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Imperial Settlement Tilesets

Posted: Fri May 06, 2016 10:23 am
by Infragris
My thoughts on the different tilesets for cities and settlements: which ones we have, where they can be used, and what we will need.

Sets we have right now:
Common (basic)
This is the tileset as it occurs in Morrowind. it is probably easiest to think of it as "Imperial Colonial Style": the kind of quick, inexpensive construction used when setting up towns in the provinces. We will most likely have little use for it in Cyrodiil, except as "default" architecture in the rare situations where none of the regional styles would fit. This kind of architecture is explicitly Colovian, built by soldiers and colonists who hail from that region.

Stirk Urban
The tileset used for the city of Stirk. Having a unique tileset for one single location is a waste of effort, unless if it is a place of special significance (like the Imperial City or Sancre Tor). Ideally, the entire Gold Coast (Stirk, Anvil, Brina Cross, etc.) should have used the same tilesets. In the future, we should avoid these kinds of design choices.

Anvil Urban
The tileset used for the city of Anvil, the upper quarter of Sutch, and all Colo-Nordic Manors in the Gold Coast and Gilded Hills regions.

Gold Coast Rural
Technically, this should probably be considered two different sets: a rural shack type for the poorest villagers, and a brickwork type in the common/vanilla style. Used for Gold Coast settlements, farms, fishing huts, etc. Brina Cross, Thresvy, and the lower parts of Sutch all feature this set.

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Future tilesets:
Colovian Highlands Rural
Similar to the Gold Coast rural set, both the brickwork common set and the lower-class shacks. We would be able to use this style for the entire Highlands: upper Kvatch, Chorrol, and the Barrowlands. The set would mostly consist of rough stone, perhaps with slate roofs instead of wood or thatch.

Colovian Highlands Urban
This set would be used for the major cities of the Highlands, Kvatch, Mohrlagrad, and Chorrol. The typical Colo-Nordic cliff-forts will also be made of this set, and might even deserve a couple of unique assets (towers, walls).

Colovian Lowlands Rural
The popular style found in the Massiquerran Forests, the Chorrol lowlands, and the West Weald around Skingrad. Sort of a Mediterranean farm look, uses mostly wood. Since the environmental factors of these regions are mostly similar, I think it would make sense to use the same style for the Chorrol and Skingrad rural areas, despite them having different urban styles.

Colovian Weald Urban
The style of lowland cities such as Skingrad, Sarchal, and Dethagrad. Strongly Mediterranean, with influences from places like Mont-St.-Michel.

Jerall Rural
Farmhouse style for the Jerall mountains. Mostly wood, strong Nordic influence.

Jerall Urban
The style of Bruma and Artemon. Also very Nordic. These mountain styles could perhaps also be used for the eastern Valus mountains.

Niben Ricefarm Rural
The style of the rice farms and lesser villages of the Heartlands and the Niben river. Since the Nibenay is much more urbanized that Colovia, I think it makes sense to use a single rural style and focus on variations in the urban styles.

Niben Deepwood
Pole-village style of isolated Nibenese tribes in the inner jungles.

Heartlands Urban/Imperial City
Used for major cities along Lake Rumare, as well as the City itself. Considering the importance of the IC, it would make sense to have tileset variations for poor houses, middle-class houses, upper-class manors, and the Emperor's Palace.

Niben Upper Urban Style
The Cheydinhal urban set, drawing inspiration from Dunmeri examples.

Niben Central Urban Style
The style of Bravil and the Valley of Altars cities. Dense, urbanized, mostly made of wood.

Niben Southern Urban Style
The style of Leyawiin, Topal bay, and the Molaquin Ren. Strong influences of Khajiiti architecture.

Re: Imperial Tilesets

Posted: Fri May 06, 2016 11:02 am
by worsas
This tileset includes both rural shack houses and common-style brickwork. This is a tileset that can be used economically, as this housing style can be used for different locations across the next two release areas. We should predominantly feature this set in Gold Coast settlements and farms, and maybe even in the Kvatch area, to tie this region together culturally. Perhaps it should have been split up in two different tilesets. Personally, I think the poorer rural shacks could be used across Colovia, similar to how Dunmeri wooden shacks are used in many different environments in Vvardenfell.
I would like to see the common-style houses used as a secondary architecture for Kvatch. The shacks should be used for the fisher towns in the goldcoast and as secondary architecture in Sutch. For the rest of Colovia, I'm not sure. These houses are relying on the presence of palms in the environment. They could continue into the westweald a littie bit, maybe.
I've complained about the use of the Stirk and Anvil wall tilesets before. If it makes little sense to have a different tileset for each settlement, this goes double for these unique walls, especially because their textures and architectural style does not relate to the building style of these cities or their fortresses. Compare this to Balmora or Ald'ruhn, where the wall set is in the same architectural style as the city itself. As such, I believe that the Stirk wallset should be retextured in the same style as the houses. I'm not sure what should happen with the Anvil wallset: personally, I think they are too bulky and bloat the city without really adding anything. I would propose replacing them with either the Stirk set, or the retextured Imperial fortress set (which would visually connect them to the castle).
There is already a fairly consistent color scheme between the Stirk houses and the Stirk walls. I don't see a need for changing them. After some doubts, however, I tend to agree about the Anvil walls. Either replace them with the legion walls or alternatively ask for those anvil walls by beyond Skyrim.

I also agree, somehow, that the distinctive architecture between Anvil and Stirk is a waste of some kind. But to me the Anvil houses are ugly beasts, whereas the Stirk houses, after my modest efforts, have become bearable in appearance.

Edit: Maybe the the stirk docks could be reused in Anvil, after changing the wall texture on the Anvil houses for the one of the Stirk houses, which would pull Anvil a little bit into the purple color scheme Stirk is using. Just a possibility.
Edit: Apologize for the conceited attitude expressed above. :oops: :D

Re: Imperial Tilesets

Posted: Fri May 06, 2016 3:23 pm
by Saint_Jiub
I agree that the Anvil wallset and docks should be replaced by the Stirk models, since they're of a higher quality than the unique Anvil stuff, IMO. However, I do believe that having distinct texture sets for each city is both acceptable and desirable - since for most of these it's basically a matter of tweaking resources from textures.com, it's far less time consuming than modelling brand new pieces for each city.

As far as the Stirk walls go, I honestly wouldn't change a thing. I love the way they look now and the mood that they give the city, walking through the front gate just makes me happy every time :mrgreen:

For the shacks, I can easily put together a more traditional thatched roof as a variant so we can continue using them into the highlands.

Infragris, how do the existing housing concepts fit into this proposal?
Image

I think these would make a good basis for the Weald Urban and Colovian Lowland sets, and maybe we should scrap the Kvatch concept since I never got it to a point I was really happy with. I can start work on new concepts once I know what I need to work on :)

Re: Imperial Tilesets

Posted: Fri May 06, 2016 4:19 pm
by Infragris
For the Highland shacks I think a rough slate roof would be appropriate, sourced from local materials. Thatch roofs can feature for the lowland set.

I don't really have a solid concept for the urban styles myself. I like the Skingrad design, but the Chorrol one is perhaps a little too rustic for a major city (it might be a good inspiration for the lowlands rural style, in the vein of the current Gold Coast brickwork houses). Perhaps it would be best to focus on the Highlands urban styles first, though, especially if we whish to use this set for the Colo-Nordic manors (opinions?). There's some stuff in the region inspiration thread about architectures.

Re: Imperial Tilesets

Posted: Mon Jul 10, 2017 3:34 pm
by Infragris
Updated OP, removed some useless talk.

Re: Imperial Tilesets

Posted: Thu Jul 13, 2017 6:02 am
by Saint_Jiub
I'm going to start work on a Colovian Highlands Urban concept showing most of the modular pieces we would need, but just to give you a taste, this is primarily what I'm basing it on:

Image

Re: Imperial Tilesets

Posted: Thu Jul 13, 2017 10:39 am
by Infragris
That looks like a good source of inspiration. Are you going to base the model on the Anvil houses?

Some other pics that might be useful:

Re: Imperial Tilesets

Posted: Fri Jul 14, 2017 4:57 am
by Saint_Jiub
I'm trying to avoid making it too similar to Anvil - by the time we get to the Highlands, we will have already used that tileset for three major cities (and probably some smaller ones too), and this tileset will get an equal or greater amount of use, so I'm going to trying to switch up the silhouette as much as I can within the constraints of having four walls and a roof lol.

Re: Imperial Tilesets

Posted: Sat Jul 15, 2017 10:00 pm
by Saint_Jiub
Okay, so here it is - first pic is the individual pieces deconstructed, second pic is an example of something that could be built using these proposed assets. I went for a mix of wood and stone and avoided plaster and those tiled roofs, in order to avoid similarities to the Gold Coast assets. Disregard the note about upper/middle class distinctions, since texture set will most likely be determined by the city rather than on a building-by-building basis.

Image

Image

Re: Imperial Tilesets

Posted: Sat Jul 15, 2017 11:15 pm
by Ted
I like it! But looks a little bit too high-rock-ish imo

Re: Imperial Tilesets

Posted: Sat Jul 15, 2017 11:50 pm
by Saint_Jiub
ESO did a horrible job differentiating the Bretons from the Imperials (using basically the exact same visual references that Oblivion used almost a decade prior), so I'm not super concerned about its depiction of High Rock tbh.

Re: Imperial Tilesets

Posted: Sun Jul 16, 2017 8:17 am
by Ted
Yeah, but it still kinda too remind me hr buildings from df and it contain also northen europe thematic, dunno. Maybe add more stone elements, different roof, add different windows add merlon to make it look more cyrodiilic?

Re: Imperial Tilesets

Posted: Sun Jul 16, 2017 10:00 am
by roerich
I like it a lot so far. Some comments:
  • Make the buildings bulkier, base size like the Anvil set. Unsure if this is your intention, it's a bit hard to tell with the window sizes, if this is supposed to be a one- or two story house.
  • I wouldn't be afraid to use plaster here and there, or have slight variations between houses. Would make it less repetetive in the long run, and help differentiating between high end and poorer/run down districts. Like the difference between the last two images in Infragris' post. I wouldn't worry about similiarities between this and the GC set, I'm sure they wouldn't look alike unless you use the exact same textures. The plaster here would be more grey IMO.
  • Having different weather vanes would be very cool. Perhaps a simple non-ornamental one, and then a few more elaborate ones like the wolf in your concept.

Re: Imperial Tilesets

Posted: Mon Jul 17, 2017 4:31 am
by Saint_Jiub
I'm working on some additional concepts that will better conceptualize the scale of these houses, but generally yes, they're roughly the same size as the Anvil houses. Main difference in terms of footprint will be that they're a little wider and shorter - aside from the towers, the tallest buildings will be two stories high, compared to three in the Anvil set - since the Highlands are colder and windier than the Gold Coast, their architecture will generally be kept lower to the ground to conserve warmth.

Re: Imperial Tilesets

Posted: Tue Jul 18, 2017 9:48 am
by R-Zero
Ted wrote: Sun Jul 16, 2017 8:17 am Yeah, but it still kinda too remind me hr buildings from df and it contain also northen europe thematic, dunno. Maybe add more stone elements, different roof, add different windows add merlon to make it look more cyrodiilic?
That's not really much of a problem as it's established in Morrowind that european-style architecture is common throughout Western Tamriel:
The houses and shops are built in the Western Imperial style, and Pelagiad looks more like a village in the western Empire than a Morrowind settlement.
It's a pleasant little village. If you didn't know better, you'd think you were in Daggerfall or some other High Rock town.
Caldera has the appearance and flavor of a Western Imperial town.
Stone blocks and wooden shingles are a really fitting element as these are found throughout the Imperial and Common building sets.

Re: Imperial Tilesets

Posted: Wed Aug 02, 2017 2:06 pm
by spineinside
just thought about Saint_Jiub's concepts while seeing this, might be a nice roof extension to Saint-Michel-wise proposal of Skingrad
https://www.google.pl/search?q=karlstej ... TPA2DrOQLM:

Re: Imperial Tilesets

Posted: Tue Aug 08, 2017 10:58 am
by Infragris
Came across this recently, I think a southern Italian style like in Matera might be an interesting compromise between the overt medievalist and the more outlandish inspiration sources.

Re: Imperial Tilesets

Posted: Tue Aug 08, 2017 3:07 pm
by roerich
Huh. I was looking at the exact same thing a couple of days ago, but forgot to post it.