I did get the original, and still want this.

The Auld Grump

As a finishing picture, when you finish, because you will finish , could you please take a pic of all the parts in a little storage bin and then one of the finished cathedral?

Most impressive.

About how many colum variations would there be to one to match all the texture for all the interior and exterior positions?

To me thats the biggest issue about doing conversions. Especially for things like shellendrak with all possible wall combinations. Seems like the converted set could end up being at least twice as big a file as the original set.

At the moment, I have 11 different high posts. First, there’s 3 different ones with blue interior (for flat walls, inside corners and outside corners) and the same with the brown interior. Then I made 4 different ones with the column texture. Inside corner, outside corner, flat wall and an all round column. The 11th one is an extra, all round outside texture.

The low posts (coming up soon) are easier. Brown and blue 3-way posts and brown and blue 2-way posts. I don’t know if I’m going to include low 4-way posts, as I don’t need them right now. Maybe later on.

And here I’m back. Second floor coming up...

First, let’s have a look at the floors, separately and assembled:





Next are the railings for the outside, to cover the sides of the tiles.





And the inside railings. Here I had to cheat a bit. As you might have seen, the arches with the columns were the double width of a normal wall, which means I had to get a bit more width in the railings. If not, you would still see a part of the top of the arches.





And the assembled result:





Then we get the posts and the walls for the second floor:





And some assembled shots of the second floor:









Finally, some looks at the cathedral so far:











Next up is the rest of the second floor. And I have to find some way to convert the stairs to a TLX compatible sollution. That’s going to be the hardest part of the whole project, I’m afraid.

That is stunning.

The Auld Grump

Now this really looks da'Bomb! No - TLX really completes the set. Just by looking at the last shots one couldn't guess that the structure wasn't "set in stone".

How stable does the whole feel with the second level on?


Lord Abaddon of Wormwood

Second floor is just as outstanding as the first! Another aspect that makes this so sharp is your craftsmanship. You can tell your cuts are straight, edging is clean, and attention to detail stellar.


To go with Lord Abbadon's question; how stable is the whole second floor when you grab it to take off and reveal the first floor? Maybe a question better answered after the entire second floor is complete.

I didn't think that this build could look much better, when you first started posting pictures of it...

...and then you had to go and put in the second floor!.

This is a phenomenal bit of work!

This is so fantastic ... incredibly awesome ... WOW!!!
If this can be Robo ready it would be as perfect as
I could wish any set to be. Its such a pleasure to see
this being done, step by step. Excellent work!!!

I'm sure I'm not alone in hoping that Denny and menace work something out to bring all us droolers a Cathedrae Noctis v2.0 (TLX and RoboCraft edition).

Quick question menace: is this a direct adaptation (ie the walls retain their full, original 3" height)?

Because that right there is the key element that prevents absolute conversions of most older sets to the new system and their 2" wall height.

I've been triying to build the Catedral a few times and don't look as good as that one... please Denny/Mat you have to work a revisit to that set !

*cries*...that's just beautiful! Its everything I could ever want a TerrainlinX set to be

The structure as a whole is rather stable. Probably not as stable as the original Himmelveil walls, because the first floor is more than twice as high, but you can put your miniatures (of any weight) on there without any problems whatsoever.

The stability of the second floor is something else, though. The 2 sections with walls on them are rather sturdy, but the bridge connecting them is a bit loose. The problem with TLX is that the structures get a gret deal of their stability from the corners and the walls. Since there are no walls but railings on the bridge, it lacks this extra stabiity. I’m afraid there’s not that much that I can do about that.



Something in between, I’m afraid. As I told before, I went with the textures and adapted the height to this. This means the high walls are 137mm (5,39") high and the low walls are 69mm (2,7") high. This has the obvious disadvantage that you can’t combine these elements with other sets in the same wall. On the other hand, I figured I would probably use this set as a standalone kind of structure, so I preferred the nice textures to trying to squeeze everything in the same space as a standard wall.

What’s more, I don’t really mind if a cathedral/church has slightly different wall height than other structures in a city. Churches have alwyas been higher than normal houses. I think it will give a nice dynamism to a complete city once you get the whole thing complete.

I’ll try and proove my point with pictures once my entire city is ready. In a year or 2

If you cut the second floor sections and bridge as one 'H' piece of foamcore it will be much stronger, as there will no longer be joints. Just a thought. It should lift off quite easily that way as well to expose the first floor level.

Beautiful work.

A thought on an official release of this: in looking at the textures, there really is no way to make them look as good if the walls are squished to 2" tall. Still, it might look pretty darned good with just a bit of vertical stretching to make the walls 3" or 6" tall. 2.7" and 5.39" just aren't very compatible with much of anything.

Or not. As long as the widths match, height differences shouldn't be the end of the world. Because, well, damn that's pretty.

This is amazing - personally I would have no problem with this being a non-standard TLX set, as others have said you're probably unlikely to mix and match the cathedral bits with standard city bits anyway (besides the floor, and that already is compatible). The primary key to my mind is being able to build it on a TLX city tile layout and this you can do.

I agree! Stretch out the standards!

Is every TLX wall ever only going to be 2" ? Thats what ends up making things look very modular-boxy. Perhaps the 3" walls should be 4". Then your standards could be wall heights in incriments of 2 inches... 2, 4, 6, 8....

I would disagree with Bob; I think people would mix and match the cathedral walls, pillars, etc. with other TLX sets. T'would be amazing to be mixing and matching streets, sewers, Thoumonts, and cathedral pieces to come up with your own super sweet builds. So they must be compatible BUT that doesn't mean everything has to fit in a 2" box

Everything should try to fit to 3" or 6" for the most part just for people who use 1.5" floors (not me but I like to think of others... )

Yeah, the bummer here is that we are just about to launch into 2-story double high walls and posts (with an additional 1/4" allowance for floor insertion). Its too bad this conversion doesn't meet that standard but that said, it would still make for an amazing modular church structure.

What I really want to see is what you can do with a church layout which is not "stock".

Seeing all of the different wall posts with this set points out something that didn't occur to me before - in order for everything to continue "fitting" together in terms of decor and transitions, the variety of posts would have to expand geometrically!

Might it be possible to instead add textured "flaps" to the wall segments which could either fold out to cover the post, or fold in and be hidden within the post? That way the wall pieces themselves hold the correct texture...

I completely understand what you mean. That’s the advantage of being able to start from the wireframe and adapt the artwork and the textures to it. I woud have loved to do it this way, but the problem is that my artistic skills (certainly for textures and the likes) are very, very meager when compared to what you are all making. So I have to make do with what I’ve got. Adapting everything to the standards of the rest of terrain linx would mean adding and creating textures and I’m afraid that’s just way beyond my skills.

What do you mean with "not stock"? If you mean a lay-out that is not the same as the original cathedral from teh promo pictures, I’m with you. I really want to try and make some different things with these walls. For example a small church or chapel should be very easy to make. I”ll get to that once I have everything converted. Give me a bit of time. I’m afraid my nights are already getting too short.

That’s actually not a bad idea. For the cathedral, there’s not too many different combinations (just inside-outside, mainly), but for a set like Shellendrak the different needed combinations would be astronomical indeed. Although I think Denny and crew are solving this problem by making the posts generic enough, so they fit with any kind of wall.

Well, yes and no. That assumes that all sets of walls and columns are mutually exclusive. However, think of an inn with stone pillars and wooden walls. Almost any wooden walls would match and vice versa. Any design where the columns are supposed to look like free standing columns and not as an extension of the wall will work with almost any wall design.

That's true - but for cases where the pillars are supposed to blend into the wall, it seems like it would be possible to add some flaps. Basically, it would add a "wrinkle" into the wall textures which could then be folded out to make a covering for the pillar. That way, you could join any wall type to a mix & match pillar, or fold out a "special" covering if you want to replace that with a specific type (case in point: On the outside wall texture for the cathedral you would have a fold-out for the outside pillar, on the inside you would have an inside pillar).
I'm playing some DA:O currently, but perhaps tomorrow I can do a mock-up to show what I mean. It would add flexibility for future wall segments while preserving backward compatibility.

I had been doing some initial planning for converting shellendrak and that had been one of the problems that stopped me from actually working on it. For the posts I had figured on just doing wooden trim for the interior posts, and obviously just the stone for the exterior. To me the hang up is the walls. There are just too many combinations possible. Someone on another thread said 2 walls fit in a slot, if so that might be the solution. Just make every wall double sided version of itself. And just add a 2nd if the other side needed to be different.


I'm pretty interested in seeing how Denny and the crew deal with it when they start making buildings with different interiors and exteriors.

Another option is to have every wall (for Shellendrak) with an exterior. Then, if you want two interiors, you put them back to back. Makes every wall an exterior wall if needed.

Looking at the exposed tops and slots on the columns make me wish for two kitbashes to go with this kitbash -

Ledges that fit on top of the exposed column tops, suitable for holding cardstock gargoyles

Flying buttresses to slide into the exposed slots

Such a bash would turn these into features!

This build just looks fantastic. Going TLX just makes it even better.

The Auld Grump

Ok, would you please get out of my head? I was planning on making these once the general structure was ready, to make a final something special.

Now you ruined my surprise! You owe me one surprise!