High Quality Map Rendering

[Vydar_XLIII]

I remember back in the day that virtualscape could make some pretty good looking images, but when I try today I’m left underwhelmed. It could be that the software is dated or that I’m just used to making higher quality imagery (my job is in architecture visualization), nonetheless I believe that its time to take the next step forward.

For the past month or so I have been working on creating 3d models of heroscape terrain. I’ve been posting my progress in the Discord and since there’s been a good amount of interest, I figured I’d document the process here.

Currently, this is the quality of image I can generate. I’d say this is about 95% final quality, there are a few texture, light and shadow settings I want to tweak yet in addition to making the models for the rest of the large pieces (ruins, jungle, trees, etc.).



STORMWALL by Flash_19

I’m not sure what I want the end goal of this project to be. Bare minimum it makes really pretty pictures. Really increase the quality of 3D images on the front page of map downloads. Current OHS maps have this slight fisheye to them because of (I assume) the way virtualscape's camera works. This, being done in an architectural program, can do perfect top-down plan views. Might be useful in making those maps. I’m an architect, not a programmer, so I don’t know how to take the next step to something like VS 2.0 or a full game simulator. But from what little I know about computer science from the one class my brother took in college, what I am making would be easily usable assets for someone who knows what they're doing, maybe.


To-Do List

Spoiler Alert!

• 1-hex Terrain
• 2-hex Terrain
• 3-hex Terrain
• 7-hex Terrain
• 24-hex Terrain
• 1-hex Liquid
• Large Ruin
• Small Ruin
• Glyph
• Grass Texture
• Stone Texture
• Sand Texture
• Water Texture
• Glyph Texture

• 1-hex Road
• 2-hex Road
• 5-hex Road
• Stone Wall
• Evergreen Tree (15)
• Evergreen Tree (12)
• Evergreen Tree (11)
• Evergreen Tree (10)
• Road Texture
• Evergreen Tree Textures

• Lava Field Texture
• Molten Lava Texture

• 1-hex Glacier
• 3-hex Glacier
• 4-hex Glacier
• 6-Hex Glacier
• Snow Texture
• Ice Texture
• Glacier Texture

• 7-hex Wall-Walk
• 9-hex Wall-Walk
• Corner Wall
• Straight Wall
• End Wall
• Battlement
• Ladder
• Flag
• Door
• Door Archway
• Castle Texture
• Ladder Texture
• Flag Textures
• Door and Arch Textures

• Swamp Texture
• Swamp Water Texture
• Marro Hive
• Hive Textures

• Jungle Bush
• Jungle Tree (16)
• Jungle Tree (15)
• Jungle Tree (14)

• Dungeon Texture
• Shadow Texture
• Outcrop Texture
• Treasure Glyph Texture

• Breakable Wall
• Asphalt Texture
• Concrete Texture
• Marvel Glyph Texture

Let me know what you think, and any suggestions you might have.

[Vydar_XLIII]

Started by carefully measuring and modeling the 1-hex terrain tile. It isn't perfect. All of my edges are sharper than the real tile is, I don't have any grooves in the area lower than the tile (anywhere brown on a grass tile), and it is solid. The tile is done by hand, off of a scaled image and not measured to be precise.

All that to say, it looks great as long as you aren't looking at it over 100% of its real size. Also this, likely, isn't going to be 3D printable. I believe there are other resources for that. This tile would stick out.

The top is inset 1/64" on the terrain and 1/128" on the liquid inside of the base to be able to show the gaps between tiles.





From there I made rough materials for each type of tile. (For those of you unfamiliar with rendering terminology, a model is strictly the 3D geometry, a material is the color/ pattern/texture that gets applied to the model. Real world example: Unpainted minis, the figure is the model, the paint is the material.)



The materials shown above aren't final, they're just rough placeholders.

The next step was to take the 1-hex terrain and duplicate it 2, 3, 7, and 24 times. Filled the gaps and merged it all together and I get the other standard terrain sizes. In the same step, I did the first draft of the high quality image.

[Vydar_XLIII]

Reserved for process photos of FotA.

[Leaf_It]

This looks really promising. Thank you for Sharing. Someone with the knowhow, or the time to figure it out, could probably make a Virtualscape 2.0 in Unity or Godot with these.

[lefton4ya]

Looks great, to bad VirtualScape does not look like it used to on older computers. See this post on how using a virtual machine with Open GL drivers you can get better graphics.

Originally Posted by superfrog

...
(Virtual) Windows XP:

Windows 10:


Not sure if there's anything worth digging further there, but I thought I'd share just in case anybody was interested.

[Vydar_XLIII]

I knew I read somewhere that VS wasn't as good as it used to be. Thanks for linking that Lefton4ya.

[Vydar_XLIII]

@UtahScott , continuing from the WoS thread:

Time to resurrect this project yeah?

[UtahScott]

Absolutely. This looks amazing, @Vydar_XLIII ! I had no idea this thread was even here. I can give you no assistance, except by encouragement. Please continue.

[Good Pig]

The renders in your first post look fantastic

[Master Roshi]

Bussin'

[Vydar_XLIII]

Here is the first pass. Missing a lot of the finer details but the shape is there

[Myriadite]

Wow, you modelled the new wall pieces! This looks fantastic! I specifically like how the joints between tiles turned out - small details that really sell it as a whole.