3d built environment design - An inquiry

[Leon Katakalon]

Dear Pompeius Magnus

For some years now I am closely watching the magnificent development of the Age of Darkness 2 mod. Furthermore of course as a real Total war fan I am eagerly awaiting the release of your mod along of course with the Ruina Romae mod. What has truly fascinated me except of course the fantastic units and the great in-depth historical accuracy that accompanies this modification is the reconstruction, within the limits of course of the RTW engine, of late antique cities and settlements such as Alexandreia, Rome, Constantinople, Sub-Roman Londinium and Justiniana Prima (I think that this is city will also be included in the mod - I don't remember well whether you had mentioned Iustiniana Prima or if it was a representation of it). Except for a hardcore total war player I am a practising archaeologist who engages in fieldwork on Late Antique sites on the island of Crete. As far as this is concerned, along with a small team of more experienced archaeologically oriented graphic technicians we would like to graphically reconstruct the early Byzantine settlement (actually a fortified Acropolis) of Eleutherna on central Crete. Eleutherna's Acropolis posseses a number of peculiarities as it contains succesive and archaeologically overlapping habitation layers ranging from Early Iron Age till the abandoment of the settlement in 12th century A.D. The current archaeological project focuses on the unearthing of the Roman and Late Antique site whose late antique structural remains seem to contain the lion's share of the site's archaeological material. I would like to ask you which graphical modding tools are availiable and best suited in order to be able to reconstruct the overall material environment of our site (in order to posses some kind of conjectural picture of it) and whether the modding tools that you are using are suitable and flexible enough of such tasks. Another question it is how such tools can be availiable (through download or purchase) and which additional programmes are necessary in order to recreate 3d buildings, gardens, walls, churches et.c. Also we would like to use 3d modeling in order to design accurately the excavation layers, designing them by hand is sometimes a gruelling task and any errors are hard to overcome. Finally how we can learn to do such modding processes are there any tutorials in order to get a knowledge of that.

Yours sincerely and of course keep up this great work we are eagerly awaiting for its release !!!

Leo Katakalon

[morfeasnikos]

This is the page with most of the tools
http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...-amp-Resources

[Pompeius Magnus]

Hello Leon,

the most important model programs for RTW (and all other games from the total war series) are:
(A) 3DSMax and
(B) milkshape: Making unit cards for M2TW using Milkshape and Photoshop

I think 3DSMax cost money due to the license, while milkshape is share ware and free available.
I'm not sure 100% because I'm no model-maker in my team. The specialists in my team concering modelling are morfeasnikos, Rarity and Wundai.