So Earth Special Forces maps count as professional now?
Personal opinion aside. Your method is kind of good, so is exporting maps from Unity. 3DS Max is the most commonly used mapping tool in this community, though.
qwertyIn Advance
Friday, December 14, 2012
Please move in the Learning Forum.
ZethThe Admin
Friday, December 14, 2012
Like I've said in the past, heightmaps and Dragon Ball Z are not a good fit -- at least not conventional heightmap methods. Dragon Ball Z cliffs and terrain are not smooth and flowing like this by any means. You'd be better off doing a box/edge-based rough draft or line-extrude (as Dave did on Namek) and then going from there.
Sculpting has a slight advantage of letting you do things like overhangs and regulate the flow of details, but typically it'll still turn out overly smoothed and much higher-poly than a low-poly foundation. As long as accuracy isn't your goal, you can get some fair results.
LfsZ Artist
Sunday, December 16, 2012
As long as we are talking about high poly terrain modeling approaches, this is a very nice technique, however, you can do that even with MS Paint. It's just a plain height map after all.
Displacement maps are good to go, but you should remember the polycount you get and cleaning is always needed in this case. You should add some optimization techniques to this tutorial also, because putting a terrain with 200-300k polycount is not very sufficient and it kills a lot of your memory. You can either way optimize this within 3DSMax modifiers -- "optimize", while reducing your polycount to ~15-20k triangles, of course, with high detail loss, but it will usable and you can do that with minimum skills.
If speaking of which, I'd recommend learning ZBrush over sculptris then. Yes, it's not for free, but it has nice retopo tools and you can reduce your terrain/map to normal polycount and grab the normals/diffuse/height maps from it.
qwertyIn Advance
Sunday, December 16, 2012
Lfs wrote : As long as we are talking about high poly terrain modeling approaches, this is a very nice technique, however, you can do that even with MS Paint. It's just a plain height map after all.
Displacement maps are good to go, but you should remember the polycount you get and cleaning is always needed in this case. You should add some optimization techniques to this tutorial also, because putting a terrain with 200-300k polycount is not very sufficient and it kills a lot of your memory. You can either way optimize this within 3DSMax modifiers -- "optimize", while reducing your polycount to ~15-20k triangles, of course, with high detail loss, but it will usable and you can do that with minimum skills.
If speaking of which, I'd recommend learning ZBrush over sculptris then. Yes, it's not for free, but it has nice retopo tools and you can reduce your terrain/map to normal polycount and grab the normals/diffuse/height maps from it.
If you look in the first video (01:07) there is a button to reduce the number of polygons.
Not all people can afford Zbrush and 3ds max. And not all people "steal" programs.
najeebMy Sir
Sunday, December 16, 2012
Maszek wrote :
Personal opinion aside. Your method is kind of good, so is exporting maps from Unity. 3DS Max is the most commonly used mapping tool in this community, though.
they look better than any Dragon Ball Z game iv seen
MimaThe Disciple
Sunday, December 16, 2012
qwerty wrote : Not all people can afford 3ds max. And not all people "steal" programs.
Max is free legally. If you check here, you'll find MANY programs that can help you.
LfsZ Artist
Sunday, December 16, 2012
qwerty wrote : And not all people "steal" programs.
And everyone has made somekind of sins in their lifes. Plus there is such a thing called as "trial".
Oh and thanks, heh, I didn't check sculptris for a long time, nice to see they have added optimization.
JayREEZY
Sunday, December 16, 2012
I've always thought of using heightmapping for any tall mountains/cliffs located FAR outside the map. Would that be Dragon Ball Z accurate? Because it seems like the mountains in Dragon Ball Z use it.. kind of.. What do you guys think?
qwertyIn Advance
Sunday, December 16, 2012
Mima wrote : Max is free legally. If you check here, you'll find MANY programs that can help you.
Not all are students.
Linkxp500
Sunday, December 16, 2012
qwerty wrote :
Mima wrote : Max is free legally. If you check here, you'll find MANY programs that can help you.
Not all are students.
Anyone can pose as a student and legally use 3DS Max as long as the program is used for non-commercial purposes.
Besides, even teachers learn new things. So technically, we are all students learning about life in general.
MimaThe Disciple
Sunday, December 16, 2012
qwerty wrote : Not all are students.
Nor do they have to be to subscribe there. You can just say you are.
ZethThe Admin
Sunday, December 16, 2012
Not all people can afford Zbrush and 3ds max. And not all people "steal" programs
There are non-commercial trials, student versions, and free adaptations/alternatives to most programs out there. Although the matter is legally complex in some countries, morally speaking, you should not feel a degree of shame if you are utilizing editing software (however obtained) in an education, non-profit, non-malicious capacity. This mentality is true primarily when you lack financial ability to acquire it legitimately; however, you should always pursue this venue when it is within (or later becomes within) your power to do so.
najeebMy Sir
Monday, December 17, 2012
you're not making anymoney from it so its perfectly fine to use , though student versions are available , I'm using 3dsmax 2013 student version , it lacks no feature , its just like the professional one
JayREEZY
Monday, December 17, 2012
JayREEZY wrote : I've always thought of using heightmapping for any tall mountains/cliffs located FAR outside the map. Would that be Dragon Ball Z accurate? Because it seems like the mountains in Dragon Ball Z use it.. kind of.. What do you guys think?
Or, you could just ignore me. That works too...
ZethThe Admin
Monday, December 17, 2012
you're not making anymoney from it so its perfectly fine to use , though student versions are available , I'm using 3dsmax 2013 student version , it lacks no feature , its just like the professional one
I wouldn't say it's "perfectly fine" as it is more of a moral gray area, but generally speaking if your intentions are pure, your actions are truly harmless, and there's an underlying understanding of resolving the situation properly in and of itself, you shouldn't try and strictly criminalize the scenario.
Linkxp500
Monday, December 17, 2012
JayREEZY wrote :
JayREEZY wrote : I've always thought of using heightmapping for any tall mountains/cliffs located FAR outside the map. Would that be Dragon Ball Z accurate? Because it seems like the mountains in Dragon Ball Z use it.. kind of.. What do you guys think?
Or, you could just ignore me. That works too... :*laughing out loud*:
If I could answer your question, I would.
However, I lack the wisdom of both heightmap terminology and Dragon Ball Z artistic styles to satisfy the conditions required by your inquiry.
ZethThe Admin
Tuesday, December 18, 2012
I've always thought of using heightmapping for any tall mountains/cliffs located FAR outside the map. Would that be Dragon Ball Z accurate? Because it seems like the mountains in Dragon Ball Z use it.. kind of.. What do you guys think?
Sorry. Didn't notice your question. You could technically use heightmaps for distant objects (such as a 3D skybox), but in all reality, once you get close to any bit of terrain in Dragon Ball Z, you'll see that its core shape is usually pretty consistent in terms of layered buildup and overhangs -- things that would be difficult to simulate/hide with heightmaps anywhere but far away.
In short, yes, you can, but best practices would have you design them in the same style overall to appear consistently accurate at both long ranges and up close.