-------------------------------------- Product Name: Steampunk Castle Construction Kit Copyright 03-05-2011 (c) Robert Blanda By: Robert Blanda Contact: Cybertenko -------------------------------------- System Requirements: PC, Poser 6 and higher, (not tested on MAC) -------------------------------------- Product Description: So called Steampunk Castle is type of late-medieval or early modern time fortress built mainly for various alchemical projects, large scale experiments and some pre-industrial production of chemicals and potions as well. Our particular Castle consists of tall main tower known as Keep or Donjon, where are located major production facilities and alchemical workshops and laboratories. The most dangerous substances stored at the topmost floor where also took place the most risky experiments, so the eventual explosion will not damage the core part of the structure. In lower floors are located laboratories for non-hazardous materials, living rooms, administration as well as store-rooms and warehouses. Nearby tall tower, known as Dansker is used mainly for the noble purpose of producing The Steam. So the Dansker Tower is equipped with the huge boiler called The Big Boiler or Lebes Magnus and several floors of massive furnace rooms where Holy Stoker Monks feed the fires for boiling the water and producing The Steam. Lower floor of the Dansker Tower are used for spacious coal bunkers, maintenance workshop and so on. Monks lived in tall turret which was part of the Dansker where their Convent was located. Location of Dansker Tower aside the Keep is motivated by safety reasons, since steam production can be risky in these times. Dansker Tower and the Donjon are joined via footbridge, which also holds the main pipeline for conducting The Steam form production to machineries inside the Keep. Safety of the Fortress is maintained by high and sturdy perimeter walls fortified by steel armature plates and cavalier bastions. Outer Walls, crowned by safe and wide battlements made from large steel pipes embody the main idea behind building of such fortresses. The Structures itself must not comply to irregularities of the terrain or the nature (which is here only to convey its resources), but it have to stretch over it. So the Castle itself is built across any type of terrain on huge stone terraces, which hereby ensure the perfectly flat and smooth surface for castle buildings. On the front (southern) part of the Castle is built massive Gatehouse building, which serves as backbone of castle´s defense system. Here is located castle´s garrison, weapon depots and also local dungeon and torture room. The Courtyard part of the Gatehouse is used as residence of Castle´s Burgrave, guests quarters and so on. Castle Main Entrance which is located between two massive stone bays guarded by sentry gangplanks and armored footbridge and further defended by possibility to pour hot oil on the heads of potential enemy (mostly traditionalists or anti-industrialists) through series ofdefensive piping in the front wall or the gate itself. Nearby tower strengthens further the Gatehouse, in the basement is located the dungeon and torture rooms, higher are garrison quarters. On the topmost floor is located lookout terrace and placement for some war machinery. Ownership Statement: All of this product's content was created by Robert Blanda and may include derivatives of the following vendor/merchant resources: Royalty free textures from www.cgtextures.com,FALLOUTIC: Rust Textures by Coflek-Gnorg, Primus Texture Editions vol. 23 - Texture Families vol.6 - Medieval Stained Glas and Primus Texture Editions vol.3 - Essentials - Rock and Stone by kelc. -------------------------------------- Installation Instructions: Poser: Unzip into any poser runtime. You will find the items in Cameras, Materials and Props folders named SP Castle. Textures are stored in respective folder. -------------------------------------- Usage Tips or Limitations: Using of Steampunk Castle Construction Kit is quite easy and it depends on your personal preferences. There are three main workflow styles for using this item. Instant Play Instant Play is the best choice if you need to buildcastle scenery quickly and just out of the box. Just select some or all given prop presets and load them in any order. You will get the Castle as it looks on the promo pictures. Each Castle Preset (Donjon, Dansker, Bridge, Outer Walls or Gatehouse) consists form various independent objects - props which are parented to its logical parent or to main Preset Parent which is labeled BASE. So if you need to move the whole Castle Preset just select the BASE prop (which is the main parent for its preset) and move it. If you need to move only some subsequent part, find its local parent and move that. Please use the Poser hierarchy editor, where you can see all props parented into groups and where you can either fold or unfold the groups to your liking and for the most clarity. For the best renderresult choose IBL lighting, raytracing and displacement maps as some materials (the grass) use them (although it is not crucial). I made good experience with use of skydome, particularly Terradome environment or skydome included in IN Wavecutter product by winnston1984 which is used for promos. Model and textures are suitable for long distance shots as well as for closeups. For closeups shots you may need to lower some texture map bumps since these are set for medium to long distances on higher values. All windows (which are also independent objects) use the high ambience value, so it will glow in low density lightning. Steampunk Castle Construction Kit includes several movable or variable items. In Donjon preset you will find movable drawbridge which can be raised or lowered through provided dialand also movable elevator platform, which can be moved the same way through the dial. For the supply basket you can choose one of three possibilities. Instead of default up station position you can make the basket lowered to the shaft inside the supply bastion or make it at the middle of its way or down. For the second two, just delete the up station variant (with all the cargo items) and load the desired one – either low station basket or midway basket. Cargo inside the basket can be reconfigured to your need or just deleted for empty basket variant. Gatehouse preset have castle grate movable prop, which can also be moved up or down via provided dial. Both elevator platform and castle grates are parented to its railing with limits turn on, so if you want to move them out of their limits just the parent railings or switch of the limits by double clicking the dial. Modify The second workflow style presumes you will load the premade presets and want the slightly or considerably modify it, edit it… It is midway style between instant play and building from scratch, since you will use most of presets configuration but you will alter it according to your needs. You can for example delete some part of preset (such as towers, gangplanks, armature plates and so on.) You may also need to duplicate some feature, such as windows, doors, oriel windows and so on. For example, if you need to build non-fantasy – non steampunk type of building, you can just delete all steampunk style stuff like pipes, ladders, metal walkways and on. You can also retexture some parts – like for example windows with cogwheel decorations and put instead of it simple patterned stained glass. All that you can do from material room where you choose the proper prop, its material zone and apply some of given material preset or sample texture from another part of the model of course from your own material collection. For the mentioned window you can alter steampunk style window painting with stained glass material preset, included in this item. This will give you perfect universally usable stained glass decoration. From inside the material room you can also choose alternative texture for the walls, except the default green-grey stonewall. You will have additional dark stone, light stone or rough stone patterns and for even more distinctive look you can use concrete texture on the walls and made some more modern looking structures. You retextured materials may need different scale so either make some test renders or switch on hardware shading in render setting window – preview rendering to see the current scaling of texture. For duplicating features like windows you can do so at… For parented props you will be asked if you want duplicate also the parent, which may or may not help you with placement of cloned prop. Choose either possibility according your actual need. For placing or moving the props may be better to use orthogonal cameras which will help you more precisely place the item. You can resave sour modified presets to the library for next use. Build from Scratch Building from scratch is possibly the most creative work with any construction set content items. With Steampunk Castle Construction Kit you can built wide array of interesting fantastic of historical correct structures. You will start with loading any presets and choosing its individual parts for resaving. This way you can make your own presets or semi-presets used for further building. For building from scratch you generally use all guidelines provided above, but you definitely use more creativity. The best is probably either load some of provided preset and then cannibalize it – delete parts you don’t need and resave the rest or just choose parts you like and these save into library. You can thus make your own presets or semi-presets and then use them for your own projects. In such work you are limited only by your imagination and fantasy. You can look to some promo pictures, where are some examples or ideas for building totally new buildings. Most of objects are closed boxes so you rotate them, translate and intersect with any other objects. You can even resize them, but be frugal and do not stretch it too much otherwise the textures will look bad. If you do so, you can use some procedural materials for which the stretching of UVs is not a problem. Don’t forget, you can use only a part of objects and the rests hide into terrain, into other objects or even out of camera view. You can use some objects in totally different way, like for example the chimneys used as gun barrels on model of island bunker seen on promo. Similarly the big boiler is used here as a part of large concrete cupola. Finally add some doors or windows, balconies, stairs and so on. Doors and windows are modeled as deeper boxes, so you can sink them into surface as far as needed, just be sure, the surface of the glass (usually the “blindglass” material) is still visible. All windows are set to glow in low density lightning by using their ambient attribute. One or more textures on this 3D model have been created with images from CGTextures.com. These images may not be redistributed by default, please visit www.cgtextures.com for more information. -------------------------------------- Files Included in the Product: \Promos main promo.jpg Promo thumb2.jpg SP Castle promo 1 BASE.jpg SP Castle promo 2 CONCEPT.jpg SP Castle promo 3 CONCEPT.jpg SP Castle promo 4 CONCEPT.jpg SP Castle promo 5 FEATURES.jpg SP Castle promo 6 FEATURES.jpg SP Castle promo 7 EXAMPLES.jpg SP Castle promo 8 EXAMPLES.jpg SP Castle promo 9 ARTWORKS.jpg \Runtime\Libraries\Camera\SP Castle 01.cm2 01.png 02.cm2 02.png 03.cm2 03.png 04.cm2 04.png 05.cm2 05.png 06.cm2 06.png 07.cm2 07.png 08.cm2 08.png 09.cm2 09.png 10.cm2 10.png 11.cm2 11.png 12.cm2 12.png 13.cm2 13.png 14.cm2 14.png 15.cm2 15.png 16.cm2 16.png 17.cm2 17.png 18.cm2 18.png 19.cm2 19.png 20.cm2 20.png 21.cm2 21.png 22.cm2 22.png 23.cm2 23.png 24.cm2 24.png 25.cm2 25.png 26.cm2 26.png \Runtime\Libraries\Materials\SP Castle Armature.mt5 Armature.png Concrete.mt5 Concrete.png Dark Stone.mt5 Dark Stone.png Light Stone.mt5 Light Stone.png Metal Floor.mt5 Metal Floor.png Metal Plate.mt5 Metal Plate.png Metal Roof.mt5 Metal Roof.png Rough Stone.mt5 Rough Stone.png Stained Glass.mt5 Stained Glass.png Stone Floor.mt5 Stone Floor.png Stone Wall.mt5 Stone Wall.png Verdigris.mt5 Verdigris.png \Runtime\Libraries\Props\SP Castle Basket Down.png Basket Down.pp2 Basket Midway Up.png Basket Midway Up.pp2 Basket Up.png Basket Up.pp2 SP Castle Bridge.png SP Castle Bridge.pp2 SP Castle Dansker.png SP Castle Dansker.pp2 SP Castle Donjon.png SP Castle Donjon.pp2 SP Castle Gatehouse.png SP Castle Gatehouse.pp2 SP Castle Outer Walls.png SP Castle Outer Walls.pp2 \Runtime\Textures\SP Castle blackstone.jpg blackstone_B.jpg ConcreteTiled.jpg ConcreteTiled_B.jpg ConcreteTiled_S.jpg decayedrust.jpg decayedrust_B.jpg decayedrust_S.jpg grass.jpg grass_D.jpg grass_S.jpg lightstone.jpg lightstone_B.jpg limestone.jpg limestone_B.jpg MetalyellowSL.jpg navalwallseamless.jpg navalwallseamless_B.jpg navalwallseamless_S.jpg oldbrick.jpg oldbrick_B.jpg planks.jpg planks_B.jpg plaster.jpg plaster_B.jpg rivetedverdigris.jpg rivetedverdigris_D.jpg Rooftile.jpg Rooftile_B.jpg roughyellowstone.jpg roughyellowstone_B.jpg rust.jpg rusted4.jpg rusted4_b.jpg rustrivets.jpg rustrivets2.jpg rustrivets2_B.jpg rustrivets3.jpg rustrivets3_B.jpg rustrivets_B.jpg rustrivets_S.jpg rust_B.jpg rust_S.jpg smokedbrick.jpg smokedbrick_B.jpg smokedrust.jpg smokedrust_B.jpg stainedwindow1.JPG stainedwindow1_AO.jpg stainedwindows.jpg stainedwindows_AO.jpg steel.jpg steel_B.jpg stone.jpg stonefloor.jpg stonefloor_B.jpg stonewall.jpg stone_B.jpg treadtile.jpg treadtile_B.jpg treadtile_S.jpg tympanon.jpg tympanon_B.jpg yellowrust.jpg yellowrust_B.jpg \Runtime\Textures\SP Castle\DONJON barrel.jpg barrel_B.jpg burlap.jpg burlap_B.jpg chimney1.jpg chimney1_B.jpg chimney2.jpg chimney2_B.jpg chimney3.jpg chimney3_B.jpg danskerroof.jpg danskerroof_B.jpg danskertankmetal.jpg danskertankmetal_B.jpg danskertankmetal_S.jpg danskerturretroof.jpg danskerturretroof_B.jpg frontondoor.jpg frontondoor_B.jpg frontonroof.jpg frontonroof_B.jpg mosaic.jpg mosaic_AO.jpg relief.jpg relief_D.jpg tallchimney.jpg tallchimney_B.jpg tankmetal.jpg tankmetal1.jpg tankmetal1_B.jpg tankmetal2.jpg tankmetal2_B.jpg tankmetal3.jpg tankmetal3_B.jpg tankmetal_B.jpg twinwindow.jpg twinwindow_AO.jpg licence.txt Steampunk_Castle_Construction_Kit_README.txt (this file) Steampunk Castle Manual.pdf