Trebuchet

Artwork Focused Critiques
1

Ive ALWAYS wanted one… but lord knows ill never get a chance to see one more or less fire it off… thats what blenders for… right?! lol

http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y208/dfstormbringer/trebuchetwip.jpg
trebuchetwip.jpg800×600

this is just what ive gotten done today…

i already know im going to have serious problems texturing this thing as blender doesent do wood well… and i SO dont want to uv map each plank and board to look diferently… any thoughts and suguestions on that matter woudl be fantastic… as well as some tips of making nice looking rope without god awful vert counts as i have a VERY low end machiene.

other CnC is also appreciated.

2

The texture part is not that hard, Take a planked wood image and uv map it where the planks are close to the same size as the planks you modeled:
http://img66.imageshack.us/img66/3900/planks5pu.jpg
Hope that helps, I’m not sure on the rope…

3

rope you should be able to get away with a low poly cylinder with a rope texture and decent NOR map.

looks like you have a few missing faces on the cross braces on the end of the hamster wheels.

4

actually… nothings missing… lol.
i wanted this treb to be as realisitc and detaiels as possible in moddeling… and wood NEVER fits perfectly togeather… especially when your in a combat situation in the dark ages… from all the reference images i saw… everything was in some way “slotted” and slipped togeather… now carving out all these pegs and square holes woul dhave taken forever… a quicker way… woul dhave been to place 3 boards togeather to form one massive plank… cutting gaps in the center board as needed to make the holes.

i definatly wanted to simulate these 3 board patterns but knew doign it through texturing woul dhave been a pain… so each majior beam… i actually moddled as 3 board meshes… leaving a very tiny gap between them to get the layered effect to render.

this will also help to add to the belivability as to why theres rope on the thing helpign t hold it togeather.

EDIT
i see what you mean now… its not missing… its overlapping…its being taken care of now as when i first made the cross i didnt know if that was a filan design… or how all that was going to work out… as things can change when adding rope and metal plates to secure everything.

as for the wood texturing… i dont have any images… i have to make my own… and UV mapping 1… being new to me… and 2… well easy for one board… iver got 1000+ boards to uv map and i dont want repeatting patterns… so… i was hoping soeone had ideas for a easy way out. .but then again… i guess it woudent be as good >.<

5

todays update is in post 1… 30k verts and 34k faces 1 hour render time >.< … machienes really becomming bogged down… even when working in layers where the item im working on is the only thing visible… the widget arrows are realyl becomming glitchy and unresponsive… and sim still missing several key items… like the wagon wheels. the main support bracket for the hampster wheel… the ropp that streatches along the sling arm… which is attatched by rope to the cross member of the hamspter wheels… the release mechenisim for the sling arm… ground… and i was thinking of a possible flag for flair… any thoughts welcome.

6

Looking good. The only thing I notice is that there is no impression in the ground where the base of the trebuchet is. The wood should sink in a little and the dirt should be peaked along the sides. Also, the wood should be a little dirty where it lays on the ground. it looks way too clean.

-Jesse

[edit] Also, on the battlefield trebuchets would be constructed as quickly as possible. the wood would be slightly bowed, rough, and definitely not polished as some of it looks… try using a noise (or fixnoise plugin) procedural applied lightly to nor and spec. and reduce the spec. And, try making the planks less ‘perfect’ They shouln’t fit perfectly at the seams and they should be a little skewed. [/edit]

7

i noticed the spec still being far too high… giving it an unnatural laqueed look and ha ve been working on that… as for the imperfections… been trying slight norm settings to it but the oas seems to remove most effects of it from a distance… so still working on that.
the tex maps are far from done… as i have no idea how to even appreoach the ropes… as for imperfections and odd shapes in the wood… and the ground… unfortunatly… that waould fall under my desire to make this a cliff scene… with a castle sitting in the distance waitting to be hit… but even now at only 30k verts… my system is so bogged down with lag that it takes 10-15 clicks on the 3d window to get the system to recognize what im doing… this is even WITH layers hidden… this poor lil p100 clone just cant handel it all… im lucky to get by wiht what i got at all… so photo realism is just something ill not be able to do.

but thanks much for the comments… and ill try to see what i can do.

8

for the rope use a texture like this:

 _ _ _
|\ \ \ |
| \ \ \|
|\_\_\_|

shaded and applied to nor

9

You should try ‘Wood Workshop’ for wood textures (procedural, but convincing and seamless): http://spiralgraphics.biz/ww_overview.htm !

You can make a normal map from a Wood Workshop made texture with the NVIDIA Texture Tools, (plugin for Photoshop or Gimp): http://developer.nvidia.com/object/nv_texture_tools.html !

For the rope texture, try the Simbiontblender plugin: https://blenderartists.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=45672 , read everything there, then go to the Darktree Shader Repository, download all DarkTrees, put them in the right place, and there should be a rope texture somewhere. They are also procedural.

Hope that helps a little! With better textures it will be perfect! Modelling is very precise! Good work! :wink:

10

Your rope model is good, don’t change it. With the texture I mentioned, it will be nice (I hope…). I forgot to mention that you should map that rope texture to tube! (I know…wow…) 8)

11

Shouldn’t the rope be more stretched out? That huge weight would be trying it’s best to pull the rope and everything with it. It just seems too loose. It isn’t practical. That’s my only complaint besides the texturing, but you said you are taking care of that :slight_smile:

Also, is the wagon balancing itself on its wheels or does it have something to hold it up. I would image it would either lean forward, where some of hte rocks would come out of the wagon or backwards because of all the weight. You don’t see to have any supports on the handles.

12

That large rope along the base (and hooked to the arm) shouldn’t have any tension on it, but this model is missing a triggerinig mechanism and some sort of latch method to keep the whole thing armed and ready.

Check out this site for source pictures.

http://members.iinet.net.au/~rmine/middel3.html

13

i actually HAVE that reference pic in my reference section… as well as 100 others lol… the modeling isent finished… i planed having a rocck… or a section of log braced beneath the cart handles to keep them up… just havent gotten to that yet… nor have i finished the moddeling on the treb… its still missing more roops ont he swing arm… as well as the conectiors for the retraction rope to the hampster wheel… as for the rope on the sling being not tight enough… NONE of my references show a totally tight sling when its in locked position… theres some slack sp i modled it that way based off the references…

as for the locking mechanisim… thats just a simple metal rigging… and will be worked on soon… its on the to do list. but being ive seen litterally over 50 TOTALLY different lock and release designs… ive yet to decide how im goign to do that aspect. and wiht my computer becimming really bogged down at 30k verts… its becomming very dificult to model things as any click of the mouce now takes 3-5 seconds to activate on the screen.

14

the two programs for photoshop from spiral graphics are absolutly amazing!!!>… i want them both… but BOTH require high end computers with googles of memory and a windows xp os… im on a p100 BARELY running win 98… so im screwed there. the nvidia programs demand XP as well. as for the tree generator… im still just barely scratchign the surface when it comes to python usage… and i cant see what that program does that i cant already do in blender and photoshop.

15

It’s not a tree generator, simbiontblender is a plugin that makes advanced (advanced, compared to Blender’s procedurals) procedural shaders made in DarkTree useable in Blender. You don’t need to understand Python to use that script. Here is a tutorial on its usage: http://ten-ninjas.com/SimbiontBlender/

Unfortunately, it will be very slow on your comp… :frowning: