Bridge Entrance + more!

So as I have mentioned in my previous blog, it was my responsibility to work on the London Bridge entrance as my first asset. We decided to tackle the big stuff first before going into the smaller details to help get our heads round scale and size of the level. After doing the initial block out I had some serious design decisions to make. The etchings suggested it was made out of stone but another painting we came across portrayed it to be far more colourful so I was not sure if wood or plaster may have been used or the stone itself had been painted over. After discussing it over with my group I decided to combine all three materials as many houses that were three or four stories had a stone foundation as a ground floor so this decision synced well with all the other architecture in the level. Heidi had also was working on a Gatehouse that would sit just before the entrance which was all made from stone, so I thought it would be nice for both to stand out with their own materials.

The initial idea was to embrace a two tone aesthetic with plaster/wood over stone and vice versa all the way to the top, this however would fail as the plaster/wood would crumble if stone were to be placed on top.

After finalising the design it was time to texture! I found some good wood references from the shambles trip to York we went on and I also tried to tile texture almost everything on the building. 

I was in a similar situation with the bridge considering design as so many etchings and paintings depicted it with its starlings in so many ways. However, I decided to keep it simple as the player would not interact with the whole bridge, especially from the outside. 

Here are the reference images I decided to work with. I only used one tile texture for the entire bridge and worked into a little more detail when it came to the starlings, although after the fourth starling, the rest are LOD’s with a baked texture ID. The Entrance stands at 23k tri’s and the bridge stands at 11k tri’s. I think the Entrance could have been optimised further now looking back but it is something to learn from.

http://www.engineering-timelines.com/why/bridgesOfLondon/bridgesLondon_06.asp

(Reference to confirm 19 arches and 20 starlings)

Once this has been completed, we decided that a stable was needed. As most of the buildings are closed structures I wanted to make this one a lot more open, so we could put smaller assets inside and make it look occupied.

I also created a horse stand to add to the streets, for people who came with horses and had no place to tie them. To add to the stable, I made some horse dung that could sit inside and around the level suggesting that horses were occupying the streets/selective spaces.

I moved on to making a cart and a carriage. The carriage I think was a particularly important asset as I found out they had been around from the early 1600’s and ‘The Hackney Carriage Act’ was established so horse-drawn carriages could be available for hire.

My final asset was a Merchant Ship. I started it as a LOD with a very simple texture in mind but ended up adding slightly more detail than I planned. The design is based off the ‘Mayflower’ which was built around the 1600’s and was known to be used at least up till the 1630’s. 

http://www.pa59ers.com/library/Addison/ships.html