo this again and use the mirror modifier to make sure everything is symmetrical where it needs to be. In the meantime tho I'll more than likely fool around with it as is to figure out texture libraries and mapping.

[vellum]

Monks, here's the stair vid link really fast and easy 

[monks]

Thanks for the vid

 Yes, that's a nice feature. Stuff like the edtiing problems happening is what I encountered in Sketchup. I found that I couldn't select certain objects individually after a while but it took a couple of steps to fix it in the end.

monks

[monks]

Vellum, here's how the Amon Hen site stands at the moment.

The water line will be as marked around the island of Tol Brandir when Outerra's lakes come online. At the moment the two hills to the south are not positioned close enough to the lake. Really there should only be two hills there. So the ones in the foreground will either have to be lowered, or the two closest to the lake need to be raised. The course of the river down to the falls is not that well defined yet but we don't need it to be for creating Amon Hen. The red line shows the path up the hill.
 It's not that difficult to make the changes. I've got a couple of options.

monks