Dev blog 16 - Making a world map
Hey all!
This week I’ve asked our lead artist boi Ivan to describe his process of making the overworld zones. I figured any aspiring artist out there might be interested in knowing how we do it.
The text he sent was god awful … kind of bad … barely useful … needed tweaks to make it presentable, so I’ve cleaned it up a bit and present it below. I’ll write my commentary underlined.
Here’s what he has to say:
==
When approaching the world map design, it begins with the basic layout. First, we decide how many lanes we’d like each part of the zone to have and where they diverge and join. Using that sketch, I hide in my cave (an actual cave) and do some research using Google satellite imagery of the needed landmark area. The maps we make don’t need to be precise or exact, they just need to have the feel of being in that location on a symbolic level.
The world map for Albion was hand sculpted as we were quite certain that the layout is perfect and will never need to be changed. Alas, we learned from our mistake, so now I make the world maps in Houdini, using its non-destructive procedural magic (everything he doesn’t understand is magic). Because of this non-destructive approach, our game designer Mat can request changes to the world map, for instance moving a mountain, which is impossible for Albion at this point. After you spend almost an entire day hand placing mountains, hills, and creek beds, hitting that “Simulate” button within Houdini to see millions of years of land erosion passing in seconds is very magical for me (because he doesn’t understand it).
When you’re a small team like us (8 full-time people!), hours stack up really fast and you need to get all the help you can afford to speed up the content creation process. As a complete beginner that never opened Houdini before, I got a finished high poly mesh of the zone on day 2. This isn’t a brag, there’s nothing special about me, but the wide array of tools we have at our disposal these days that weren’t available a mere decade ago is amazing at speeding up this process! Comparing the cost of the hand-made sculpted model for Albion (that I still like, btw) which took me a week, versus the better-looking model with millions of years worth of erosion simulation created in a single day… There’s no comparison, and to me as an Art Director, it’s a no brainer.
From Houdini, we export a high and low poly world map mesh which has baked normal maps ready for further processing. At this point, we like to add some flavor to our creations. Kaz hand paints the world map texture, while the rest are sculpting low poly models for symbolic map elements - tiny trees, rocks, pathways, cities, villages, etc. They are placed as small explicit instances, to make the map as lightweight as possible. Finally, we add some cloud or fog particles, and that’s basically it.
We are looking forward to hearing about your experience while traveling the world we are preparing for you - from the green fields and forests of Albion, over snow-covered mountains of Marca Hispanica to the sand dunes of our yet to be revealed final zone.
==
Thank you for reading, and a big thank you to Ivan for writing this up. If you want to get in contact with us, come join the Hand of Merlin Discord server, or follow me on Twitter and ask anything!
MarkoP
This week I’ve asked our lead artist boi Ivan to describe his process of making the overworld zones. I figured any aspiring artist out there might be interested in knowing how we do it.
The text he sent was god awful … kind of bad … barely useful … needed tweaks to make it presentable, so I’ve cleaned it up a bit and present it below. I’ll write my commentary underlined.
Here’s what he has to say:
==
When approaching the world map design, it begins with the basic layout. First, we decide how many lanes we’d like each part of the zone to have and where they diverge and join. Using that sketch, I hide in my cave (an actual cave) and do some research using Google satellite imagery of the needed landmark area. The maps we make don’t need to be precise or exact, they just need to have the feel of being in that location on a symbolic level.
The world map for Albion was hand sculpted as we were quite certain that the layout is perfect and will never need to be changed. Alas, we learned from our mistake, so now I make the world maps in Houdini, using its non-destructive procedural magic (everything he doesn’t understand is magic). Because of this non-destructive approach, our game designer Mat can request changes to the world map, for instance moving a mountain, which is impossible for Albion at this point. After you spend almost an entire day hand placing mountains, hills, and creek beds, hitting that “Simulate” button within Houdini to see millions of years of land erosion passing in seconds is very magical for me (because he doesn’t understand it).
When you’re a small team like us (8 full-time people!), hours stack up really fast and you need to get all the help you can afford to speed up the content creation process. As a complete beginner that never opened Houdini before, I got a finished high poly mesh of the zone on day 2. This isn’t a brag, there’s nothing special about me, but the wide array of tools we have at our disposal these days that weren’t available a mere decade ago is amazing at speeding up this process! Comparing the cost of the hand-made sculpted model for Albion (that I still like, btw) which took me a week, versus the better-looking model with millions of years worth of erosion simulation created in a single day… There’s no comparison, and to me as an Art Director, it’s a no brainer.
From Houdini, we export a high and low poly world map mesh which has baked normal maps ready for further processing. At this point, we like to add some flavor to our creations. Kaz hand paints the world map texture, while the rest are sculpting low poly models for symbolic map elements - tiny trees, rocks, pathways, cities, villages, etc. They are placed as small explicit instances, to make the map as lightweight as possible. Finally, we add some cloud or fog particles, and that’s basically it.
We are looking forward to hearing about your experience while traveling the world we are preparing for you - from the green fields and forests of Albion, over snow-covered mountains of Marca Hispanica to the sand dunes of our yet to be revealed final zone.
==
Thank you for reading, and a big thank you to Ivan for writing this up. If you want to get in contact with us, come join the Hand of Merlin Discord server, or follow me on Twitter and ask anything!
MarkoP