First screenshot (with some Photoshop blur)



This is of course, the XNA game texturing, textures and lighting in Uru version may be nicer. This is a prerendered shot of the model, but the kind of lighting/shadows and such that you see here will also be visible in real-time 3d because they'll be baked into the textures.

I'm running out of time on the XNA stuff, hopefully I'll do okay on the assignment.

More to come later...

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Matthew L. Hornbostel, creator of Panoramic Worlds,
a Myst fansite , and
various other stuff.

i like it. i think its gonna turn out great. quick question though: will the leaves on the tree get smoothed out some or whatever to make it look more realistic, or will it be left as it was in the shot for the sake of time/space taken up/load time/etc.? other than that, id love to give it a shot.

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i like it. i think its gonna turn out great. quick question though: will the leaves on the tree get smoothed out some or whatever to make it look more realistic, or will it be left as it was in the shot for the sake of time/space taken up/load time/etc.? other than that, id love to give it a shot.

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We'll see. It will make a lot more sense to do the leaves as semi-transparent textures, which would look great and allow for more natural leaf shapes, and also require fewer polys, but I'm sort of counting on not doing that in XNA. Even the window may be baked into an opaque texture for the XNA version - all the stuff beyond it would be rendered into the texture surface of the window itself, because I am uncertain that I will have time to get transparency shaders working in time for the due date.

So, yeah, by the time this reaches Uru it may have higher levels of detail in many respects, but for now I'm in a rush and need the entire level plus interactive elements, done in a month and a half.

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Matthew L. Hornbostel, creator of Panoramic Worlds,
a Myst fansite , and
various other stuff.

Would be nice to see it without the radial blur, can get more of a picture of how it actually looks.

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While I admit it looks very nice, and I can't wait to see finished form.. and it may be the blur filter throwing me off... the age throws my distance perception for a loop. Is there a light above the tree hidden from view? Because if the light is between those posts, those shadows are more than a little off kilter.

And even if there is, wouldn't that diffuse (is that the word I want?) the shadows near the light a bit?


Must admit though, amazing what a difference a bit of shadows and texture make to make a place look more... real.

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You know, I wish we would learn Atrus loved the 1812 overture, and in turn we had a copy for our relto.
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Welcome back all!

I'll get you your render as soon as I can, Tweek. I'm having problems with my mac - the computer I have the graphics files on - and it may be a little while before I make any meaningful progress on this.

That said, there may be some meaningless progress today! Completely insubstantial progress! Progress that doesn't look anything like progress!

As for your query, MuffinCakes, uh, I mean, Gondar...

These lights are not by any means in their final form, and incidentally there *is* an overhead light in a chandelier of glass hexagon-thingies. There is also a little bit of light coming in through the window - I think...

Yeah, I'm used to screwing up imagery in postproduction. I tend to blur stuff, or add noise to it, or mess with contrast and color levels/exposure, to cover up the synthetic look. Sometimes several of the above. The more messy a shot is, the less it looks synthetic to me. My video is often kind of chaotic-looking, so my VFX should match that. I do a lot of motion tracking and handheld-type stuff in VFX lately, in "Duel 2030" for instance. I've also had to learn the squint rule lately - a video should look good viewed up close and from a huge distance.

However, rules for still images are very different from the VFX rules I'm in the habit of following. If it isn't moving, it shouldn't be blurred. It should be pristine. I forgot that out of sheer stupidity and carelessness.

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Matthew L. Hornbostel, creator of Panoramic Worlds,
a Myst fansite , and
various other stuff.

Okay, technical problems pretty much worked out. I'm rushing all the parts of this XNA game project, so I'm obviously incredibly dissatisfied with my texturing and lighting, and moderately unhappy with the models themselves.

I had to have something to show in class, though. Here's what I hacked together for the presentation, and of course a lot of this is not related to the temple level but I thought I'd throw it out there anyway.

Still loads of work to do, and many improvements to be made. You might recognize one of the tiled textures I used, Tweek.









That last one is the temple interior, or at least, the amount of it that I've modeled. You can see clearly that this extends beyond just the one room you've seen thus far. There's a sort of mini-garden in one room, with fences and shrubs. It offers the illusion of a balcony into the outdoors, but of course this is all miles underground and the environment extending beyond the fence is a painting surrounding the room.

Again, the three tables in the other room - from a particular vantage point the tops of those three tables should line up to form a single image, one that is distorted and unclear from every other direction. There are other assorted details, I'm still working on, but those are two of the more intriguing illusory rooms. There's a lot of encoded D'ni text lining the hallways as well, or will be whenever I can get this whole thing done right.

Hopefully MO:RE will come back to life fairly soon and this will be explorable online, but we'll see what happens.

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Matthew L. Hornbostel, creator of Panoramic Worlds,
a Myst fansite , and
various other stuff.

Great!

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- Guild of Writers
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looks interesting though I have to say not very myst like, looks more to me like and old fort crossed with castle in the southwest somewhere.

perhaps not but what are the possibilities of all the other worlds or ages being Myst like

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Quote:

When you eliminate all other possibilities, what remains, no matter how improbable, must be the solution.
Sherlock Holmes

Karkadann wrote:

perhaps not but what are the possibilities of all the other worlds or ages being Myst like

thus my problem with open source and fan created ages.

You don't have to visit fans ages. It is very likely someone will open a shard, without any fan content, or at least ones which should really bother you.

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Previously known as "The stranger"

The stranger wrote:

You don't have to visit fans ages. It is very likely someone will open a shard, without any fan content, or at least ones which should really bother you.

that is not what I was implying.

rygynjupiter wrote:

Karkadann wrote:

perhaps not but what are the possibilities of all the other worlds or ages being Myst like

thus my problem with open source and fan created ages.

OK then look at it from another point of view, If we had Linking technology in today's society and a modern day Writer where inspired to create a link another world with all the possibilities of what Life could evolve into what are the chances it will be like what we have here today.

its like saying If their were intelligent life on other planets it would hafta be Humanoid because we are intelligent and we are humanoid. The Possibilities of other Ages are limitless, Im sure Cyan, the Writers, Maintainers, the DRC and every one else involved in the New Age Creation and Approval possess will take care of the details of how why and what for ext. and thier will always be issues about "does if fit in with the story or not" However A true community will find a way to make it work, a community that is fragmented might make it work but will have to work harder to archive the same goal.

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Quote:

When you eliminate all other possibilities, what remains, no matter how improbable, must be the solution.
Sherlock Holmes