So, here’s a little sneak a peek of the process to generate a new terrain.
First of all, Emiliano designs the map and transfers it into a super low res bmp file with color coded values for the terrain (green grass, red rocks, blue water, etc).
Then the same image is fed to a .NET (windows) software that extract the data information out of it and exports them into a lightweight txt containing a numeric grid (representing the terrain underneath).
Then George grabs the colorcoded picture and feeds it to a huge houdini system he built up, and the monster procedurally generates the 3d map, than in 2-3 hours, all automatic, is rendered as an 8k file to be chopped into smaller pieces.
Then it all gets loaded into Unity 3d, fire gets added with a flowmap (a liquid simulation) made by houdini inside the same riverbed and animated through a shader, and trees, rocks and bridges are added semi-manually.
(the last terrain pic is not the same map, but built with the same process described)
So as said, approximately the creation of a new map takes 2 to 4 hours, but with most of the time not requiring any assistance from our side. So all in all, even though (specially the houdini node graph) took quite some long time to prepare, we’re very happy with it, and it will allow us to expand fairly easily the number of available game maps also after release.
Cheers,
H
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