Amon Hen: Middle Earth SBG Terrain.

I started planning out this idea a few weeks ago. I had several hurdles I needed to break in order to attempt this.

One was my 3D modeling program, Wings3D,  (free program) doesn’t handle scuplting very well. On the other hand Scupltris (free program) handles sculpting like a champ! Only issue is reigning in the control of keeping things flat in Scupltris. Having a flat bottom surface is a must when your 3D3D printing.

So I did a few tests.

And realized I could pull off textured Gondorian brick work.

Keep in mind this picture was after four hours of playing around to get the desired result.

So what I did I created a brick in Wings3D. And I exported that brick out as an .obj file.

I then imported this brick.obj file into Scupltris. And I subdivided the object once. Which made the entire brick ball on out and completely loose its shape. Since subdivide increases the poly count of that file. My thought was to increase the polyps of the brick in Wings3D before I import it in.

So back in Wings3D. I cut the object into 5 sections on the ends and 10 sections along its length. Then exported this new brick into .obj format again.

Going back to Scupltris I imported this new brick and hit subdivide again. Kept its shape fairly well and then I did it a second time. Which kept it shape but gave the ends a slight hump.

So I found the key to do be able to start texturing this basic brick shape. The hump was not an issue, in fact it worked in my favor. This gave me a nice cut stone look that I needed.

From here I just sculpted into the brick. I would made cracks and imperfections where ever seemed right. Which would put this one brick over 20,000 polys. I would then reduce that brick down to 5-6,000 polys. Then export it out as brick1. Next I would smooth out as much detail as I would like. Then sculpted in more detsil. Reduce the polys again and export it as brick2. While keep repeating these steps until I had several bricks created.

If you are wondering why make a detailed brick at 20K polys and then reduce it diwn to 5K? Well my laptop can only handle and function right around 1.2 Million poly range. If each brick was 20K there would not be much of a structure I could build. Plus reducing the polys which affects the detail gives it a more weathered look. Ancient stone that has been laying around for 500 plus years.