[WIP] Brightwynd Valley

[korric]

Good evening guys and girls.
This is an edit of Deadwind pass to make it more "friendly", I decided to call it Brightwynd valley as it's bright... well it will be once I manage to swap the skybox
Maybe this is the sort of thing that will happen to Deadwind Pass in Cataclysm?

Bio:
"Brightwynd Valley is situated in Central Azeroth, inbetween the Swamp of Sorrows and Duskwood; the southeastern branch of the Kingdom of Stormwind.
Because of it's short distance from the Swamp to the east, there ia a lot of water in the soil; and so flowers can be seen sprouting from the mountainsides and the trees are often fruit bearing in the spring months.
The Valley of Brightwynd is outcast from the Kingdom of Stormwind and therefore recieves little trade or visitors. On the rare occasion that someone may venture into the Valley, they would be attacked by the local eagles or ogres.
At the most southern point of Brightwynd is the Ivory Tower of Karazhan, the home of the great wizard
Medivh, and a small village in it's cortyard for the wrokers in the Tower.
But all is not well within the halls of Karazhan; rumors are passing around the capitals that the last guardian of Tirisfal has been slain, and the tower has been taken over by a demonic prescence that is corrupting Brightwynd from inside.
The villagers who live below the tower have all been corrupted too, and now take a more aggressive action towards any passing traveller who hopes to enter the Ivory Tower, be they friend or foe.
The Violet Eye have stepped are trying to control the prescences in the tower by drawing power from the ley-lines that Karazhan is built on but the Violet Eye alone are not enough to rid the tower of the demon that resides within it's halls, and so adventurers who make it past the eagles, ogres and the corrupted souls of the villagers are often recruited to enter the tower to attempt to purge it."

Here's a video of my mage showing you around the area.
Also I apologize in advance; sorry if it's a re-post [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQTSY0jOgoI"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQTSY0jOgoI[/ame]
As stated in the title, this is a work in progress (I have about 3 different projects on the go at the moment) and for now, this has come to a standstill
My problem is that I've been using Glitchy's skybox editor to swap the skies over so it's sunny, but when I put the patch into my data folder and start WoW, I get a critical error. I read the error message and it told me that Light.DBC has 12 columns; whereas after patch 3.3, it has about 15.

So if you got any idea on how I can make the Skybox editor use the DBC files from post-3.3 and not pre-3.3, pm me and if I get it working I'll greater than 3 you for ever lol (I'll +Rep you)
But for now, enjoy the vid and tell me what you think of the edit

Edit; video should work now, fingers crossed

[mkross1983]

Hey wanted to check this out but youtube says the user has removed the video.

[korric]

ye sorry about that, decided to take it down cos it showed the name of my character, re-recorded a better one and it will be up shortly

EDIT: Video should work now, hopefully... Video is still being processed according to youtube... it hates me today

Edit 2: Youtube's getting on my nerves now

Edit 3: VIDEO WORKS!!! /Happy now

[ultramega]

It looks great! But all the piles of rock rubble everywhere are kind of jarring when clashed against the healthy green grass. Really cool idea, I always love the "make dead lands vivid" style of model editing. And vice versa those making formerly lush areas dead (ie, turning Elwynn into a plague wasteland or something).

Just a personal asthetic opinion, maybe it won't be as bad when the skybox is sunny. I could never do anything on this scale of model editing so I can't critique too much xD

[I Hypnotoad I]

Nice job on this so far, I agree with ultramega, Replacing some of this rubble with something.. Je ne sais quoi.. Lifelike? Perhaps you could replace the rocks with some shrubbery of some sort, or possibly an aesthetic object, such as an altar or something..

In front of karazhan, there are a few ruined buildings and a church, I think it would help to convert these into lifelike buildings, like you would see in Elwynn forest or Redridge, however, keep the cellar how it is.. in case somebody will use this swap for retail. The ogre mound near karazhan could also be turned into a town with the proper tools.

Textures.. The grass texture should match with the trees, it seems too 'Bright' for them. maybe even adding custom textures to karazhan.

Oh, by the way, PM me sometime, maybe I can get a hold of this and help you out. Here's my input, good luck with you project.. and remember, inspiration, imagination, and skill are the perfect factors for a perfect modeledit. Be original.

[korric]

I tried replacing them with roots when I finished the initial patch with only tileset changes, swapping every rock with the roots like you see in wetlands and stuff. but when i logged on all you could see was roots lol.
I'll have a look into different models that would suit the area once I manage to sort the skybox
And I'll get experimenting with different grass textures straight away so it matches the trees, it's sometimes a little hard to see considering Deadwind is so dark and dull :S

I like your idea of adding new textures to Karazhan, I was reading the lore for the place and I believe it used to be known as the Ivory Tower by the townsfolk, it would seem I have a colour scheme

Edit; being a regular retail player (with a pretty sh*t laptop) I have never downgraded WoW in order to get a program such as NoggIt to work, and being as my laptop is so very bad, Noggit for 3.0 does not work very efficiently and often closes if I even try to open maps
I'd get a better laptop but what can I say, I'm a student

Edit 2; I'll be sure to PM you if help is ever needed (which it probably will be cos I'm not great at editing).
I thought to myself the other day, if I change deadwind then I may aswell change Duskwood and other select areas to a similar state, and a little bit of assistance would not go amiss and would be greatly appreciated

[Glynbeard]

Didn't read all the comments above mine, but a major thing (other than skybox ofc) that clashed with the overall look you were aiming for was the random little patches of green on the jagged rocks.

Just looked kinda weird imo. Removing them or even swapping for trees might give it a brighter look. Interesting idea though, GL in finishing it.

[korric]

the random patches of green were supposed to be moss (didn't work out too well did it?)
I'll swap those big rocks with something soon that will suit the area better.


Edit; experimented with light by changing some of the huge rocks into streetlamps from Stormwind city, looked brighter but the lamps, they were everywhere!

[mkross1983]

Korric, have you found any building textures? I have looked for days and can't figure out any paths for them. I'm trying a GS edit and want to make the Inn and Blacksmith buildings look different but I cannot find any building textures at all in any of the MPQ's (I've looked at them all in every subfolder, seriously).

If you know a couple paths can you post em for me? Thank you much!

EDIT: Never mind, I believe I finally found them.

[korric]

Open Common.MPQ.
World\AZEROTH\ELWYNN\BUILDINGS. have a look thru, as far as I know these are the textures for all the buildings in elwynn.
But have a look thru the whole world folder, there should be all sorts of skins and stuff

[korric]

Bumped with updates; all rocks in deadwind pass now changed to flowers. all deadwindpass NoDXT detail flowers are changed to the ones in Elwynn.
Tried reskinning Karazhan to turn it into the Ivory Tower... didn't work first time, still in process.
Added a small descriptive paragraph to the original post.

[I Hypnotoad I]

Flowers, Nice touch. lol

[korric]

Haha flowers... I thought that they'd look terrible to begin with but they actually look pretty sweet instead of those horrible rocks around the place