New civilizations also mean… new buildings! And we were presented with a big plate of fresh challenges. Looking back at the new architecture sets introduced in Age of Empires II HD: The Forgotten, we knew we had to step up our game. The Italian set was masterfully photoshopped from the Middle Eastern set (with some exceptions) but we wanted to go the extra mile for the African set. Time to brush off our 3D modelling software!
References & Concept Art
The first task is to find pictures of existing African buildings, we gathered hundreds of pictures of Northern African architecture. However, here we met our first challenge: we’re not making a set just for the Malians, we’re having them share their set with another African civ. So we had to make a “generic African” set, which is not something that exists. Time for concept art! We started with the market as our first building. The reason for this was two-folded. First of all, the market is a building that changes in all ages, so we can use its style and texture as a base for the rest of the buildings. Secondly, it’s a big building with a lot of variety, which helps us define that proper style.
Basic Blocks
Time to turn this pencil & paper artwork into digital models. We jumped into our modelling software and came up with the following models:
However, we made a big mistake, which we didn’t notice right away. All buildings in Age of Empires II have their characteristic shapes and sizes. Although the market was “roughly” following the proportions of the existing markets, it wasn’t close enough, and it felt like the buildings stood out too much. Back to the drawing boards, where we analyzed the existing sets to turn all buildings into basic blocks. Playing with LEGO as it were.
Now we had the basic shapes, we could start modelling again. This time we focused hard on the Feudal Age set. A lot of improvements were made as you can see on the images below. Feudal Market V1 shows the market prior to our block-building analysis and V2 shows the revamped version with proper AoE2 proportions.
However, we weren’t happy yet. The shape was right, but the building looked a lot more simple than the buildings currently in the game. This was due to two reasons: firstly, African feudal architecture was mainly mud-based, which has functionality over aesthetics, but secondly is because we made it look simple. It’s not because it’s simple, that we can’t make it look more special, time to step up our game!
So we began experimenting, which eventually led to all the images below. First we tried with some more complicated textures. Then we started to change the shape of the building, which eventually led to V3, which we nicknamed “Flintstone-melted potato with a tennis sweatband”-style. Needless to say, we ditched that one in the end.
Many iterations later, we ended up with the final Feudal Market, which is the one you will see in the game.
Rendering & post-processing
Now, what was the reason we got the market to fit in with the other buildings in the end? Once again, two important reasons. The first one is because of the way Ensemble Studios created their buildings. In the 90s, 3D modelling wasn’t as evolved as it is today. Each and every object was created individually, down to every brick in a wall. Which is exactly what we did. The straws in the thatch roofs on the Feudal market are all modeled individually. Which you can also see in this detail of the Imperial market.
Now comes the most difficult part: we’ve seen the models in high-quality 32-bit renders this whole time. But for Age of Empires II, they need to be converted to 8-bit images, which means from 24 million colors to just 256! Luckily we can use Photoshop to help us in that conversion so that not too many color-ranges get lost, but it’s still a shocking difference to see sometimes.
Last but not least, we add eye candy! The last step in post-processing to make the buildings fit with the rest of the game. We copy some barrels, items and little plants that can be found on other buildings and paste them on our new models.
It’s been a month-long journey, and at the time of writing, we’re not at the end yet, but I would already like to thank our lead artist Jorgito, for all the hard work he has done and still maintaining his sanity over it 😉
To top it all off, a small teaser screenshot of a Feudal Age Malian village!
Jorgito, is your units re-skin mod going to be added to The African Kingdoms expansion? Your units are much better than the original ones.
Nope he is not doing any units for this just the buildings and other stuff.
would it be very out of place or time to ask about a crusader faction from levant/cyprus/rhodos/malta/sicily as an enemy of the barbary coast?
At 70% of the development already done? I think it is out of time.
However, it would be nice.
I dont think its accurate to call crusaders a different faction there were different crusader orders throughout the middle ages and lots of European knights were members.
you are right in some way, but there were principalities and kingdoms – real independent states! like those states that were nominal under abbassid control!
It’s just not feasable, you had innumerous authonomous/independent states. Crusader states can just be played by any other European civ, like Franks, Teutons, or whatever else. It doesn’t add anything really new.
But this xpack isn’t about Crusaders anyway, so we know it won’t happen for now. In fact, considering the large amount of European civs currently in the game, I’d risk saying it probably won’t happen at all.
It would be so badass if they managed to fit Kanem Bornu mounted armored knights. They’d be an anti-infantry unit, but be more efficient against infantry than Cataphracts but worse against ranged units (less pierce armor and health overall).
If i’m not mistaken, the Boyar already work like this.
Ore efficient against infantry than cataphract ? What would be the point cataphract said with logistica destroy all infantry, kill halbs in 3 hits while taking only 25 damage. Cataphracts ARE the anti-infantry weak against archers cavalry of the game.
Personally i’m a little disappointed it’s going to be a african focused expansion, we’ve already got a good number of native/primitive type civ’s to play with, but i always hope for new civilizations with nice looking unique units (more kinds of knights/armored fighters/etc with interesting looks/etc) But with the african expansion coming it seems like we’re just going to get more stick wielding people i assume just like more aztecs/indians/incas/mayans/etc…
That’s just me though, and anything new is good, the fact alone that we still see such support for this game is amazing.
This painting, although a contemporary rendition, of Askia, emperor of the Songhai empire, is the only answer I can give you. If this pic doesn’t pump you up for this expansion, if it doesn’t make you think “Hmmm, maybe I have misconceptions regarding Africa during the middle ages.” I’m afraid nothing will. If you want to learn more on the subject I suggest you read about the African kingdoms and empires during the middle ages, the Mali, Songhai and/or Ethiopian empire, and the Islamic Golden Age, just to name a few. Bonus factoid – Mansa Musa, of the Mali empire,… Read more »
You have never played FE have you?
lol
‘Italians’ = Genoa in Forgotten dlc. We need the Normans, Scots. and the other Italian city states. Portugeese seems to be coming in the Africa dlc.
The Scots are the Celts.
Just an idea. Could you (or skybox, microsoft, whoever) add a option to enable in-game FXAA/MSAA? I think the game could detect and enable this feature by default, because today a lot of people don’t know this yet. New water effect + HD widescreen + retexture + FXAA… “Age of Empires” look absolutely amazing.
You were also able to add a south american monk for the south american civs.. the black villagers shouldn’t be a problem. If the villagers of the new african civs will be white then I won’t buy this expansion. Playing this would be to weird.. It is acceptable to have one kind of villager for all european and new world civs.. although I would be happy to see at least brunette villagers when I am playing the Brits, Vikings, Celts, Goths, Teutones and Slavs. But subsaharan africans have to be black! Plan A (2 villager races): The usual one and… Read more »
wtf? just because the villager is not black, while it does not affect anything at all XD, the monk thing was made by ensemble not this guys, and it was stated that it was a crazy hard thing to do, it does not worth the work, its a very tiny detail, its not like we don’t know medieval african people was black, like we won’t believe 10 elephants occupy the same space as 10 people, like we also won’t belive onagers scorpions and trebuchet are automated machines which move on their own, that the most loyal guys of your empire… Read more »
You are mentioning details. The thing with the 10 elephants and 10 people etc. When I play a subsaharan african civ it is FUNDAMENTAL thing to have black people. I don’t care that “we all know” that they’ve been or are black. Why the new architecture? Only because it’s easier to create new things than replace something? I heard the Indians will get their own architecture style. No one says that he doesn’t like the architecture diversity in the game either. I WANT BLACK PEOPLE IN A BLACK CIV. I would even wait a few months longer in order to… Read more »
The indian architecture is a mod, finish informing yourself, it will be included as an “official mod” so, you want black villagers? go, make them yourself like that (maybe you can learn is not that easy, or perhaps you are a code genius) and send them to the developers asking them to be included as an official mod too, UU will be black as with all UU wich will folow the civ’s “look”, also It is fundamental that they have to be black? Well that’s your opinion, to me its a detail as tiny or maybe even more than those… Read more »
I also would like black villagers, but it’s amazing how much people demand being faithful to real world history/facts and don’t care about the game being fun to play, which is what ends up making the difference, since there are so many awesome games these days. If we don’t have black villagers in 4 days, too bad. If one day they decide to make a fully revamped AoE2, with graphics as good as AoE3’s or even better, with mesoamerican, oriental, african, western european, mediterranean, etc champions / paladins / scorpions all different from each other, and black villagers for subsaharian… Read more »
If graphic mattered to anyone here i don’t think we would be checking on a AoE2 expansion, I’m not against better graphics or black villagers/units, I just think it does not matter as much as people is demanding, it won’t really be less fun because they are “white”.
and that mayus “I want black people in a black civ”. You sound like a pampered kid throwing a tantrum.
“You were also able to add a south american monk for the south american civs” which didn’t work properly, so there’s definitely a problem
Can you please tell me from where you got the textures for Feitoria building?
Love this game and graphic
As a 3D artist and an AoEII nerd I really appreciate that you took the time to make this article! I always knew that there was a huge attention to detail in all of the sprites but seeing the whole process of starting with the high poly model and baking right down to the 256 colour sprite is fascinating and inspiring, amazing work! Thank you!