An exterior to match Elder Soul set by 3dLab?
echristopherclark
Posts: 287
I adore the Elder Soul set by 3dLab but am struggling to build an exterior which matches it. Has anyone seen anything that might do the trick?
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How exact do you want? There are various church, temple, and cathedral models - most have pitched roofs, but those can combine with vaulted interiors. Romanesque should be the right style, but using that as a forum search term is thoroughly unhelpful. Basilica is no better.
The roofs on the wings for https://www.daz3d.com/borgias-opulent-courtyard would be the right shape, but they would need new materials (or at least some good overlays) and you'd need walls from another set.
That's an amazing coincidence, since I'm using the Opulent Courtyard for a different part of the same city setup. I hadn't tried that yet but will now. Thank you!
You may want to have a look at these too:
Castle Creator for Daz Studio | Daz 3D
and it's add-on
Castle Creator for Daz Studio: The Palace | Daz 3D
Alot of good modular pieces in there to build with, and with a slight edit to some of it's textures in Photoshop (or similar) I am sure you could get the stone to look similar, or if they are already tileable on the set you are using, just reuse them on these pieces.
That's what I'm trying now, as I couldn't get Borgia's to work. I'll probably just end up giving up soon because I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong. I'm at that stage where I don't know what I don't know, so I can't really ask for help because I'm not so good at explaining what I'm after.
The Elder Soul looks like it'd be a small structure since it has windows on both sides of naive (the long corridor with pillars and benches/pews). The Meeting Lodge has a nice exterior, but doesn't align with the windows/doors.I'm not sure how close you want the interior to match the exterior. Three artists I'd recommend would be Stonemason, Enterables, and Xivon. All are wonderful when it comes to exteriors, and some you might be able to kitbash.
@mrpenguin76 recommended the two Castle Creator sets. I own both. I cannot recommend it enough. Has so much more pieces then shown in the promo pictures. Very customizeable and easy to use. And it has domed roofs to match the alter area of the Elder Soul model.
Happy rendering!
https://www.daz3d.com/medieval-castle-construction-kit--walls-and-towers
Has rougher but similarish stonework, there's also some village sets in a similar style.
In the current Alphabet sale "The Alchemist" might be in the rotation in ~6 hours (Daz Midnight until Sunday Noon)
Thanks, everyone! I really need to take some time and learn how to use those two construction kits, which I've owned for years now. I usually just end up using their pre-built parts because I'm so impatient and get so easily frustrated with myself.
For this one, I think I've decided to have the temple (Elder Soul) built into the base of a cliff/mountain. That way I just need to create a facade for the front. I recognize that'll eliminate some of the cool shafts of light that Elder Soul shows in the promo pictures, but I think I can make it work in other ways.
I don't have the set.
But making an exterior should be feasible. You essentially want to duplicate the shell excluding windows/doors and move it outward along the normals, corresponding to the thickness given by the windows. I first wanted to make it with a raised roof, but realised it would conflict with the tower. So the roof has to follow the interior.
Rudely tried illustrated in attached.
Thanks. I'll give that a try before I resort to my "it's been built inside a mountain" plan.
P.S. Anyone know why the set would be entirely black from the outside in Texture Shaded view? I can't find a parameter to change that. None of the usual suspects seemed to have any effect. Not a major issue but one of those minor annoyances that add up when you're me and your brain is being dumb.
Lights? It isn't black for me by default, in the Day load, but if I turn the Sunlight distant light off it goes dark; I haven't checked to see if the night version has any distant light for the moon or the like..
Atttaching a screenshot of what I see when I load the Elder Soul Day scene in Texture Shaded view. Adding the ES Render Settings Day doesn't seem to change anything. Like I said, it's not a big deal. I just can't figure out why it looks like that.
I noticed you have it on Cartoon Shaded. I don't have the Elder Soul model or use this option very much, so I can't be certain. The Texture Shaded option is usually the best to work with when posing, lighting, etc.
It's not on Cartoon Shaded on my computer. For some reason, on my computer, the Texture Shaded and Cartoon Shaded icons are the same. Here's what it looks like it Cartoon Shaded mode.
I certainly don't get that on first load. What settings do you have in Edit>Preferences>Interface? Is there a distant light for the sun, and is it switched on?
Thanks for pointing me to that part of Preferences. I hit "Restore Factory Defaults" and that seems to have done the trick. I don't know what I might have changed at some point in the past, but it works now.
Egads, I do realize that the default behavior that turns the whole model yellow while hovering it was something I had switch off at some point. Gotta find that setting!
P.S. I think I might have found a/the real-world church this set was based on.
St. Michael's, Hildesheim, Germany
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Michael's_Church,_Hildesheim?wprov=sfti1#Measurements
Check out the interior shots.
Draw Settings pane>Highlight Style>Set it to Bounding Box Only
Normally when I see a scene which is almost all black, then either there is no light, or the normals are flipped the opposite way to what they should be. The flipped normals are irrelevant when rendering, they only appear black in the texture shaded view. Given you are not really supposed to be looking at it on the outside it is no surprise the normals are the wrong way round. You can flip the normals using the Geometry editor. Just select all the polygons then use Geometry Editing -> Flip Normals.