Designing a world!

I've been designing some rpg maps and i was wondering how i should start transforming this 2d map into a fully detailed 3d world using unity terrain (or another software)?

I mean,making the continents into landmass with all the rivers/etc and still having a good scale,not too big neither too small.

I'm going for this type of world:



What would be the best terrain width/height for this?And how should i start creating the landmass?
Also,how does the industry experts create their game worlds?
Take Skyrim as a example,they had a map concept and created the world,how do they started doing it?

 

Well, one way of doing it, would be to either hire a 3d sculpting/modelling artist.

Or, they do it themselves, by using 3d modelling software, such as Maya, 3dmax, SoftimageXSI or Blender etc.
And sculpt it, in that program,.............
Or they would use, a 3d sculpting software, like Sculptris, Z brush or Mudbox etc.
And he/she would make/sculpt, super high res/high poly mountains and landscapes for their game.

Or, sometimes they would buy 3rd party plugins, or make a plugin that extrudes, makes mountains and landscapes.
Of course, they would still have to sculpt onto it and make it a bit more detailed, to fit their taste etc.

It could take a few months, a year, or 2 years, to make an entire landscape/giant Landmass continent, for a big game.
And bring that entire map you made to life.

At the end of the day/year(s), you gain tons of experience and well it's worth it too.
It gets alot easier, after you pull it off at least once.

Go for it!!

 

For starters, Skyrims landmass is not a single mesh, it is hundreds of meshes lined up in a grid. You notice this in the Creation Kit if you start deleting the giant rocks they have placed because they are used to cover and blend the seams.

Second, a terrain can only go so far for a landscape. Like I said above you will need models for the environment to really bring everything to life and give it the look you want. The earth surface is not smooth with just different colored surfaces.

Third, here is my work flow:
1) I would start by drawing a grid over your map. A grid with small cells, but not too small. These cells will be used as a reference as you model your world.
2) Next after you have a grid on your map you need to decide on a scale. For example: one cell is equal to an in-game terrain of size 1000x1000x600.
3) Once you have done all this, you are done with the preperation work. Next you just need to pick a cell to start with, create a new terrain and size it to the scale you decided on. This cell is now the origin of the game map.
4) And from here on it is as simple as looking at the cell so you know what the terrain is supposed to look like (desert, hilly, mountains, etc) and then sculpting it.

Make sure that as you make new terrains that you are placing them in the right places and making sure there are no large gaps that the player can see/walk through. To fix these gaps, there are scripts that adjust terrain edges so they match one another or you can use environment models like large rocks to cover them.

 

@BrandyStarbrite
Thx for the response!

@Magnite7

Thx a lot!
Your workflow seem very good,i'll certainly give it a try!
Btw,do you think if i recolor my map as a greyscale image,and then,manage to export it as a tiled terrain it would give a good base to start?

 

It definitely would get you off to a good start because each terrain piece would already be in place for you to work on it. But I wouldn't do that until you figure out the scale you want to use for the game. It would suck for you to start sculpting and then realize the scale is too large or too small. Another thing to keep in mind is that the larger you make the terrains, the higher you will need to set the Detail Resolution so the ground texture can be done on a finer level.

 

Ok,thanks a lot!
I'll get to work on this and see what i can do.

 

Seriously, nobody would go to the trouble of these workflows unless they're off their rocker.. Just get world machine, it'll split into tiles, add perlin noise / erosion and all the detail you need. It'll split the heightmaps into grid sections anyway..

It takes a little while to learn, but after that you can create massive terrains in minutes. You'd never sculpt large terrains, you'd mask with detail (like sculpted rocks, bump offset materials on terrains (even maybe POM or tessellation for higher end games.)..

 

After making several world maps for Star Wars: The old Republic, we developed a nice pipline for building the area. But first there was some preliminary work/planning.

Before creating your massive terrain... please please please benchmarch your designs. Nothing sucks worse than making a whole big stretch of map to realize that the size is off and have to redo it. Your art assets will also have a lot to do with the size too. Say if you don't have any artists and grab some assets from the store, you really don't want to go in and resize everything after the fact.

You may think this is the "long way around", but building from a solid gameplay foundation makes such a big difference later.

1) The very first thing we solidified was scale. How big the characters were and how fast they needed to traverse the distances. So we played a lot of MMOs for comparison and even used a stop watch to determine the run distance between WoW objectives for the different zones. I might suggest making some preliminary tests with the character controller you plan on using to do some quick quest... not even a quest... just time and tweak the run speed against what you had in mind.

On our current project the player is 2 Unity units tall (2m in 3DSMax) to make the sound and innate physics work out without adjusting.

2) Next solidify your level technology. Is it streaming new levels, is it one big geometry, is it one room linked to the next via a scene change? It sounds like you're targeting PC so that means a lot of area probably would be covered. Solidifying your technology first will give you the foundation of which to optimize later. I cannot overstate this part of your research enough.

On the legacy version of our project we tried hex static mesh tiles because they looked cool, but had tons of reasons why this was a bad idea that we now know. We went back to embracing mesh tiles with open arms, for our optimization and it has a 30 FPS on mobile. We've counted our lucky stars several times over that we planned for that ahead of time before we started building tons of levels.

3) Level design documents (LDDs) for each area. Nothing too detailed, just the big points of interest and themes. Who goes where and at what level. These plans make a tremendous difference to the effectiveness of your world creation speed and to get others to help you.

Our LDDs are very detailed and can be handed to both artists and designers without much learning curve. We found the difference between having them and not is nearly 10x the development time in terms of redos.

4) "Paint" the Points of interests and critical paths on the terrain. Basically copy your terrain plan onto the 3D space and clock the distances to make sure it has effect you're looking for. The other details will quickly fall into place when you're running around thinking, "I'm getting bored just running now".. that's the place where you'd want to put something else interesting.

Alderaan, Tatooine, Taris, Balmorra, Belsavis, Coruscant, Hutta, Hoth, Drumand Kaas, Nar Shaada, Corellia, Korriban, they all a had the same timing... we found running 15 seconds was about the right time to have some little oasis to break up the journey.

5) Now comes the fun part of actually putting down your assets to Whitebox the space. Tree, buildings, details, towns, blah blah blah. Test out your quests, gameplay, in a limited area before really going over your whole world.

6) By this time you should be in really good shape to punch out the rest of your content....

 

World Machine removes a lot from the creative side just for that fast and instant terrain.

 

Have you got time to re-scult / re-topo / texture 256 tiles of terrain and still make it look better than World Machine? Even AAA use world generators and it doesn't really remove any of the "creative side" as you can build it from scratch by drawing it out.

 

Thx a lot for the detailed answer,its very helpful!

 

I have about a year of experience with world machine,but i just don't think this is the right tool for the kind of terrain i'm trying to achieve.
What i'm trying to do is basically a relatively small open world environment,and as far i'm aware,world machine is more suitable for huge landscapes,not a small world.But if you know a good way do achieve this kind of terrain in WM i would really like to know!

 

Ours is a smallish sort of "Island" type too, best thing to do is to mask a layout generator to the Advanced Perlin and then draw in with Circles n' lines. Then you'll need to breakup / set heights / modify curvature etc.

It's a bit tricky to get it right, but that's how I did mine.

 

That sounds interesting,what terrain extents in WM do you recommend for a 3000x3000m terrain in unity?I tried using 100x100km in WM but the results aren't good at all.
Btw,don't you think the polygon tool is better for drawing maps instead of the circle/lines?

 

Umm that's mighty big , I use 8KM X 8KM and that's roughly how big it is on our game world. Yeah the poly tools ok, I tend to use them all in conjunction dependant on what I'm trying to achieve.