This is a broken urn, not a broken amphora, and it still looks too clean.
I think I will have to do a bit of post processing to make them not so sharp, the right kind of colour, and dirtier to fit with the set. But otherwise there's no reason why I can't do several amphora - whole and broken.
I also haven't figured out how to incorporate handles, since they are separate objects to the rest of the urn.
I was getting on with the amphora so well, and then this happened!
Thunder storms are getting to be one heck of a pain in the neck around here, but if I don't shut down soon I could end up in a lot more trouble than just suffering a bit of frustration. Still - you can see it won't take too long to make a pretty comprehensive set.
In terms of getting the right "look", while appreciating this isn't the kind of thing you can necessarily do quickly, it may be worthwhile reviewing some archaeological reports showing images of in-situ pottery remains in and from tombs. That should at least give a better impression of the general "damaged" look that subterranean burial gives to the surfaces of even intact objects (as you mentioned wishing for better detail regarding the broken columns previously, for instance).
Amphorae that contained things when entombed will usually be sealed, and at least some evidence of that will survive in the top of the neck once broken, which I can imagine will be as problematic as getting partial broken handles attached to the rest of the item. Sorry!
I really meant the right look being similar enough to DD3 that the styles wouldn't clash and could be used together. It's a fine line between getting it too close, and not close enough. I want to be able to show a certain amount of detail, but too much makes them look too different. For example, the existing amphora is pretty homogenously coloured and textured, so if I start adding too many stains and too much dirt (though I will try to add some at least) or go too authentically grey-pink or white instead of orange, they just won't look right with DD3 assets.
I looked into how they used to seal them because I was concerned about that as well. It seems that back in the beginning they tried straw and wool and such, but later they were cork bungs. They couldn't really use much else because most of what was transported in them was wine and olive oil, and wine in particular goes bad really fast if too much fresh air gets into it in transit.
The inside walls were often waxed, or glazed in later times, and if they weren't then the inside walls would be even darker than you might expect with all that wine and olive oil soaking into them.
These are all too pink by far, but retexturing is nothing compared to adding handles, and I only have one more to do. I picked the 5 most variable amphorae. Doing more than that would seem to be a bit excessive - especially since there will be 3 versions of each one. Whole and lying on its side, whole and standing slightly on a tilt as if stacked in a ship's hold, and of course broken. That's 15 symbols that are all amphora!
Regarding the use of the pointy end bit. It is said that they were pointed like that to make it easier to stand them in sand, and one source suggested that ships stood them upright in a bed of sand! That I find seriously doubtful, since adding a large enough volume of sand would be such a huge amount of ballast as to be likely to sink the ship without adding the cargo itself. However, if you look at the shape of them you can see that it wouldn't be too difficult to store them in wooden racking, possibly built around them during loading, and if you look even closer you can see that a double row end to end would interlock if they were lying flat or against the inside of the hull and all the same type.
Ballast stones on ancient oceangoing ships were not particularly large: adding sand between the stones can help to keep them from shifting. Rocks and sand are definitely cheaper than wood in most cases. However, you'd generally want to get rid of as much ballast as possible when shipping cargo in order to fit more cargo and keep just enough ballast to avoid problems if the boat had to move while empty.
One nice feature of amphorae that is that the bottom points of a second layer will snuggle nicely in between the necks and sloping shoulders of the first ones. The's only useful if they are all of the same general size or if the bottom ones are larger than the top.
Maybe the amphorae were the ballast - being as heavy as rocks in themselves when full of their liquid content?
I still think sand would be the worst ballast ever, since the bilge water would wash it all over the place in a choppy sea and throw everything off balance. At least you can control rocks by jamming them between bulkheads or in a special compartment in the floor.
I agree that you would generally not use pure sand for ballast, but it would work as extra weight between stones (soil that compacts is apparently much better than sand if you can get it) for the case where you can't get stones or soil. Wet sand (especially angular river sand) tends to pack together quite well when wet and won't wash out from between rocks much at all. However, it's a pain in the hands to unload if needed.
Ballast is substitute cargo to keep the ship from tilting overmuch, so you want to have as much cargo and as little ballast as possible to maximize profit. There's a minimum amount of weight needed on the bottom of the ship to avoid problems. Modern ships tend to use water ballast because it's easy to onload and offload, but ancient ships don't have specialized tanks and pumps needed to make that system work well. Ideally, you'd want to have a cargo of about the same weight at each port of the ship's run and not need any specific ballast at all. Keeping the ship properly loaded is part of the sailor's art and it was probably harder for the small ships of antiquity with manual loading and balancing than it is with today's giant ships and automated systems.
Ok. I think I have got the colours mostly ok, bearing in mind they have to blend with the existing amphora.
I haven't done the broken ones yet because I might need to retexture them again if I can't make them work properly.
In this screen shot I've laid out the rendered draft symbols from Blender on the carefully scaled reference diagram in Affinity Designer to process them further - add dirt and stains. I can't go as far as to make them real like the reference images on the right, or they just won't work with DD3, but I'll see what I can do. DD3 is very colour saturated, which means my amphora have to be equally bright, rather than more pastel like the photographs.
It looks like there may have been several ways of stacking them. It may have been different for each type of amphora.
I did think about map shading, but I think they would probably not look good in a lit dungeon, or mixed with non-mapped DD3 symbols. In the end I opted for what my college art tutor used to call 'bean can shading' (mostly when he was criticizing my imaginary drawings because there was no real and observed lighting involved), where the vertical sides are simply dark and the horizontal face up side is highlighted.
I will experiment a bit with adding the highlight by hand, but it's late for me now, so that might not appear until Monday.
Pure skylight is what that "bean can shading" is in most physical contexts. You normally only see this on solidly overcast days or semi-cloudy at dawn or sunset when there isn't direct illumination. Fortunately, most 3D renderers these days include ambient occlusion, which exactly lights it that way (uniform illumination from across the skydome). You can sort of fake it in a 3D package by putting the light along the same vector as the view, but the two are a bit different in practice.
I think that for dungeon things without direct illumination, that kind of indirect shading is definitely your best bet.
The roof-shaded thing was the same lame semi-joke request that I always make, so I wouldn't even give it a second thought if I were you.
It turns out that a little more shading made them look a lot better. I'm happy with these as they are, but if anyone has any suggestions all are welcome. (The Greek urn has yet to be done)
I will do cork bungs and a dirty straw texture to go with them, then move on.
Not forgetting the broken ones, of course ;)
Maybe the bottles could do with a bit of highlight as well?
I couldn't figure out a way to plausibly get the handles off the egg-shaped amphora from my end, so it seemed better to ask someone was in a position to do that. Now there's critters, places to hide, and unexpected ways to find them.
I imported them at 200 px per map unit, so you can make them larger if you want, but I think they might be a bit obvious at full size if you are trying to hide them among the fragments. Full size would be if you want them to be noticed straight away.
The full size is for when your players have nearly been killed from what came out of those small ones they didn't notice, and then they find a full-size one in the next location.....
I was thinking something more like earthworm egg cases (cocoons) more than bird eggs because the earthworm cases look almost exactly like that that second amphora from the right, but bird eggs work, too.
Now, when you run across giant potter wasp nests, then there's a problem...
I wouldn't worry about doing any worm egg cases. For earthworms, the case is secreted by the clitellum around the egg mass. It's kind of leathery (maybe plasticky) and there aren't any shells to speak of after things hatch. Sort of like this:
The bird eggs are really well done, btw. I think the way that the shells are broken strongly suggests a very thick-shelled egg like an ostrich egg more than relatively thin-shelled one like a chicken egg. As the shell gets thinner, the interior membrane becomes proportionally stronger, meaning that the shell will flex and shatter more at hatching time.
And the only difference between a potter's wasp nest and most of the amphorae above is the presence of handles and the spike at the bottom.
Comments
This is a broken urn, not a broken amphora, and it still looks too clean.
I think I will have to do a bit of post processing to make them not so sharp, the right kind of colour, and dirtier to fit with the set. But otherwise there's no reason why I can't do several amphora - whole and broken.
I also haven't figured out how to incorporate handles, since they are separate objects to the rest of the urn.
I was getting on with the amphora so well, and then this happened!
Thunder storms are getting to be one heck of a pain in the neck around here, but if I don't shut down soon I could end up in a lot more trouble than just suffering a bit of frustration. Still - you can see it won't take too long to make a pretty comprehensive set.
Amphorae looking good!
In terms of getting the right "look", while appreciating this isn't the kind of thing you can necessarily do quickly, it may be worthwhile reviewing some archaeological reports showing images of in-situ pottery remains in and from tombs. That should at least give a better impression of the general "damaged" look that subterranean burial gives to the surfaces of even intact objects (as you mentioned wishing for better detail regarding the broken columns previously, for instance).
Amphorae that contained things when entombed will usually be sealed, and at least some evidence of that will survive in the top of the neck once broken, which I can imagine will be as problematic as getting partial broken handles attached to the rest of the item. Sorry!
Thanks Wyvern :)
I really meant the right look being similar enough to DD3 that the styles wouldn't clash and could be used together. It's a fine line between getting it too close, and not close enough. I want to be able to show a certain amount of detail, but too much makes them look too different. For example, the existing amphora is pretty homogenously coloured and textured, so if I start adding too many stains and too much dirt (though I will try to add some at least) or go too authentically grey-pink or white instead of orange, they just won't look right with DD3 assets.
I looked into how they used to seal them because I was concerned about that as well. It seems that back in the beginning they tried straw and wool and such, but later they were cork bungs. They couldn't really use much else because most of what was transported in them was wine and olive oil, and wine in particular goes bad really fast if too much fresh air gets into it in transit.
The inside walls were often waxed, or glazed in later times, and if they weren't then the inside walls would be even darker than you might expect with all that wine and olive oil soaking into them.
These are all too pink by far, but retexturing is nothing compared to adding handles, and I only have one more to do. I picked the 5 most variable amphorae. Doing more than that would seem to be a bit excessive - especially since there will be 3 versions of each one. Whole and lying on its side, whole and standing slightly on a tilt as if stacked in a ship's hold, and of course broken. That's 15 symbols that are all amphora!
Regarding the use of the pointy end bit. It is said that they were pointed like that to make it easier to stand them in sand, and one source suggested that ships stood them upright in a bed of sand! That I find seriously doubtful, since adding a large enough volume of sand would be such a huge amount of ballast as to be likely to sink the ship without adding the cargo itself. However, if you look at the shape of them you can see that it wouldn't be too difficult to store them in wooden racking, possibly built around them during loading, and if you look even closer you can see that a double row end to end would interlock if they were lying flat or against the inside of the hull and all the same type.
Ballast stones on ancient oceangoing ships were not particularly large: adding sand between the stones can help to keep them from shifting. Rocks and sand are definitely cheaper than wood in most cases. However, you'd generally want to get rid of as much ballast as possible when shipping cargo in order to fit more cargo and keep just enough ballast to avoid problems if the boat had to move while empty.
One nice feature of amphorae that is that the bottom points of a second layer will snuggle nicely in between the necks and sloping shoulders of the first ones. The's only useful if they are all of the same general size or if the bottom ones are larger than the top.
Maybe the amphorae were the ballast - being as heavy as rocks in themselves when full of their liquid content?
I still think sand would be the worst ballast ever, since the bilge water would wash it all over the place in a choppy sea and throw everything off balance. At least you can control rocks by jamming them between bulkheads or in a special compartment in the floor.
I agree that you would generally not use pure sand for ballast, but it would work as extra weight between stones (soil that compacts is apparently much better than sand if you can get it) for the case where you can't get stones or soil. Wet sand (especially angular river sand) tends to pack together quite well when wet and won't wash out from between rocks much at all. However, it's a pain in the hands to unload if needed.
Ballast is substitute cargo to keep the ship from tilting overmuch, so you want to have as much cargo and as little ballast as possible to maximize profit. There's a minimum amount of weight needed on the bottom of the ship to avoid problems. Modern ships tend to use water ballast because it's easy to onload and offload, but ancient ships don't have specialized tanks and pumps needed to make that system work well. Ideally, you'd want to have a cargo of about the same weight at each port of the ship's run and not need any specific ballast at all. Keeping the ship properly loaded is part of the sailor's art and it was probably harder for the small ships of antiquity with manual loading and balancing than it is with today's giant ships and automated systems.
Ok. I think I have got the colours mostly ok, bearing in mind they have to blend with the existing amphora.
I haven't done the broken ones yet because I might need to retexture them again if I can't make them work properly.
In this screen shot I've laid out the rendered draft symbols from Blender on the carefully scaled reference diagram in Affinity Designer to process them further - add dirt and stains. I can't go as far as to make them real like the reference images on the right, or they just won't work with DD3, but I'll see what I can do. DD3 is very colour saturated, which means my amphora have to be equally bright, rather than more pastel like the photographs.
It looks like there may have been several ways of stacking them. It may have been different for each type of amphora.
I found this article quite interesting as well.
Do you think these are a good compromise?
They look a bit flat in CC3. I think it's back to Blender for better contrast lighting on the sides.
Time for roof-shaded versions?
Those amphorae look like a nice set. Like all pottery, amphorae change with time and location, so it's really hard to get a "good" compromise set.
Thanks Joe :)
I did think about map shading, but I think they would probably not look good in a lit dungeon, or mixed with non-mapped DD3 symbols. In the end I opted for what my college art tutor used to call 'bean can shading' (mostly when he was criticizing my imaginary drawings because there was no real and observed lighting involved), where the vertical sides are simply dark and the horizontal face up side is highlighted.
I will experiment a bit with adding the highlight by hand, but it's late for me now, so that might not appear until Monday.
Pure skylight is what that "bean can shading" is in most physical contexts. You normally only see this on solidly overcast days or semi-cloudy at dawn or sunset when there isn't direct illumination. Fortunately, most 3D renderers these days include ambient occlusion, which exactly lights it that way (uniform illumination from across the skydome). You can sort of fake it in a 3D package by putting the light along the same vector as the view, but the two are a bit different in practice.
I think that for dungeon things without direct illumination, that kind of indirect shading is definitely your best bet.
The roof-shaded thing was the same lame semi-joke request that I always make, so I wouldn't even give it a second thought if I were you.
LOL! I knew, Joe :)
But I did actually consider it - along with mapped stalagmites, but I discarded that idea too for the same reason.
It turns out that a little more shading made them look a lot better. I'm happy with these as they are, but if anyone has any suggestions all are welcome. (The Greek urn has yet to be done)
I will do cork bungs and a dirty straw texture to go with them, then move on.
Not forgetting the broken ones, of course ;)
Maybe the bottles could do with a bit of highlight as well?
Ok. This is the amphorae done for now.
So they all contained Shard-onnay? 😁
Still need one brownish egg case for the rafflesia worms to hide in the pile of amphorae!
That might have been a joke, but it's a great idea, Joe - thanks :)
I couldn't figure out a way to plausibly get the handles off the egg-shaped amphora from my end, so it seemed better to ask someone was in a position to do that. Now there's critters, places to hide, and unexpected ways to find them.
Do you mean something a bit like this, @jslayton? Something where you don't actually know for sure what it was that just hatched out?
I imported them at 200 px per map unit, so you can make them larger if you want, but I think they might be a bit obvious at full size if you are trying to hide them among the fragments. Full size would be if you want them to be noticed straight away.
The full size is for when your players have nearly been killed from what came out of those small ones they didn't notice, and then they find a full-size one in the next location.....
I was thinking something more like earthworm egg cases (cocoons) more than bird eggs because the earthworm cases look almost exactly like that that second amphora from the right, but bird eggs work, too.
Now, when you run across giant potter wasp nests, then there's a problem...
Never seen either of those things before, but I'll see if I can fit them on the list for you Joe :)
The wasp nests remind me of... Alien!
The broken-open eggs could use a more ragged broken edge. They look much too neat presently. And again, sorry Sue!
Oh dear! And they took me all day yesterday to get 'right'. Oh well...
I wouldn't worry about doing any worm egg cases. For earthworms, the case is secreted by the clitellum around the egg mass. It's kind of leathery (maybe plasticky) and there aren't any shells to speak of after things hatch. Sort of like this:
The bird eggs are really well done, btw. I think the way that the shells are broken strongly suggests a very thick-shelled egg like an ostrich egg more than relatively thin-shelled one like a chicken egg. As the shell gets thinner, the interior membrane becomes proportionally stronger, meaning that the shell will flex and shatter more at hatching time.
And the only difference between a potter's wasp nest and most of the amphorae above is the presence of handles and the spike at the bottom.
Worm-urns...
Well, maybe the eggs I've done can be dragon eggs?
Gonna need different coloured eggs for all those different coloured dragons in D&D - chromatic, metallic, gem, etc. 😉🐉