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ScottyDoesntKnow
05-26-2005, 08:42 PM
Hey I was wondering how people did big projects. I mean the type that have like a huge city from a birds eye view. Like an example of a type of project would be this one.
http://cgnetworks.com/challenge/grandspaceopera/entry.php?challenger=4590&page=1
Like how do you make stuff like that. Do you make each and every object from scratch then add UV map it and texture it. Then put in place. Or is there faster ways or do ussually people have objects like that already done and just import them in and then add a few details? I know this must sound confusing. But basically how would you make a big scene like that?
Bonedaddy
05-26-2005, 09:16 PM
The first thing to do is break it down into component parts. Figure out the camera moves, and what really needs to be done.

Do what you can in 2d -- either matte paintings or cards.

Have a couple hero buildings, the up close ones, the distracting ones, well modeled. Then make increasingly crappy ones, until you get to just generic buildings to fill in the rest.

To speed up rendertimes, make as many of them simple textured geometry as possible. Also readarchive (if using PRman), geometry shader (if using MR standalone) or particle instance as much as you can.

I did a shot or three like this a bit ago, and I developed a citybuilding script that made a bunch of generic buildings. We had a set of around 20 texture sets for the sides of buildings, built in such a way that the building could be as tall or wide as need be, and still the textures would fit well. It auto-assigned them to all the generic buildings, and through a switch utility, hue and value shifted them just enough so they didn't look all the same.

There's a lot of ways to tackle something like this. Bottom line is, do as much as simply as possible.
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