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[Redrobes]

Ennecap is a 3D modeler of exceptional ability who is creating Minas Tirith in great detail. He has donated one of the buildings to MeDem and we shall see how that can be fitted into the terrain using Outerra. We have to work out now how we we import this, store it and make it available as part of the data.
So a big thanks to him for this:

[vellum]

Nice work Ennecap, thanks for the model.  What are you working in max / blender / maya / Lightwave etc?  I posted the wip on Amon Hen earlier, if you get the chance take a look at it and give me some tips / help.  I just downloaded blender two days ago, so I have no skills atm LOL, just fighting my way through the UI. 

[Redrobes]

Hopefully he will join but he told me he is using 3DSMax.

[monks]

  That's nice and I think you could learn a lot just by studying that. His models are pretty amazing!

monks

[D3Souz4]

that model looks amazing although it's very far from book accurate.  Were you hoping to use this or steer more towards the books dimensions?  This looks like it is 1.25 x wider than it is tall.  By the books description the outer diameter should be a mile, each level was 100 feet and the tower on the top level is 300 feet (1000 total) so it should appear about 5.5:1 width to height.

[monks]

  Yeh, that's pretty sweet We approached the modeller but he didn't want to let it go...maybe he was hoping to make some money off it. Not likely if you ask me, since it uses the films as a ref I think. He was kind enough to donate a tower though.
My personal opinion is that there are a few way of approaching it. Interpretation. We had some guy from UCLA who was doing population models, One of which was Middle-Earth. He was using historical estimates of Europe. He reckoned there was never enough room in the city for a centre of population like Minas Tirith. I'm not saying he's right, but Tolkien didn't get everything to the level of realism that he wanted. He even bemoaned his lack of knowledge of geology before he started creating M-E. Given several lifetimes, I'm sure he would have changed it.
 We got another chap doing weather sims for the MET in UK, and he ran M-E through it. Again, no doubt his predictions don't sit with Tolkien. He offered to run our data though it. You get all kinds of boffins with their specialities and insights 
 Anyway, this guy was opting for filling up the mountain slopes behind the city proper with dwellings dug into the rock, which seems like a good compromise.
 I'd probably opt for following the book, with the modifications mentioned. I'm not a stickler for absolutely following the book. For starters how is a 2D paper map to be projected onto a sphere while preserving distances given in the book? Given it's The RedBook of WestMarch, how reliable are Bilbo's measurements, etc, etc, etc.

monks

[PytonPago]

I'd probably opt for following the book, with the modifications mentioned. I'm not a stickler for absolutely following the book. For starters how is a 2D paper map to be projected onto a sphere while preserving distances given in the book? Given it's The RedBook of WestMarch, how reliable are Bilbo's measurements, etc, etc, etc.

 ... a project form a book, where people measure everything whyte laser-range finders and include overall topography in book included digital form.  

Making corrections from the book in terms of global geogaphy would not be such bad thing. Re-thinking city-building may have some extreme situation issues, doe, i dont think any book ewer described a town to the last detail of all its buildings (also, untold history parts of those cities may be used to give it a reason -- Nero ruined a whole city and other build monuments around a damn tree in our past too ) - there is a place to fit some of the needed stuff there. Also, its middle earth - some structures hold or deform solely by their own will - its a damn wizzard and demon world ! Who knows what tampering did the race of the moria-demon do to Earths liqid core for geologic anomalies in a global level in all the ages ...

Doe, i really would be impressed, if in later stages, the AI life of ME would be whyte some middle-age everyday life thinking. There is newer enough complexity and gives s more "alive" feeling of a lpace, than just statistics based chaotic/sporadic population movement implementation ... (that complexity means - yes, witchcraft does headache to science people, but must be complex enough, to convince them, that its based on tampering whyte quantum physics and chaos theory )

[John514]

Excelent!