Question: Large Environments

[Notum]

A hand modeled map would be more efficient. But I imagine it would involve a serious amount of work to get it looking got. A ROAM algorithm could probably be used to give you almost infinate level of detail. A ROAM algorithm only details the area that you are currently looking at and leaves the rest as a low poly mesh. It automaticaly tesselates the mesh as needed. There are some limitations with this technology though, so it might not be ideal to your needs. Look it up on google, and I think Gamasutra has an article on it.

Regarding calculating how many polygons a computer can push is possible, but it will only give you results for ideal conditions. And will probably mean very little in the end. And there are so many factors that make up the final performance, such as number of textures, texture size, shaders etc etc. Sadly your best bet is to do some testing on different configs. Do some parallel testing on your minimum sys requirements and you should be safe :)

Hope that made some sense.

[voodoofactory]

On the NASA site you can find lots of satelite photo's, including foto's of Europe. They're pretty high-res and they're available as colormaps, specular maps, heightmaps etc. I think the ideal solution would be to use those to make a heightmap(also known as terrain). Depending on which engine you're using, you could brake the map up into several LOD maps, or use dynamic terrain LOD(like in Torque) to render it. This should work on even the older pc's.

[three]

Thank you for your replies guys.
I've been doing some research, I haven't found any good satellite pictures of Europe (atleast none that are as detailed as I need).
As for the technique, I'm going for a combination between a handmodeled and displacement painted environment. If it works as I want, I can make a displacement of the landmass, and then go in, cleaning up and adding all the details (mountains, rivers and so on) with a edit poly modifier.
Let us all hope for a nice looking result.
I'm going to post here when finished.

[NeptuneImaging]

You can create terrain just as easily with bezier splines with smooth points on (3DS Max), lofting in Maya, or Spline patching in LW...

If you were to create bedrooms in a house, you can begin with bezier splines, outline the map you are designing, and patch/remove polygons if neccesry.

[three]

Hello again.
I've been working on this.

I made a pretty rough displacementmap of the landmass, and then I went in, fixed polys laid out UVW's and started texturing.
I'm getting pretty close to where I want it to go.

http://w1.523.telia.com/~u52313329/diverse/3d/render06.jpg
And a wire:
http://w1.523.telia.com/~u52313329/diverse/3d/wireframe.gif

I've detached the mountain meshes, attached them to each other and slapped a quick reference 512x512 map on them. I'm going to paint mountain textures later today, hopefully.

To do:
- Do mountain textures
- Fix some polygons
- Fix water textures
- Build some sort of UI

Polygons (without water):
12933

Which seems to be pretty "normal" for maps today. I'll go in and remove some polygons that aren't necessary below the waterline.

Crits and tips are allways welcome.

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