3D Map Generator – ATLAS, TERRAIN & GEO

While completing my own experiment with height map made from an Google Earth image, I came across a Photoshop plugins, that help to generate those maps. It seems to be a very useful tool, which helps a lot whit the process. I know that not many GAME environment artists use height maps for a base of heir levels, but these software may allow them to start doing so.

Although the different versions of this plugin are on the market for a while, the most recent version gain a huge interest recently. The company advertise their software as a game-changing products for creating professional and high-quality maps in no time, so the industry started to put some interest into that.

The example of ‘hot it works’ image from the official website

The plugins are suppose to generate a grayscale height maps and it looks like it’s doing a job pretty well. The images provided by the official website are really impressive. However, not many of them provided a close up of how the actual terrain looks like. This is an important factor for the game designers, less for other artists, so probably that’s the main reason behind it. Even if there is something wrong with the actual density of the close up geometry, I believe this could be easily edited inside the Unreal Engine 4.

A comment provided by the used of the plugin

The software seem to add seamless textures to the terrain as well. I’m not exactly sure how would that work for the game environment, but I hope it could be used in the game at the end.

Would this plugin change the entire process of creating the levels in games? I’m not sure, but it’s definitely worth trying out. However it’s not a free software and have its price (not that high), it may become a time saving tool for any artists.

REFERENCE LIST:

3D Map Generator, (2018), Available at: https://www.3d-map-generator.com/ (Accessed: 20 April 2019)

Envato Market, (2019), Reviews for 3D Map Generator – Atlas – From Heightmap to real 3D map, Available at: https://graphicriver.net/item/3d-map-generator-atlas-from-heightmap-to-real-3d-map/reviews/22277498?page=2 (Accessed: 20 April 2019)

Horizon Zero Dawn

This game is amazing on many levels, but the most beautiful part of it was the environment itself. While playing the game, I was so amazed with the world created by the developers, that I sometimes forget about main objectives. That’s my main reason why I’ve decided to focus my research on this game, as I really love the work they’ve put into it to create this vast and divers world.

I was surprised to see that many plants were made from an actual geometry rather just simple plain shapes. The base of each leaf has its own tube-like base to go with. Most of the games use low polygon alpha planes for the plants like these. In Horizon Zero Dawn even the smaller plants on the ground had their own geometry.

Another interesting point was, that most of the trees had some plants growing on their sides. This gave a nice effect of a fully-grown jungle and add to the realism. I’ve also noticed that most of the materials have been using an effect called a ‘subsurface colour’, which affected in a more realistic shading effect.

On the other hand, the trees and plants weren’t that carefully placed, so many leaves were overlapping with others. This slightly destroyed the effect of the realistic environment, but it’s only a small downside to the entire amazing effect.

The game run in a day and night circle as well as has multiple weather conditions, so the materials responds to those with appropriate effect. During the rain the leaves were appropriately shiny to give an effect of wetness. This gave me a better understanding on how I wan my own leaves to looks like if I decide to have a rainy weather.

The game have also multiple interior environments (which I don’t have screenshots of), which could have also influence my own design. However, most of the interiors was so destroyed by the nature, that it probably wouldn’t perfectly suit my own idea (my lab will only be abandoned for few days). This is why I haven’t focused on that area of the game for my research.

REFERENCE LIST:

Horizon Zero Dawn, (2017), Sony Playstation 4 [Game]. Sony Interactive Entertainment.

Plants and Flowers!

Today I wanted to produce something rather than just researching and planning, so I’ve made a bunch of flowers and some plans. Although, I’m not sure that I will use them in the final work, I needed a break from the research.

These flowers are still not textured, but I aimed for the interesting general shapes. Some of them may be used in a bigger quantity than other (flower_05), because of their low tris count. Others, those with the higher level of polygons, may become a bigger, singular plant-like flowers or even collectables.

I’m not sure what I wanted to achieve while creating some of those plants, but one of them looks a little bit like those water grass, so I may place it in several places around the river.

On the other hand, I don’t think I will be using the rest of those plants in my project. They all looks too weird both small and big, so I may just use them as an experiment with alpha planes and geometry combined together.

Analysis

It was a very productive day. I’ve picked the images that I took in a park nearby and decided to analyse them for the shapes, colours and other aspects. I believe this would help me to create foliage in my own level.

The research provided some general understanding of how trees and bushes are made (the flow of the branches), and what shapes of leaves I can possibly get in my own level. Although those plants grow in the current times, the prehistoric nature doesn’t have to be as much different. Remember, the world that I want to create isn’t strictly prehistoric, so the nature could have evolved and become more recognisable as current one.

I’m planning to use the colour samples to enhance those in my own level and shapes of leaves helped me to better understand the differences between spices of bushes and trees. Now I should be able to combine that knowledge and use it in my own design to produce realistic foliage.

Height Map

This is an important experiment for myself, as I really want to make a real world location as part of my level. This technique could improve and speed up my process a lot!

Google Earth image of the area of interest

I was using Photoshop to edit my image and I was fallowing the tutorial (link in the reference list). The video contained information about how to create height maps, but they were some sort of different type of maps. I needed an image that would be good enough to create an entire terrain, detailed enough to give the levels, but not too much for the terrain to appear pointy in flat areas. Unfortunately, I believe that the Google Earth image has shadows, which would make a problem for the software to make a proper terrain.

The final Height Map created in Photoshop

I was so hyped to do it, that I didn’t spent enough time to edit the actual Google Earth image, which resulted in a very disappointing terrain.

Because I’m completely not experienced with height maps, my texture generated in Photoshop wasn’t clear enough to give me a nice result. The imported level become a huge mess with many pointy geometries. The actual terrain wasn’t even in a similar shape as the real one in Google. This method completely didn’t work for me.

However, I’ve heard about a specific software that generates height maps (especially from Google Earth screenshots), so I may consider buying a licence and experimenting with it again in the future. For this specific project I probably won’t be using this technique anymore, as this will require lots of research and experimenting and may affect my time management.

REFERENCE LIST:

Google Earth, (2019), Dinosaur National Monument 40°31’13.8″N 108°59’30.6″W, elevation 200M, 3D map, [Viewed: 12 April 2019]

Inventory (pick an item)

Today I’ve deiced that I need to make a small experiment if I want my game to fulfil the requirements that I came up with. This is very technical part of the project, but would be very important.

For the purpose of this experiment, I’ve found a perfect tutorial that I’ve fallowed (link in the references section). The tutorial helped me to produce a working inventory with the assets floating in the level. I’ve only experimented with one item today, but I would like to add more in the future, as my collectables list is long and diverse. Although I only have one item so far, I’ve already prepared an inventory for 5, so the actual blueprint has space for more than one item in the code.

I’ve also made a model of a pick up item (fruit). First I though it would only be used in the experiment, but now I’m quite happy with it, so I may use it in the final level. However, it still needs to be textured.

Model of the prehistoric fruit (564 tris)

The fruit is slightly high poly, but I want to make my level a really detailed one. The leaves on the top will be alphas, but I’ve already implemented some ripped leaves into the model itself. This may add a small variety in the repetition of the leaf.

REFERENCE LIST:

Virtus Learning Hub / Creative Tutorials, (2016), Introduction & Setting Up Hunger System -#1 Creating A Survival Horror (Unreal Engine 4), Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJJn9igmznc&t=16s (Accessed: 17 April 2019).

The story

Today I’ve wanted to focus on the actual story. I already have the list of potential objectives, but now I wanted to combain them together to came up with the overall storyline.

BACKSTORY:

The facility was prospering at its high rate, researching the dinosaurs and producing several different medicines, but few days ago, one of the personnel infected the main computer with a virus. It caused a huge system malfunction and breakdown of the electricity supply. This affected and switched off the fences outside the area, so the dinosaurs roamed freely into the facility. The entire building was invaded by the Raptors and become their playground. This couldn’t end up well, so most of the personnel was killed and only few of them evacuated by the helicopter on the roof, but then they’ve lost the contact and disappeared from the map. Before leaving, the reminding scientists left the note about where all the cures are hold, but during the attack, the note was ripped apart. Now the information isn’t perfectly clear, so the newcomer must locate the cure by himself.

GAMEPLAY STORY:

The main character was sent t the abandoned facility to acquire a lifesaving cure for a terrible disease that was recently discovered in the reinforest laboratory. As the world is filled with many dinosaur species, the area isn’t as safe as it supposed to be, and the facility have been destroyed. The player will have to look for specific items during the mission to progress through the storyline. In the meantime, the main character will receive several voice messages through a walkie-talkie like device, from a friend, about his progression in the other area. When the player retrieves the note from the scientists, the information is partly unavailable. After a short search, the character will be able to locate a recipe for the cure. so he/she can prepare a new one. Then the player will have to locate the ingredients, pick hem up and prepare a medicine at the scientist table. This is where the story ends.

Although it wasn’t a very productive day, I managed to finalise the stage of the story creation. As said, I’ve also made a final objectives list and created a pop up menu that will be placed on the UI screen.

After Earth

I was watching this movie with a friend, when it came to my head that it can be a part of my research as well. As majority of my level would take place in a rainforest, the movie seams to be a good choice for the research. At the end it helped me to generate a more playful ideas for my own level.

The main storyline is about a quest, where the main character must travel from one point to another through the dangerous woodland, and at the same time communicate with his father through a futuristic device. They show emotions, make hard decisions and help each other throughout the movie. This will give me some ideas while working on my script for the walkie-talkie conversations in my own game.

The path taken by the character require many skills. This hard and trouble making rout gave me some ideas on how to improve my own level by adding some obstacles to my level (huge fallen tree that the player can walk on it). This will increase the general playability and make my level more interesting, as I haven’t considered any platforms or higher levels before.

The movie had many interesting camera angles, where all plants in the area were perfectly captured on the screen. I don’t know much about the camera work, so this may improve my final presentation of the game.

REFERENCE LIST:

After Earth, (2013), [DVD]. Directed by M. Night Shyamalan, United States, Columbia Pictures, [Viewed: 16 April 2019].

Walking with Dinosaurs

Tonight I watched half of the series about the Dinosaurs on Netflix. It was called ‘Walking with Dinosaurs’ and is a BBC series recorded while ago. Although it won’t be my main source of visual reference, I found some interesting and important facts about the dinosaurs, which gave me several ideas for my level.

The living dinosaurs leave lots of signs of their existence. This can become an interesting sign for the player that there are living creatures around. Broken or eaten plants, lay eggs, make dens and do many other things. Some of these may become part of my level.
I have gained additional information about many species of dinosaurs. It included information such us the area where they lived, what they eat, how they reacted to each other and so on. This would improve my knowledge about those creatures and help me build a believable level as well, as some of these (type of food for example) would have a huge impact on the actual environment.

At this point, I have also make a list of potential games and movies that I would like to research for this project:

Horizon Zero Dawn [game]
Jurassic Park series [movies]
Avatar [movie & game]
Jurassic Park: the game [game]
Jumanji [movie]
Far Cry Primal [game]
The Lost World [TV series]
Ace Age series (stylized) [movies]
Good Dinosaur (stylized) [movie]
Evolve [game]

This will probably be updated during the project as some of these may came to my head later on.

REFERENCE LIST:

BBC Walking with Dinosaurs, (2012), [Online]. Directed by Tim Haines & Jasper James, United Kingdom, BBC, [Viewed 10 April 2019]. Available from Netflix.

Avatar – Main Inspiration

As I’ve mentioned before, one of my main inspirations is also an Avatar movie. Although it takes place on a completely different planet, I wanted to have a look at their plant creation as I remember it being really creative and interesting. My second main research would be the advanced technology they’ve implemented into the movie. This may have a huge impact on what would be placed into my own level.

The research was good enough for me to orientate within the possibilities of the futuristic technology, but I still feel like I’m missing the main point. I want my own lab facility to be slightly more advanced, have much more interesting hardware and other items around. I want to amaze the player with the technology but at the same time make it looks realistic and possible to use.

I’ve also found out, that most of the lab scenes had a small blue tint. This gave the place more unnatural – computer-like lighting. It was also slightly darker than other areas probably to make the on screen images more visible on the screens and holograms. This would definitely be applied to my own design.

The world of Avatar is a pure beauty, so I could take screenshots every few seconds. However, the actual plants are slightly too much fantasy-like for my own production. I still want to be able to fill my world with amazing plants. I would really like to impress the player with its beauty, but at the same time, give the impression of reality and unexpected danger.

I also have to admit, that I love the creature design in this movie My own dinosaurs (the few that I’ll have in the level) may be very colourful as well, but at the same time, nicely blend with the surroundings with the patterns on their bodies. I don’t want them to be too visible from the distance, but on the other hand, I want them to be quite easy to find. This may be a little tricky, but if the colourful patterns won’t blend enough, I may add several colourful plants around the area to camouflage them better.

REFERENCE LIST:

Avatar, (2009). [Blu-Ray]. Directed by James Cameron, United States & United Kingdom, 20th Century Fox, [Viewed: 12 April 2019].