NENIA Extreme map:Nenia Exteme size 22 by 19 file size: >19 megs memory 128 megs world type: Unique/Hallucigenia # of players: 2-10 designer: Brull designer info: e-mail - brull@mediaone.net icq# 22556017 made with Annihilator 1.5, Bryce 4, Photoshop, and hpi view and pack Requires TACC and TAMEChpi V13 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Notes: I started working on this map at the beginning of the year. Took quite a while as I had other stuff going on then when I was %90 done I had a hard drive crash and lost nearly everything. My Bryce save, all my renderings, and, of course, the map I had been working on for months. When I realized what had happened I just sat blankly looking at my computer screen for a few hours. After reinstalling everthing I found I did have a %75 done version of the map on another hard drive. But in the interim I upgraded from Bryce 3 to Bryce 4 and ran into a problem. My basic ground height went from 91 to 48. A large discrepency. Which might not have been too bad if I could have re-rendered all my sections but I had lost those. And, considering I had many serious gaps missing in my original map and it really hadn't fulfilled my real intentions of what my map should look like I decided to do it all over again. This time I would do it right and not wimp out on things that I had done earlier. One item were layered cliffs. Sure I had cliffs of different heights on my old map but they were each seperate and non-connecting. I didn't want the hassle of melding together cliffs with different textures on them. But I did on this map in several places. I found out it really wasn't that difficult and the results are just stunning! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Objective: This map offered up several challenges that were daunting at first but I felt the need to do them, anyway. No one else had really done a strata cliff system. And none so intricate as mine. It's very tedious, frustrating work getting the strata from one section to match up with the strata from another. They are always going to be just a little bit off. Which is why I really can't release a tileset of this map. There was too much work done in annihilator and photoshop to get the map to look as seemless as I hope it does. There are some places where I had to fudge a bit but I doubt anyone will really care or could find those places. --------------------------------------------------------------------- Bugs: Fortunately, I was able to compress up to 17 megs. Normally Annihilator quits compressing at 15 megs. What this means is that using some finely honed skills at file size reduction (though you probably couldn't tell by the file size) I was able to cram in more, larger, and more detailed cliffs and hills for the megabyte. At around the time I wasn't able to compress anymore I also lost the ability to render a final minimap. So anything that I added after 17 megs will not show up in the minimap. Sorry. --------------------------------------------------------------------- Dedicated with love to my friend Mary who drew the hill at the very bottom center and insisted for some reason on changing the lighting settings......Thanks much! --------------------------------------------------------------------- Also included is my bryce 4 save of the Hallucigenia tileset (I also have the bryce 3 save if anyone is interested.) Working with this tileset is very easy. I did most everything with a flow of 3-5 notches and at maximum softness except for the flat sections. To create hills/cliffs just build up from the ground height. To create puddles/lakes just dig down from the ground height. The tileset is seamless at every height I have checked. The beauty of this tileset works in the materials lab - setting the diffuse/diffusion to "fading." This gives me different colors at various heights. So I can have blue water,purple land, and red hills all in one easy step. Add in "redlayers" for strata and the rest for just basic texturing and you have an easy to use tileset where its very hard to make mistakes with. Some small pointers. To make domes just set the height to maximum and click a few times. At maximum softness you'll get a small mound that grows with every click. I also hit the "erode" effect give a cool, weathered look to Nenia.