[MOC] Gate of Rivendell

[LegoEomer]

When we last heard of the city of Rivendell, also now known as Acadia, only the buildings near the walls were complete. By now, more buildings are complete, and Sir Thomas's builders have completed the West Gate of Acadia, the first of what will be eight gates into the city. The gate is said to rival that of Avalonia's largest cities of Sionnach and Albion.

Streets_of_Rivendell (22) by lego eomer, on Flickr

Streets_of_Rivendell (21) by lego eomer, on Flickr

Streets_of_Rivendell (20) by lego eomer, on Flickr

Streets_of_Rivendell (19) by lego eomer, on Flickr

Streets_of_Rivendell (18) by lego eomer, on Flickr

As many of the architects designing the city were Kaliphlinian, the designed an arch that is distinctly Kaliphlinian, and looks similar to those of Barqa and Petraea. The mighty portcullis, one of the largest of its kind, was forged by the dwarven clans of Mitgardia, and costs a fortune. The residents of Acadia joke that the portcullis isn't meant to defend the people, but rather the people are supposed to defend the portcullis

As always, thanks for looking and I hope you like it. Sorry for the lack of detail, I hope its size and the little detail of the portcullis makes up for it. Also, I can't really think of anything to put in the empty spaces behind the wall. Can you come up with any ideas?

[TitusV]

I really like the portculis, good job on that!

Try a market in that clearing... A few brightly-computer shops may help

[bricklover]

Cool! Add something in that open space!

[dathil]

Nice one!

Maybe you could try adding some sort of foliage. Titus's suggestion of a market seems cool too!

[Gideon]

That's an epic wall!

I think however that you should put a bit more work into increasing the amount of details, for example adding more structure in the walls.

Something which would improve the presentation of your builds would be to render them with a third-party program like POV-Ray. You can find the LDD to POV-Ray converter here: http://ldd2povray.lddtools.com/

I'm no expert in digital MOCing, but here is an example of how a POV-Ray rendered build can look: https://flic.kr/p/eg6F6w

Only thing to be aware of is that raytracing takes a lot of time, and that transparent pieces increase the complexity many times over. I tried to render a small stream once with a few 8x8 trans-medium blue plates and a bunch of smaller transparent pieces. I gave up after more than a week of rendering time

Normal builds should be finished within hours on a decent computer however.

[LegoEomer]

Thank you for the kind comments.

That's an epic wall!

I think however that you should put a bit more work into increasing the amount of details, for example adding more structure in the walls.

Something which would improve the presentation of your builds would be to render them with a third-party program like POV-Ray. You can find the LDD to POV-Ray converter here: http://ldd2povray.lddtools.com/

I'm no expert in digital MOCing, but here is an example of how a POV-Ray rendered build can look: https://flic.kr/p/eg6F6w

Only thing to be aware of is that raytracing takes a lot of time, and that transparent pieces increase the complexity many times over. I tried to render a small stream once with a few 8x8 trans-medium blue plates and a bunch of smaller transparent pieces. I gave up after more than a week of rendering time

Normal builds should be finished within hours on a decent computer however.

Thanks for the advice. I will give POV-Ray a try. The next thing I plan to build is my sig fig's castle. However, I can't seem to match the complexity and detail of your builds, like this.

[Tokru]

Maybe you aren't aware of it, but you can turn on outlines of bricks in the options of LDD. I think that makes it far easier to build and it also looks better than the standard options.

I just don't like when I build bigger structures and they are a big block of, for instance, grey in the end. It would bring a lot of detail to your pictures because you would be able to see the wall's structure.

But it also uses a bit more processing power of your computer.

[Gideon]

Maybe you aren't aware of it, but you can turn on outlines of bricks in the options of LDD. I think that makes it far easier to build and it also looks better than the standard options.

I just don't like when I build bigger structures and they are a big block of, for instance, grey in the end. It would bring a lot of detail to your pictures because you would be able to see the wall's structure.

But it also uses a bit more processing power of your computer.

Processing power should only be an issue when working with the build, turning the lines on just for the screenshot shouldn't be impossible in any case?

Raytracing which I'm advocating is however insanely processor heavy