Chrono Compendium
Kajar Laboratories - Fan Works and Submissions => Kajar Laboratories => Topic started by: Schala Zeal on May 25, 2020, 08:15:30 pm
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My isolation project is to 3D model Zeal for VRChat or something similar (yes, VRChat has competition but it's not as popular) and for the most part, I can manage it. I'm almost done with the skyway stations, I have a good idea for the Mammon machine, but what I'm struggling to approach is how to do the actual landmass of Zeal, and possibly select surface landmasses like Mt. Woe and such.
Normally, this would be done by generating it from what's called a heightmap. A heightmap is a bird's eye view of some landscape and the height info is represented by black, white, and shades of gray in between. (black = lowest height, white = highest) Though, I could do it the hard (hopefully not necessary) way of 3D sculpting it.
As amazing as the fan works of Chrono Trigger I've seen are, I've never seen anyone make anything remotely similar to a heightmap of either the Zenan continent, Zeal, whatever. The CT Resurrection crew I'm sure is pretty hit or miss. I'm posting this in the hopes someone can point me to some resources.
I'd really appreciate any effort and by the time this is all done, I hope it pays off for a lot of fans to have a nostalgic place in VR to hang out, role-play, whatever. For now, here's a render of the in-progress skyway hub
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EY062CiVcAA7DbM?format=jpg&name=medium)
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EY0zAOTU0AEeOFq?format=jpg&name=medium)
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Here is from my project years ago.
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More
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Those are slick!
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Hi Schala! I'm not really experienced with heightmaps and the like, I mostly have experience with character stuff in the 3D realm. But I just wanted to say that your assets are looking really nice! The shaders look excellent. What program are you making these in, and have you heard of substance painter?
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@cymorg: I'm a beginner-to-intermediate with Blender 2.8's shader nodes. Since posting this, I tried my best making my own heightmaps by doing the following:
- Set the render colouring profile from Filmic to Standard for more accuracy
- Set the render output format to OpenEXR with full 32-bit float for the same reason
- Set the camera mode to orthographic and placing it above the map mesh pointing down at it like a bird's eye view
- Positioned and scaled the map mesh to be sitting on the grid of the viewport
- In the shader editor, created the material seen in the attached screenshot. Blender takes the Z axis positions of the mesh's geometry and multiplies them by 0.225, feeding it directly into the material surface output, as lighting or shadows are irrelevant here. This produces a colouring effect where the bottom of the mesh is all black, but as it gets higher, turns brighter shades of grey up to the highest points, which are white.
- I got the 0.225 multiplier value by plugging the multiply node into a 'greater than' node which had a value of 1. Then I slid the multiply value to a point where you first start seeing white. This operation tells Blender that the highest point on the mesh should be white and not a lesser shade of grey.
- For Unity heightmap import, I rendered with a 4097x4097 resolution. It is the highest heightmap res that Unity currently supports.
Granted, Stringray's heightmaps look a bit more precise, though lower res. Maybe I need a color adjustment?
Also, Stingray, do you have anything for the Zeal floating isles, like a variant of the model without the tunnels or holes cut in them? I want to build more suitable models for the various buildings, etc.
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Also, Stingray, do you have anything for the Zeal floating isles, like a variant of the model without the tunnels or holes cut in them? I want to build more suitable models for the various buildings, etc.
No, I took a model from minecraft and recreated it from that. So that is all I have for the floating islands.
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I see. Well, I was able to cover up the holes with patches a bit roughly, but rendered out, you can't really notice them
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Maybe you are trying for more realistic maps. I messed with this today.
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600
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1000
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2300
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12000
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Oh wow! Nice job! Uhm... if possible, can I have it in 4097x4097?
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Here ya go
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Last two.
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Awesome! Are you rendering these in a program?
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I use Worldpainter and TerraSculptor. Used Worldpainter to get the main brushes put down for the mountains and valleys, then took over to TerraSculptor to adjust height and make a few other mods.
The renders are from inside TerraSculptor itself. Just screen captured from TerraSculptor.
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Sounds like they'd cost a pretty penny...
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Nope they are free.
https://www.worldpainter.net/
http://www.demenzunmedia.com/home/terresculptor/
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Sweet!