# Mapmaking Discussion & Philosophy (WIP/Critique) > Building/Structure Mapping >  Digsite 51

## Troedel

Beneath the rubble an ancient staircase was found, leading to a subterran burial site and a shrine of some sort. Leading to an even deeper level a giant stair beneath a strange statue is blocked by a massive door. An archeologist went missing last night, the seals on the door broken. Still it does not budge.



This is the map doodle I whiped up for my new project. The aim is to create a map using 3D graphics, modelling the assets in Blender, texturing in Substance Designer and creating the final setup in Unreal Engine 4. There I want to take HiRes Top down and isometric shots to make this think come to life. I feel that after learning much I can do it and will post my progress. Wish me luck  :Wink: 

Should be moved to subterran subforum...

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## Troedel

I created a first blockout.

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## Troedel

A little update, a few more forms and scale corrections.

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## arsheesh

That's really cool!  

Cheers,
-Arsheesh

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## lostatsea

God I do so hate people with Talent and Skills and all that other nonsense! :Razz:  Looks really good ! I'll be watching this closely.

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## Ilanthar

Oh, you've done an impressive job on the 3D render!

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## Troedel

Made myself a statue, it´s modeled after an minature of Nyarlathotep. Decided to give this a lovecraftian twist. Great stories. I have a higher poly version but will not go for more detail as the camera will be "far" out in the end. Took me about 2 hours.

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## Troedel

Something I will look upon for some time....
started unwrapping and redoing some parts. I will stay very low poly and try to manage surface structure with just normal maps. We will see.

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## Abu Lafia

Hey Troedel, already wanted to comment on one of your earlier posts, but the threads are sometimes disappearing too fast: Awesome job on the dungeon, very good layout! The figure is really nice too. 
Imo, the colour palette of the dungeon could stay as it is now. Usually they look all dusty and grey... never seen a trippin' rainbow-dungeon before  :Wink:

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## Troedel

That rainbow checker pattern is to check upon the uv unwrapping, a process to flatten out the 3D forms on a flat surface. Like unstitching a piece of clothing. With the pattern projected on the objects one can decide upon the orientation and relative scale of the unwraped objects. I hope not to carry coals to Newcastle  :Wink:

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## Troedel

Finished UVMapping (there will be revisits I think/fear....) and started to port assets to UE4. Here the render is still perspective, I think I will switch to ortographic again. Just not good for editing.

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## Troedel

It´s comming along, stairs missing. Played around with lighting a bit to get a feel and to set the mood. But I think the first shot wasn´t so I went back to that.

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## Jacktannery

This is amazing!

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## Troedel

I ran into some lighting problems I could not solve in a clean manner, tricked around. I´m almost sure it will bite me later. We will see, it took a great chunk of try and error without a success in the end... Perhaps someone knows?

The picture in the middle shows a lightblocking geometry that helps achieving the shadow in the first picture. Removing it lets light leak through my stairwell walls. It´s one sided geometry, tangents seem to be correct. I will go on from this point. In the future I think I will stay in blender but one thing the transition to UE4 teaches is to be very aware of your topology. I enjoy it ( to a certain point  :Wink:  ).

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## Troedel

Modeled my waterroom statue and added some water.

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## Larb

That looks really good. 

By the way, what is UV mapping? I hear some 3d artists speak of it like it's always a terrifying and time intensive thing to do.

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## Troedel

I did some texturing, just basic materials provided by the engine as starter material. But it is a bit sweeter on the eye and I get an idea where to go. Hope you enjoy.

#Larb  UV Mapping is the process of cutting up a 3D object so that you can lay it flat on a piece of paper. Imagine opening all the seams of a dress so that you get the flat fabric again. After that you can apply textures. There are many ways to place the seams, quick and dirty or very elaborate. For a complex model it´s time consuming.

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## Ilanthar

Nice work on the water! This map is getting better and better. Do you plan to post different view? It would do justice to your splendid 3D render.

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## wthrasherb

This is friggin sweet! It's coming along nicely. 

I've been wanting to try my hand at some 3d work. Are you doing the initial layout in Blender or Substance or Unreal or what? 

I'm looking forward to seeing what you end up with!

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## Troedel

I did my Layout in Blender. Blender wasn´t love at first sight for me but once you get used to workflow and the hotkeys it´s pretty fast for modelling. I did the layout and built the elements the map is made with. From there on it´s building up, refining and rinse and repeat...
Allegorithmic came up with a plugin for UE4 supporting the new stuff from SD5. So I fired the Substance Suit and retextured the floor and some crates. It´s working pretty well. A screenshot of my work over the easter weekend and the little spare time I had between eating cakes and drinking coffee  :Wink:

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## Troedel

Worked on some light....There are still some errors but I think the mood is set. I would like to have some feedback on that. Sometimes blindness sets in  :Wink:

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## Jacktannery

Looks great Troedel.

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## Troedel

Thank you for the encouragement, I think I will wait with the next post until I´ve got done a bit more to show. But this one will fly  :Wink:

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## Falconius

Wow this is great.  I was curious as to your thoughts on the perspective issue in terms of a top down map, as generally maps have no perspective at all.  In this map it's not bad as the walls only slightly obscure some secondary rooms, but what if you were doing a longer dungeon where it become noticeable?  Just keep pulling the camera out farther?  I was also thinking of the possibility of angling each room towards the camera like a little open building orbiting the  camera, although that would create its own host of problems...  Or shooting each room individually and stitching them together.  Perhaps the better question I should start out with, is what is your goal by making a 3D model instead of some other method?

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## Bogie

Wonderful 3d work.  
From an artistic view, the very dark shadows look good really setting the mood, from a gaming point of view the shadows are to dark and obscure large parts of the map that should be at least partially visible.  Just depends which is more important to you.

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## Troedel

#Falconius Why a 3D modell? I think it is a style that is very immersive a gives a pretty good feel of the area and the mood. And I like the looks. The best maps around for VTT´s of this kind are from Lord ZseZes´s but I´m very convinced that a seasoned game level designer would put us all in a state of wonder  :Wink: . Downside is the workload to make it right. Building up a prop library would speed things up and it would become a matter of drag and drop for maps of similar style. I did not think about larger dungeons but it could be handled by camera settings. Or you could just set it to ortographic for a real topdown. But you would loose the sense of depth.

#Bogie I think in the end the lights are very difficult. Everything has to be visible without destroying the mood and keeping the lighting a little bit plausible. I will tackle that one step by step. 

Right now I´m fooling around with Modo indie version from Steam with 901 at the doorstep. Perhaps one day I will switch from Blender. At first i cursed Modo because it´s completly different but after watching many tutorials I begin to understand why people love it for being a very good modelling aplication beides many other things. The package seems to be a bit more streamlined and unified than blender. But I miss modifiers.

Keep mapping!

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## Deadshade

> I´m very convinced that a seasoned game level designer would put us all in a state of wonder . Downside is the workload to make it right. !


I fully agree with that. I have watched once a Professional level designer at work. He had in front of him a rough handdrawn sketch and used simultaneously Mudbox + World Machine + some other 3D software I forgot.
In a half a day he had a 3D map of something like 200 km x 200 km done in a perfectly realistic style, fully rendered with a moving sun, shadows, lights, reflections on water and everything.
Of course his libraries where he was picking things all the time were giant.
It looked easy and it was then that I decided to never attempt this kind of style because if I could do it in a comparable quality as this guy did, I would be a Professional level designer and not an occasional map artist  :Smile:

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## Troedel

This is an old one but still waiting for completion. On this journey I learned much about technical aspects for transition between differnt software suits and the integration and management of assets into UE4. It was a fun ride with a LOT of sidetracks but totaly worth it. I´m looking foreward to my next project to test out new and improved workflows. I´ll see how RL allows that  :Wink:  

I hope you like it.


CC BY-NC-SA

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