Let's do some calcs please!

[Azazelkeep]

As some of you know I'm studying game development and I focus on 3d modeling.
As even less of you know I've been thinking of remaking an Old Athen map in high-poly count in CryEngine 3.
As probably none of you know I have no experience in modeling outside of hard surface (tried really hard but It seems like I'm missing the part of the brain I need for modeling anything biological or living...)

And now you'll say "Why are you posting here and not in other forums like FanArt?"
Well... I have a big problem that probably noone is more capable of helping me than all of you and that's AO's scale or dimensions or whatever you want to call it.

I asked yesterday in the OOC bot about Old Athen's dimensions and Pants found out it's around 2.2 square kilometers. Keeping that in mind the difference between North and South wall in game coords is 395 units. Considering 395 units in 2.2 kilometers a unit in coords is ~5.5 meters.

Now... The difference in coords from the bottom of the whompahs to the top of the antenna is 89 units. That means that whompah antenna reaches ~490 meters in height

Which is not possible at all... To my eye the bottom cylindrical part should be ~5 meters high compared to my short female opifex that I guess is around 1 meter and ~60 centimeters.
Which cylindrical bottom part in turn is almost 1/5th to 1/6th of the total height of the whompah. That should make the antenna reach max 30 meters in height which is way more logical.

I could really use some help with that because while I can calculate the dimensions of mail console or mission/shop terminals or grid/insurance terminals using my character's height as a comparison I'll need to use coords for the stuff like whompah antenna or buildings or the big tree.

I could also use a top-down view of OA if someone feels up to it.

[ByLogic]

Take screenshot of Old Athen from all angels X, Y , Z and draw polys over that in 3D. You end up with pretty precise model.

OA probly will look the same in CryEngine as with the new engine since it uses most of the same shader functions..

For 3D modeling i would recommend 3D studio Max. it support game development pretty good with fbx or obj export even x objects.. (fbx most used now days).

Gl

[Azazelkeep]

I took a screenshot from minimap of the whole OA square. But the minimap is old and several buildings are missing. Seems I'll have to add them manually through Photoshop or something as a layer.

As for modeling buildings/machines etc it is pretty streamlined for me. Maya for base model export to zbrush for some details like panels/bolts etc then back to maya or Topogun for a retopo.

Maya or Vue for OA ground blockout and then xfrog for trees/plants etc.

Reference them all in CryEngine, manually place buildings machines etc in the correct place and put some weather effects.

Then I'll probably make a video of the original CryEngine player running around.
I just wish I could make an animation video of it all with full effects etc instead of a screen recorder but my cpu will simply refuse to render it and I miss the money to pay a render farm for it.

[ByLogic]

yes Photoshop is good start, draw lines, maybe you could fly up (disable fog) and take screenshot from above top view. Top is always the best angel to start with If your used to Maya thats fine, Max and Maya are very equal. Zbrush is good for making texture (high poly render texture), but its not recommended when modeling objects for gaming, the GPU poly rendering ability is not unlimited and performance is always important when working with game development. Start with box and simple polys. Slace / extrude edges is better approach for making buildings.

If your making a video or screen render of AO inn highpoly thats no problem. Make sure to post here so i can see your progress i would love to see OA in high poly.

[Azazelkeep]

Well... The high poly is the reason here... Of course I'll try to keep it as low as posible but I wouldn't want to make a box and then with some clever use of bump/normals/opacity give the final look to the model. That's what AO devs did (not criticising. I know they didn't have much choice in late 90's). That doesn't mean that the ground tiles in OA streets will be poly-modeled of course, but the bolts/panels on machines will be.

[ByLogic]

Well... The high poly is the reason here... Of course I'll try to keep it as low as posible but I wouldn't want to make a box and then with some clever use of bump/normals/opacity give the final look to the model. That's what AO devs did (not criticising. I know they didn't have much choice in late 90's). That doesn't mean that the ground tiles in OA streets will be poly-modeled of course, but the bolts/panels on machines will be.

The power of smart texture design i think Funcom did a great choice back in the 90ish. Objects doesn't have to look highpoly for people to relate to it, computers back in the 90 had pretty bad rendering ability, what Funcom did with AO was pretty good at that time.

If blizzard for example wanted to hire you as a 3D game developer, you will be put on a very hard polycount discipline, objects can look "highpoly" without being highpoly. There are many zbrush to low poly tutorials you could read if you dont want to go the "box polymodeling" way..

Not sure if your topic is about "Game development" or just 3D in general

[Azazelkeep]

My topic is about measurements in AO and specifically in Old Athen's high buildings/antennas/etc.

As for the process I follow it is simply box modeling with a ton of extruding/beveling until I get a good result (which is still low poly. Thinking around 2-4k polys for the bank terminal for example).
Then off to Zbrush to sculpt panels/bolts and the rest of small details. I'll then export those details back to maya to remesh them (mostly deleting edgeloops) to get to the lowest possible polycount without loosing the detail and merge them with the base model.

Thus I get the finished model with the lowest polycount and every detail (bolts/panels/screens/buttons/etc) is part of the finished model without using normals/bumps.

This should bring me to ~20k polygons for a bank terminal for example. The bump mapping will be for setting the grain on the metal for example.

As for a side note I started on bank terminal after all but most of those machines in AO feel too empty. If anyone is good at painting and concepting details on them, without loosing AO's feel, I'd love some ideas brainstorming

[ByLogic]

sounds good looking forward to see some render

[Redesine]

To get the scale of AO, you could use a character with 40m capped nano or attack range:

Character 1 stays in one place, character 2 moves away until you find the point where you're just out of range. Then check the difference in coordinate units. That difference is 40m.

Should be able to do roughly the same thing using the character view distance slider in settings.

[Zeephonz]

To get the scale of AO, you could use a character with 40m capped nano or attack range:

Character 1 stays in one place, character 2 moves away until you find the point where you're just out of range. Then check the difference in coordinate units. That difference is 40m.

Should be able to do roughly the same thing using the character view distance slider in settings.

I was going to suggest the same thing, except Char 1 sits right in a corner of OA, and Char 2 moves to max nano range along 1 wall only from that corner.

They should be enough to reasonably build a relationship between AO's coordinate system and actual distance, so that from that point on you can just stand/fly on top of buildings, grab the height coordinate and derive actual height from the relationship, or any positional location as actual distance from the original corner... rinse and repeat.

[ByLogic]

if you want a coordinate related measure just simply use AO owns cords system in real time. Stay 1 person then press F9 then move and Press F9 and you get the distance.

You can also do some Quaternion calculation to get all angels correct.