A'm a dwarf in human form trying tae learn tae mak' picters o' hame

rlmorgan

I started with the first version of D&D and now many decades later I am still in love with fantasy,

My goal is to try and create a complete Dwarf city though I am beginning to learn that that may not be possible with the software I have chosen. I can make rooms or a street of buildings but not something you can walk through. Instead each building would have to have its own set of scenes etc. if I understand things correctly. Oh well, I will learn all that I can about 3D and will gladly learn and pass on any information that anyone wishes to give me.

I spent 32 years in IT coding in everything from mainframe assembler (CICS included for those my age) to the latest nastiness to come about in Java land to try and solve business problems. The last application I worked on had a Visual Studio/C# front end accessing Java applications in mid-range land as well as mainframe applications on Big Blue. It was a joy to show new developers their development environment, a task given to me because I do love to teach and I can do it and develop at the same time. I have messed with PHP and some of the other scripting languages, fell in love with Ruby but it was never accepted as one of our acceptable "tools", i.e. the ones the Architecture Group decided they were interested in learning. :-)

I survived outsourcing at two companies, leaving the first because they were headed backward, not forward. I left the second when my doctors told me that I could continue working and die in less than a year or retire and maybe have a few years with my grandchildren. I chose my grandchildren but I am so happy I was brought up poor because going from a low 6 figure to Social Security Disability has been interesting. Not whining, just probably passing out too much information but hey, I took my meds half an hour ago so I can blame them! :-)

I have a BS in Math, a BS in Computer Science and a MBA which means I have the capability to see things through; translation, if you want to teach me something, I will stick with it until I get it and then, if permitted, I will pass it on to anyone else who wants to learn. I love documentation, period so who knows, if I learn this stuff well enough, I can help keep the documentation up to date and possibly add to it.

I have been married 35 years so I no longer have an ego, however I do hold strong opinions like why in the world did ticks evolve or mosquitoes for that matter? I rarely take offense even if someone is trying to offend me. The Army, creeping up on 4 decades of marriage and 12 years of martial arts took care of that. By the way, the marriage thing was sarcasm meant to get my wife riled up when she eventually reads this. You cannot possibly program if you don't have a healthy ego. Just my opinion bolstered by the fact that I never hired anyone who did not believe in themselves.

I guess that is enough. I am going to try and create a cave to start with since a couple of kind people gave me a couple of ideas to try that I don't understand yet but will. I know there is a cave package you can buy but I'd really like to try and do it myself as that is how you learn by really messing up and blowing things up then starting over again.

I hope you all have a great day or as I used to say when I told my DM regulars goodbye:

Kin light shine oan yer faces whin ye'r in ony form o' darkness 'n' kin th' path ye tak' aye tak' ye hame.

Hermit Crab

That's an interesting career you've outlined. I don't normally look at this section of the forum (or post much at all) but, as a Scot, your title caught my attention.

I like your aim of building a world for Dwarves. 3d is a great way to realize imaginary worlds. Bryce is excellent for expansive landscapes with vegetation, clouds, water and skies. Carrara can do the much the same but offers a broader toolset - for modelling, animation, etc. I love both programs.

Without having looked to check, I imagine you would be able to find lots of suitable content ready-made in the DAZ store.

Good luck with it all.

Edited for spelling

FirstBastion

I'd reccomend "Vue" for landscapes and all encompassing vistas. DAZ Studio for characters and interior scenes, plenty of content available here in the store to get you started. If you want to actually model 3D models yourself, most agree the user interface for Hexagon is very novice user friendly and still produce pro level content at a very reasonable price. But if price is no object then there are other modeller programs like modo, maya, and 3DMax, Zbrush that can also do modelling. Different learning curves for each. There is also a free program called Sculptris, now owned by the makers of Zbrush, that can introduce you to flexible modelling.

The key to all this, a willingness to learn and small steps each day on the journey.

StratDragon

Blender

it's not easy, but nothing worth doing ever is.

www. blender.org

MeerkatsAhoy

OK, first, in case anybody missed it, our new dwarf friend is into DOCUMENTATION. Not just good at it, but actually likes doing it. He's a catch, people!

I spent a lot of time on a "walkthrough village" project myself, and it can be done (sort of) but with trickery. How you create the illusion depends on what you're going to do with it. Think of it like how filming is done in real life...it's possible to shoot inside the real building you used as the exterior, but it's extremely limiting.

Good idea to make your own cave. Even if you buy most of your models, you'll still need to know how they work. Blender is an excellent starter software for that bit. Not just because it's free, but it's got a great OS community that has produced forums, tutorials, and plug-ins for everything it can do...which gets closer to being "everything" all the time. I mostly model in Modo now but I still use Blender too.

Now that I'm pretty much only working from home I am hopped up to talk to anybody in similar projects (or just anybody), so forgive me if I'm a little babbley. But the point was, welcome!

McGyver

I've been working on a whole bunch of props from a couple of stories I wrote years ago, a couple of them are pretty big...
Most of my freebie models (the architectural ones) are actually way smaller than the big ones.
One is a whole small island and all the structures on it... I chose SketchUp for that, but if I were starting from scratch, I'd definitely have started with Blender first.
Blender is hard to learn, but solid and growing bigger and better all the time... SketchUp is super fast to learn, great for architecture but one has to learn to not model using N-gons from the beginning.
It also has tons of free plugins to make it versatile too.
I wish you luck with your endeavor my good dwarf.