Logos and Height Maps
thedenrei posted in Uncategorized on July 1st, 2006
I’ve put a good amount of time into the logo for our current project. Using this excellent tutorial by dinyctis as a starting point, I took a stab at creating what Chris had described at the end of our 2.5 hour meeting.
Situations like this are always kind of tough for me. We all came up with the name togeather, and the team has a feel in mind for what it should end up looking like. Sometimes that causes me to get in ruts, trying to guess and prod at exactly what everyone has in mind so I can deliver on it. I don’t address things creatively, I just guess at what people are thinking – which doesn’t produce the best results. I think this comes more from the respect that I have for my team, than any fear of inadeqacy in myself. Things like logos represent our group as a whole, it seems improper for me to just duck into my room and make it up. I think I’m getting better at handling this sort of thing though, I’m pretty happy with how the planet turned out anyway.
Looking through the tutorial, you’d think coming up with the planet would have been simple, but it was actually a little tough. The textures I had been using for the planets surface really weren’t working out as I had hoped they would. The texture dinyctis has is quite excellent for the task. But after a few failures, I got one that seemed to work quite well. My hope was that the planet would have the feel of the old west – like its harsh and undeveloped but at the same time it has potential for someone whos willing to sweat for it. I was even able to get different areas of the planet to show different climates. One side looks more harsh and hot, the other is more green and blue. I just did it becuase I thought it looked more interesting, but Chris suggested that “Maybe it’s a planet with an orbit that has one side facing an intense sun” which is a cool explination for it. Maybe the planet like, rotates very slowly so theres always vegetation on the back side which gets burned up as the planet rotates into the sun, then regrows when it enters the shadow again. I feel like I saw that in a movie or in a book or something. Ray Bradbury? Is that how it worked in Pitch Black? I think I had a dream with this in it…. if someone starts reading these posts and knows where this idea comes from please post.
I feel like doing this logo has also given me a strengthened sense of direction in terms of the look of the game world. Making world textures will be easier keeping this planet picture in mind. So far, things have been kind of disjointed in terms of like, realism vs stylized design. This planet seems to me to have detail of a realistic rendering, but lighting and colors of a particular feel. Which I’ll try to keep coherant with the rest of the game as it continues to develop.
The other thing I’ve been doing is working with Maya and Photoshop to generate some terrain using height maps. Its a really unforgiving process, but I’m getting better and better results. What I’ve got going now is using 2 maps. 1 is the more detailed, randomish map to get nice bumps and hills where I want them, then the second one gives the more generalized changes in height. So if I want a planes vs rocky area, that is decided in the first map. Then the second map gives broader changes in elevation. The reason this is effective is mostly because I can say 10% black is where water level is on the first map. Then everything below 10% will be under the water plane. The water plane does not receive any displacement from the first map. Then (after pointing all the vertex normals streight up) I apply the second displacment to both the water and the terrain. That way, I can keep the rivers looking just how I want them. This probably makes no sense at all as I’ve discribed it here. I’ll elaborate with pictures and such once I actually see the technique succeed.
Deadline for the next milestone is Sunday night. Things are looking good.
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