Gideon

@MikeyB: That Phoenix Guard surely looks like it means business! Lovely setting you put them in as well. On another note I can't decide if I think ZC's nagging about people joining "the wrong guild" is tiresome or entertaining, I still think there are a lot more to Historica than Nocturnus. And besides, why join Nocturnus when everyone probably will more or less be forced to build there soon in challenge 2:1 anyway?

Gabe, continue to keep us updated! It makes a Kaliphlin stuck in building for Avalonia (LUG work really but Avalonian-ish setting) remember why I stayed in Kaliphlin And it looks great!

Mean looking fellas! As always your rockwork is excellent. Are there any pics of the whole MOC?

Nice twist of the story there, I did not expect to feel sorry for the drow at the end of it The vegetation looks appropriately Nocturnian.

Wonderful rockwork, and I like the house and vegetation a lot! The water might have benefitted from some more movement (gets a little repetitive with this technique), but the creek, waterfall and movement around the boats looks really nice! Looking forward to more!!

Great figs CBB! The two to the right look truly evil, and a bearded elf is scary as well

Those figs are just perfect! I think I should start eying the Chima line some more

If you would like to have Kaliphlin side characters just go ahead! I have for example used a major Avalonian side character (although he was killed at the battle of Queenscross) and have a couple of Mitgardian side characters waiting to appear in some MOC in the future

Yea, no sensible trader would send the caravan through the Kelra Labyrinth.

I've used LDD2POV-Ray as well, can't say that I know a lot of those settings unfortunately however. But I remember that it was possible to set various antialiasing parameters. An hour or three doesn't sound bad to me, since we are talking raytracing which is insanely heavy. Try making it take a whole night or more with higher antialiasing and see if the difference can be noticed? My worst attempt using POV-Ray was a small landscape 32x32 with a river of four 8x8 trans-medium blue plates and a bunch of other transparent details. It took 25 days (!) to render on my i7 3770K, but only less than an hour when I removed the transparent parts. So that's why I say that transparent parts are heavy

An advent calendar would be great, I will gladly build a day or three

Wonderful interior build, the lighting in from the screen really works well Nice to see how it all fits together as well, and I would hope it doesn't lower the score that the outside isn't very presentable. If all had to build their interiors with useless nice exteriors as well, it would after all take time away from the important parts (or additional freebuilds to flesh out the world).

Wonderful lighting! Are there any pictures of the magiclego behind the effect you might share...?

@127: Welcome! So those are some of the reasons Kaliphlin traders have a tendency to disappear in the labyrinth! Do we know which side they support in the civil war?

That's what I suspected, and I hear you about the tradeoff between rendering time and quality. How long do your renders typically take? Because as long as you don't use too much transparency, I would think that some more antialiasing would enhance the photo realism of your renderings without taking forever to process. That the impact of aliasing varies between renderings depends I think on the direction of the light, if you have light reflected on an edge and that edge gets aliased, it will be much more visibly jagged than an edge with no glare.

I seem to not have made my post here as I thought, here is the painting of Sir Gideon collecting his ingredient to the potion:

I think that is up to the leadership of GoH to decide, since firearms can have implications on the plausability on many stories and builds (for example fortifications). I think the general consensus before was that the use of firearms was considered highly experimental and not widespread in Historica. I myself would like to keep Historica in a more high medieval setting and not get too close to say a 16th century setting, but as GoH is fantasy I also agree that some anachronism is fine since we are not try to replicate an exact historical time period.

Lovely creation, Some really nice techniques you've used there! A rendering question: there seems to be some aliasing problems around the edges of the pieces (particularly visible between the pieces on the roof) is that caused by scaling in Flickr or is that already from the rendering process?

I guess there are a few Mitgardians who have a different opinion regarding whose beer is the best. Beer is too weak for a Kaliphlin, we prefer proper strong wine from our abundant vineyards!

I do not know about the calculations you refer to regarding the size of the land mass, but in my mind it is more like the size of western Europe since we have both Mediterranean/Northern African climate as well as subarctic climate. To me it feels a bit cramped to have all of that within only an area the size of France. That would not at all fit the large areas of uninhabitated wilderness in Mitgardia and Kaliphlin. A more appropriate scale is that maybe Avalonia is of the size of France? I think it would be easiest to use the established name Historica for the whole world and let Varlyrio be included as well (since it after all is the 5th guild of Historica). In the cases we need a distinction "mainland Historica" might do for the land mass with the four playable guilds, or another name for the big land mass.

Nice variations in the landscape, and a fitting contrast between Mitgardia and Nocturnus! There seems to be some magic present here whose border follows the river? I wonder if magic is causing the corruption on the Nocturnian side or preventing it on the Mitgardian side? A note on the MOC is that it seems a bit weird when you see snow underneath the rock, a border around the edges would have hid that

LD houses growing out of a DC style tower? I like it! I've never thought about using hinges just for texture like that but they work very well

It can also be great fun to expand the collection to fit your guild! I for example did not have a lot of tan/dark tan before joining Kaliphlin but half a year into GoH and some BL orders later it was enough to build a fair chunk of Petraean city wall. Of course Kaliphlin was not the best choice for my wallet however... Important to remember is that it is not necessarily the size of a MOC and number of parts which matters. Small but well built and detailed MOCs, presented with good photography can get you a long way (especially with the new challenge rules with different classes).

Welcome! Great sigfig composition and a novel use of that warg

Nice to see part pack monster fighters figs put to good use! A fitting dwelling as well