Classic-Castle.com

This sounds really great! My Gaylord & Co entry did 2 bricks high with plates being carried along on top. I am not convinced you need the tiles, actually, baseplates sit fine on top of studs, and tie in nicely with a few crossplates.

I've placed a link to this thread in BrickWiki...

http://brickwiki.zapto.org/index.php/Te ... References

If anyone wants to contribute to that article, or others about terrain, the CCC standard, or anything castle related, please do! In fact, the CC entry http://brickwiki.zapto.org/index.php/Classic-Castle is very sparse and could use updating by someone that knows the history of Classic-castle.com

Thanks!

At BrickFest, KK Quah had a notebook about his terrain design system, I think called the Hill & Ridge Modular System. I asked him if it was on his website and he said not yet. What I read of his was pretty flexible and interesting--perhaps we can get him to contribute to this discussion. I sent him an email this morning letting him know that this discussion was taking place if he was interested in participating.

Carl

Hi to all,
This will be my first post to classic castle though I have been on lugnet many a time. Bear with me as I am not
sure about putting pics on this.
Carl, thanks for the note.

I did show the Hill and Ridge Modular System (HRMS) at Brickfest 2005 and was the result of putting on many a show at various locations and wanting something flexible and reusable. Modest goals were
- reusable system of modules
- fast assembly for outdoor scenes
- interesting asthetics
- compact to carry around and lightweight

Based the module on the 1/4 green baseplate which measures 16x16 studs. Decided on 4 colors which was
a brick layer of brown, 2 brick layers of tan and one brick layer of green. Note since Brickfest 2005, I am building
add-on standards in gray to make the hills so that a stack above this may include another baseplate+4 brick layers of dark/light gray.

I have used this to build nice landscape scenes to "frame" the scene and it is quite flexible. The 2 IC, 4 OC, 2 DS, 2 SS, 2 RS and 2 PS I brought to Brickfest 2005 with assorted 1/4, 1/2 and full green baseplates could be made into at least 8 different landscape scenes for the Macedonian phalanx I also brought along. And those were just the one I thought of. Phalanx on brickshelf at

http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=120917

There were 5 different modules all on 1/4 green baseplate which was a "starter" pack of which all others would be derivative. They are...
- single straight (SS)
- inside corner (IC)
- outside corner (OC)
- raised section (RS)
- patch section (PS)
From these 5, many other sections can be derived like ..
- double straight (DS) 16x32 green baseplate
- double raised section (DRS)
- quad raised section (QRS) 32x32 green baseplate

Section pics on brickshelf when moderated.
http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=143682

As mentioned earlier, been working to extend this to the next level (literally) by now adding another baseplate with 4 gray/dk gray brick layers and you can have hills built with some nice contours.

As far as a standard, this probably could be a flexible standard to allow different groups making large scale scenes to merge them together.
I have yet to incorporate river/waters into the modules though I have experimented with them. Likely possible with some more R&D or Trial and Error.

Been working on a brand new website to post this but that will take some time so I have at least uploaded the pics to Brickshelf. Hope this helps.

KK [/img]

Apart from the fact that you're using 16x16s and I was using 32x32s, we have pretty much the exact same idea. I didn't include hills in my original post, no reason why these can't be added (though on a personal note brown and tan bricks are a bit scarce in my collection).

Since I've got a 3 day weekend comming up I'm thinking I'm gonna start putting an article together. If anyone has attempted a BPPB module by all means post some pics and I'll include them as examples.

The ammount of response I've gotten so far has put me in high spirits for sure. Not sure what I expected originally but I guess the fact this is attracting attention from people like Larry Pieniazek shows I've generated at least a little buzz Thomas's enthusiasm about getting some BPPB at NWBC has definitely got me excited.

Oh by the way, I think I'm gonna shorten it to just "BPB" since, as I said earlier, BPPB is a bit of a tounge twister. I think the official term will be "BPB Theory of Modular Landscaping."

Welcome kkquah! I'm glad you are here now too to share your experience. I did notice the terrain in your phalanx MOC and I liked it with the exception of one thing: it seemed to be made mostly of bricks, not plates, so the contours were a little choppy. I tried to use lots of plates on my roman MOC, to give it a more flowing appearance, and add some plates in and around structures, since there would have been slight differences of elevation.

Maybe for some of us in the DC area doing the Fall for Fairfax we could try out this system? Take it for a test drive? Magnus or anyone else, want to give it a try? We could make a great little battlefield area to highlight armies.

Hey KK,

Just a quick note to say welcome to CC! We're certainly familiar with your Asian-themed castle creations at CC. You've got a lot of fans around here. Look forward to your participation.

Bruce

I read this thread back when I was still only lurking so I never did respond, but I must remedy that now because this post was very inspiring to me. I love what you've done here BreadMan. It makes me want to create huge terrains! As an AFOL just returning to Lego in a serious way, I really haven't dabbled in MOCs yet, but I have to say this post is one that probably made me the most eager to give them a try. I've started stocking up on baseplates when I can find them and I'm on the lookout for all else I can use to make terrain. Thanks for the inspiration!

Hello and welcome to kkquah as well. I will definitely have to look at your post in detail later on when I have some time, as your work sounds equally inspiring!

~ Joan

kkquah wrote:Hi to all,
This will be my first post to classic castle though I have been on lugnet many a time. Bear with me as I am not
sure about putting pics on this.
Carl, thanks for the note.

I did show the Hill and Ridge Modular System (HRMS) at Brickfest 2005 and was the result of putting on many a show at various locations and wanting something flexible and reusable. Modest goals were
- reusable system of modules
- fast assembly for outdoor scenes
- interesting asthetics
- compact to carry around and lightweight

I got a chance to play with this in a more hands on environment earlier this year at KK's house and can vouch for the power of this system. Also, the size and height make it really easy and economical to make more modules. Recommended. My only issue with it would be the lack of color variance. But if you keep the edges uniform you could vary where the green goes to heightwise in the middle...

My 2 pennies...

I really think you've got a good idea there. Its actually something I have thought about myself. A Classic-Castle-Country standard is a brilliant idea!

Of course, like the current city standard, such a standard needs to be incredibly simple for it to be successful. With that out of the way, I really believe that this is a necessary evolution for castle displays. Current displays seem to forgo alot of landscaping. A universal standard would go a long way to rectifying this situation. Afterall, this would allow builders with larger, landscaped MOCs to match their creations to a scene without any difficulties.

My biggest problem with your proposed system is that for many builders, such a system is quite brick-intensive. Perhaps too-much-so for most. Still, this is an idea that needs to be explored. I can only hope that it is supported by the community at large.

Later.

Recluce wrote:

Maybe for some of us in the DC area doing the Fall for Fairfax we could try out this system? Take it for a test drive? Magnus or anyone else, want to give it a try? We could make a great little battlefield area to highlight armies.

Emily, is that you? Marc Nelson and I were talking about incorporating these kinds of ideas into a CCCish style city display. It was Marc's idea - or maybe he got it from you?

Hope you can join us and contribute!

Yup, that's me. Drop me an email and we can discuss trying this landscaping standard. If you know what my partner and I built for Brickfest then you know we have plenty of green bricks to do some landscaping. We also have a small minifig army to perhaps put out camping on the landscape?

I'd LOVE to do a river with a bridge, and have two opposing armies fighting over control of the bridge...

Ok, question for you all (working on article)...

I'm thinking of making edge-based modules (seashores, cliffs, etc) be based off 16-wide baseplates like KK's hills. My main reasoning is that way 3cs walls could be built along seashores and atop cliffs (like, for instance, this). The disadvantage is, of course, more complexity and added difficulty when planning. Thoughts? I'll put some pics together incase its not clear what I mean.

Example pics for what is described above:

1. A coastline using 32x32s as set out in my original post:


2. A coastline built on 16x32s set between green and blue 32x32s:


3. A coastline on 16x32s offset by plain 16x32s allows for a wall to run down the middle:


4. A slight variation: