AM - Alex, hefty reply

Hey Alex
That is one hefty reply! Good to see...
I know the camera move is a test but make sure to keep camera moves really simple for shots like this, and make sure to keep the speed slow enough to read any detail regardless of video compression.


In production i guess you generally use displacements like textures and scale them dependant on the distance from camera?

Not necessarily. We always try and keep displacement the same levels. For example, if you are creating a displacement map for bark on a tree you would not increase the depth of the displacement if it was further from the camera. You could probably even get away with a bump map for trees far from the camera and switch to displacement for close-ups. The key to displacement is to check the profile shape of your object. If the the profile looks simple, it doesn't matter how much detail you put into a displacement map because it will always look low on detail.


The design of the windmill blades is kind of work in progress, they are a bit sharp and straight edged but im going to roughen them up a bit.

You are right, but it won't take much to make them all look slightly different. You can then just add another layer to your textures by overlaying a texture photograph of anything from rocks, to even a galaxy picture. It might sound weird but try it. Grab a high res photo and play around with the blending options of your layers. You could even try adding a transparency mask to the wood panels and darken the surrounding area to create a feature knot or knurl.
As for the model, just randomise the perfect placement of the wood supports or even make the end of the wood planks not so even and perfect.

Not a bad solution for UV the branches. As always, there are numerous solutions to 3D problems. Good to see your using your head.


Also the bell_tower.obj is another example where i have many separate objects for one building, should i be trying to merge these into one mesh and if so, how would i sort out the topology so that it wasn't a complete mess?

I'm having problems opening your obj so I'm just going to take a stab at this without checking your model. Can you zip the obj file up if you send it again...thanks!

Anyway, for models like this don't be afraid of combining geometry into one mesh. If your window will contains four wood panels, simply combine/merge them into one mesh. This will not alter the UVs and it will help keep your object count to a minimum. Once you have your window sill I would them put all your window sills under a single null called windowSill_geo or something similar.
If you send me your scene again I will adjust the hierarchy of your scene and give you an example of what I would do.


Overall it's looking cool Alex...keep the updates coming.
cheers
Andrew