Quote"The basic modeling was pretty fast ( a couple of days total), but refining + texturing... that took almost 3 weeks. So let's say a month
Yes. Oh how I have learned about this.
I can model lots in a few hours, but making it not suck can take days, even weeks. And not sucking is the important part. Not to mention UVs and having any hope of being renderable. And then to start texturing
But he has the benefit to render where he models. If he was planing on going to TG it would take longer! When he says that it did not take too long to create the models them selves, from that I can guess the detail is mostly bump, via normal maps. Which is standard. For me, I want to render in TG. This just makes everything so much harder. Because I can't just follow tuts and stuff I find on line. I have to learn and know all the un-standard things about TG.
I know that PlanetSide is working to bridge the gap between how models work in standard packages and TG though. SO that will be good.
On the other hand, one great thing about TG, is that I can do all real geometry, which I am in a few models (which also makes modeling & texturing take longer). So while I can't use the standard normal maps, I can use 100 percent real geometry for perfect 1:1 representation of the subject rather than an illusion of the reality via bump, This means I can get from very far to very up close using the same model at film resolution. IN TG I can have a population of 1million polygon objects, this is not going to happen in a lot of other soft.
If I was smarter and less stubborn, I would export my terrain and render in mental ray, rather than exporting to TG. But I am stubborn, and I do like TG. It lacks stuff, but what it has is easier to understand and work with. And TG is heads above the rest on atmo and light for large scale scenes.
