3d village creation
Blitz3D Forums/Blitz3D Beginners Area/3d village creation
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| Please can someone give me some advice. I want to try and create a village/town for a game I am attempting to write. I am looking to create an early 20th century rural english village, so need to create a terrain and on it some houses. Yes eventually i would like to be able to go inside these houses too. What package and blitz loading method can I use to create a terrain and then place on it houses, trees and bushes. Thanks in advance. Chris. |
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| The package should be Blitz 3D, if I understand fine your question. For the terrain, look for the related terrain commands, like loadterrain, createterrain, and the like. The houses, trees and whatever, are merely 3D objects, that is, meshes. These can be loaded with the approriate command loadmesh (if a .X or a .B3D model), or LoadMD2, if it's a .MD2 model. Each mesh can then be positioned with the command PositionEntity entity,x,y,z , and so placed on your terrain at the needed place. Hope this has sense for you, Sergio. |
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| Make the outside of the houses and the terrian one big mesh. Make all the interiors seperate meshes that can be hidden and shown. |
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| Before you do anything, I'd do some research on what a rural english village actually looks, like ie. get some visual reference, and then I'd start building the houses etc. in a modelling program such as milkshape, lightwave, Max, etc. etc. I beleive psionic's website has a particularly good tutorial on building...erm...buildings [lol] in milkshape... Hope that helps! ;] |
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| Sorry - i should have explained - i am writing a game in blitz3d. I just wondered if there was a blitz written util that i could use to generate the landscape and houses. Thank for the help everyone - some good pointers. |
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| Just for anyone else reading this - Psionics page is http://www.psionic3d.co.uk/ and its pretty good! However there is no sign of building tutorials on it - there IS a good one regarding a shotgun - hmm - not really much use to me ...yet. Thanks again. |
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| Also what packages would i use to create the terrain, or is that also done in milkshake? If not - how do i add houses and trees and hedges onto a terrain map ? TIA |
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| Well, the way a terrain is done in blitz is via a heightmap. Basically a square image (2x2,4x4,8x8,16x16....256x256,512x512..etc) i think it has to be square and a power of 2. Now the way it works is a pure white pixel is the highest value for height, whereas a black pixel is the lowest value for height. And any grey-ish pixels are inbetween. So it depends on the brightness of a pixel. If you look in the samples of blitz3d and find one that uses a terrain, look in the media folder where all the graphics are, and you'll see what a heightmap looks like :) As regards to adding hedges, they have to be added manually, but there are some blitz world builders out there that will make it easier for you :) |
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| no tutorial on buildings? i found it right here. Also, check out [a http://www.turbosquid.com]TurboSquid[\a] for *a few* free models...;] |
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| Cool thanks. So I can now build a house - excellent. next stage is to plop it into a village. Ross C mentioned a world builder. So what package do people recommend ? www.turbosquid is nice - but is there anything for free? I couldnt see any. Cheers again for all your help. |
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| I would recommend in this case to use a mesh ground instead of a Terrain, and put holes in the mesh where the houses go. That way, you don't have to worry about the outside ground intersecting inside the house on a slope, and you could even add basements and such. Not sure what package would be best for that. Some help I am, huh? |
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| on the contrary, you have been lots of help. I will put this next question in a new topic i think. |
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| Try Quill3D |
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| "Zace" in terms of loading method (it depends on your game and how rich the environment is (in terms of individual meshes - fences, lamp posts, bushes, trees, vehicles, people, etc.), but you could "load" in and out of the houses. You could just walk straight into your houses and upstairs, etc. However, you can also choose to load the house interior as a seperate enviroment - some games do this to give more depth to interiors (more furniture and stuff). A good comparison is Operation Flashpoint (walk straight in - but naff interiors) V Morrowind (load interior - good interior) - if you see what I mean. |
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| Cheers Puki. Well the initial idea of the game )as a lot of people seem to have) is a MMORPG. Everyone does a fantasy one, and occassionaly you get a sc-fi one. I wanted a different take on these, so decided to do one based on a certain amount of reality, then realised that as I have to host it - telewest aka blueyonder, only allow a maximum of 10 users - so its hardly MMORPG. I have plumped for a max user game, preferably LAN based but not necessarily, but then wanted a toe emphasise the RPG side of it. Yes I want a rich environment. So wandering around a village would be great, then going into buildings and searching for clues etc. A LOT of work - ohhh yes. a LOT of LEARNING...... fun ? i hope so. Tears, Ohhh yes. So mesh it is - but what package can I use to create these meshes please? |
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| "Zace" - I found this on me hard-drive: ============ Blitz3D Intermediates: Render Tweening - John's Tutorial by John Blackledge <mailto:john@...; [3] Improving Speed (1): Several people have suggested that care should be taken to keep the number of entities visible to a minimum. In the case of furniture and houses (where you don't need to access separate child parts) the best way to do this is to merge (in your modeller) all the parts of an entity into one, as the final production model. And even, if possible, to merge all of THOSE entities into one final entity, which is your 'level'. It's my belief that this is why 'Morrowind' is so fast - the opening village is literally one entity - all the houses are really only external shells, and are merged with the terrain as one model. =========== The interiors are loaded seperately though |
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| For my village I am using 3DS Max 4.2. I keep the polygon count to a minimum and seperate the stuff inside. That way, when the player moves into a building I can make the outer shell translucent so the player can be seen inside. A nice technique I borrowed from Skies of Arcadia :) |
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| Thanks Neo Did you know your website isnt working? |
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