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Re: All levels combined into one mesh. W.I.P

Posted: Tue Jan 03, 2012 11:21 pm
by s13n1
Okay, by the end of today this mesh will be finished and i can start to sculpt the island using Mudbox.
All i have left to do is join the coast along the AS and AS2 levels with the ocean, then its done.
island_all_clean_with_ocean.png
island_all_clean_with_ocean.png (98.25 KiB) Viewed 19086 times
The missing coast and the gaps between the levels was filled with very basic geometry, i didn't need
anything too detailed, just as long as the mesh had no holes.

PH and Plains will be built in Mudbox as its much easier to sculpt terrain in Mudbox then in Lightwave.

When the coast is finished, ill render a 360 degree video of the island.

Whew.. nearly here!

Re: All levels combined into one mesh. W.I.P

Posted: Tue Jan 03, 2012 11:31 pm
by machf
Would a heightmap of the actual Cocos Island help? Though it isn't too detailed...

Re: All levels combined into one mesh. W.I.P

Posted: Wed Jan 04, 2012 12:09 am
by s13n1
Nah not really, i tried to find the highest resolution data available for Coco's but its just not detailed enough.
Even then, i would still need to add all the in-land detail anyway, so its just as easy to build to coast yourself
using an outline.

Its interesting that the dev's chose to model the island on coco's rather then the fictional island:
http://www.jplegacy.org/encyc/novel-map ... amap-1.jpg

No doubt once they stated, they realized that such a round island does not allow for much travelling unless
they filled it with unrealistic cliffs and lots of gates and blocked paths.

Once im done, maybe someone would like the job of taking a heightmap of my reconstruction of the Plains
and PH and build the levels in TresEd?

Re: All levels combined into one mesh. W.I.P

Posted: Wed Jan 04, 2012 12:23 am
by Dragonlord
Why don't you use some fractal height map overlays to get detail into the missing parts (or in general) without much work? Concerning TresEd I don't think it can handle that large terrains as I think it has image size restrictions somewhere. That said I never tried such a large height map. It's already easy enough to screw up without them :D

Re: All levels combined into one mesh. W.I.P

Posted: Wed Jan 04, 2012 1:13 am
by machf
A couple of minutes ago I found this:

http://www.maplib.net/map.php?id=13384

I wonder who made it...

Re: All levels combined into one mesh. W.I.P

Posted: Wed Jan 04, 2012 1:42 am
by s13n1
Whoah, cool link machf!

That's the best representation of the island i have seen yet!

Re: All levels combined into one mesh. W.I.P

Posted: Wed Jan 04, 2012 4:01 am
by chronzerg
Wow Machf, that is truly an amazing find. Maybe I'm missing something but what engine will this unified level run on?

Re: All levels combined into one mesh. W.I.P

Posted: Wed Jan 04, 2012 5:33 am
by s13n1
About the only engine that could handle a terrain this size while still being able to populate it with
objects and make a playable map out of it would be CryEngine2/3.

It really depends on which engine does a better job of handling the final height-map. I'm pretty sure
that CryEngine3 is going to be the winner here, but for the sake of a small amount of detail i'd be
more then happy to use CE2.

I'm doing this to help drum up some interest in my Petrolia project. I think that once people see how
committed i am to this project i might have more of a chance getting a programmer to help.

Re: All levels combined into one mesh. W.I.P

Posted: Wed Jan 04, 2012 5:40 am
by s13n1
BTW, here's the finished optimized mesh. Around 122,500 polys.
island_clean_final.png
island_clean_final.png (99.47 KiB) Viewed 19074 times
For some reason Lightwave wouldn't save my renders, i'll have to play around with it later and see whats wrong.

Now that its 100% and hole free i can start the next stage in Mudbox.
Here's where the fun begins! :mrgreen:

Re: All levels combined into one mesh. W.I.P

Posted: Wed Jan 04, 2012 6:13 am
by machf
Looks very nice...
Hey, chronzerg, good to see you again!

Re: All levels combined into one mesh. W.I.P

Posted: Wed Jan 04, 2012 3:17 pm
by LtSten
machf wrote:A couple of minutes ago I found this:

http://www.maplib.net/map.php?id=13384

I wonder who made it...
viewtopic.php?p=100970#p100970

For those of you wondering...

Re: All levels combined into one mesh. W.I.P

Posted: Wed Jan 04, 2012 3:54 pm
by s13n1
Thanks for clarifying that LtSten

Why was there no feedback given on enigma's map!?
Some wonderful work was done there!

I've got a small update on how things are looking in Mudbox. The terrain needed
some further modifying to get rid of some nasty polys that were stopping Mudbox
from loading the mesh. It took a while but i eventually found em.
island_mudbox_01.jpg
island_mudbox_01.jpg (446.55 KiB) Viewed 19066 times
The sculpting is low detail, just getting the scale right first, then ill start on the finer details.
PH and Plains are starting to take shape, but will most likely go through a few changes yet.

5,896,416 polys :-)

Re: All levels combined into one mesh. W.I.P

Posted: Thu Jan 05, 2012 7:34 pm
by Slugger
Just like to drop by and say wonderful work here, s13n1!

Re: All levels combined into one mesh. W.I.P

Posted: Thu Jan 05, 2012 11:45 pm
by awesome24712
I am quite impressed by that image thereā€”I see the the beach, the town, and where all of the other levels would be. Sorry I didn't post something like this earlier. :?

Good luck with your project! :yes:

Re: All levels combined into one mesh. W.I.P

Posted: Fri Jan 06, 2012 5:52 am
by s13n1
Thanks guys!

I'm just doing some CE3 Sandbox testing to check the scale.
Its a little hard to gauge the scale while its looking so bad with no trees or other objects, but after walking
around and checking all areas, it feels right.
sandbox_scale_tests.png
sandbox_scale_tests.png (459.46 KiB) Viewed 19047 times
The height-map used for this test was a simple version extracted from Mudbox, i smoothed it a little to remove some of
the sharp stepping effect (side effect of this heightmap format) which also reduced a fair bit of the detail.

Performance wise, i know this is nothing but a detail-less terrain, but its good to see the engine handling it with no
issues. Draw distance is great and shows the island how it was mean to be seen.

I think for accuracy reasons, i will use WorldMachine to export the correct height-map format of the mesh i created, then
ill recreate the Plains and PH in Sandbox, as its easier to keep track of terrain heights and overall scale. I like to be able to
place objects on the terrain as i sculpt, it helps with scale and also accessibility. Making sure slopes and steps are the right
height, angle etc.

It means the work i showed in the last image i posted will be wasted, but its so easy to sculpt those details in Mudbox it
doesnt matter. I would rather have to redo that small amount of sculpting in Mudbox then potentially ruin my texture maps
if the scale and size is all wrong once i import into CryEngine.

I can only imagine how good the view from the Summit will be once the island is textured and populated with trees and
other objects.. :D