LANDNAV simulation game development
grand marshal polycounter
A fully functioning military compass for a land nav simulation game.
This is the game model, I gonna make a high version in zbrush and boolean out the ticks and numbers along the ruler, then I'll bake it and texture. It will be used in Unity so I have to find some magnifying shader for the peep sight.
The mils and degrees are geometry, but they get baked onto the compass wheel. I used geometry because I find it easier to get the precision I need for this thing to actually work inside Maya rather photoshop.
Shoot an azimuth. The lens here has to be magnifying to work correctly.
I'm not so experienced with hard surface. Let me know if I did something stupid. For the high version I do subdivision without smoothing in zbrush, then on a very high level I slightly smooth some spots. It's a hero prop that will be large on screen and very often so I use plenty of bevels. (note though that the outermost top and bottom aren't seen at all in game, so I didn't bother to bevel them, hence the hard edges)
This is the game model, I gonna make a high version in zbrush and boolean out the ticks and numbers along the ruler, then I'll bake it and texture. It will be used in Unity so I have to find some magnifying shader for the peep sight.
The mils and degrees are geometry, but they get baked onto the compass wheel. I used geometry because I find it easier to get the precision I need for this thing to actually work inside Maya rather photoshop.
Shoot an azimuth. The lens here has to be magnifying to work correctly.
I'm not so experienced with hard surface. Let me know if I did something stupid. For the high version I do subdivision without smoothing in zbrush, then on a very high level I slightly smooth some spots. It's a hero prop that will be large on screen and very often so I use plenty of bevels. (note though that the outermost top and bottom aren't seen at all in game, so I didn't bother to bevel them, hence the hard edges)
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I also have some improvements I can make on the normal map. I am seeing a little bit of bad shading in some spots. I need to make an even quads version that I can subdivide cleanly to bake from in order to fix that. I should have taken a little more time and did that too begin with. Any time I try to go fast it always ends up costing time!
I have displayed this in Toolbag. I'll need to fashion some shaders in Unity to get it looking right there.
The compass has about 7k tris, and uses a material each for the body, the compass dial, and the glass parts.
For now I will be setting this aside though and moving onto the next asset for this game: a Rite-in-the-Rain mechanical pencil. I'll use this thread for all the art assets I make for this game.
I made the green paint slightly smoother and added more contrast on the roughness map overall. I also exaggerated the rough finish on the black plastic as well -- before it all looked the same. I also took off the AO from the white paint area because the degree/MIL numbers were catching too much shadow. I look at reference and the white paint must have some kind of light reflecting/dispersing property because shadows are very faint even in strong light. Or maybe that's just because in 3d environment we don't have true GI or something. In any case, problem solved.
The only thing I'd really like to do more is make the plastic molding that the tritium bits and the W & E letters fit into. But I need yet another shader for that because the way light goes through plastic like that would be different than any other part of this thing. I don't think it's worth the time right now, but maybe in the future I can explore that just for the fun of it. As it is, this compass will do.
And I'll ninja the notebook in there too. No need to bump thread for that. Well, that is everything player needs to get from A to B. Everything except the map. But I wait until I get back to my home machine for that. For now I move onto the rucksack.
The pen looks a bit too artificial, perhaps adding some more roughness variation and some scratches/wear, especially on the metal tip, would help it look more realistic. Notebook and wood backdrop looks good, I like the small details but it looks weird to have "790" repeat so often.
The artstation link in your signature is broken
Iteration on art is also iteration on workflow. As much as possible, I want a fully non-destructible workflow. I want to maximize the ease of iteration. I am not an experienced environment artist, so the more easily I can experiment, the quicker I can discover the best results. It's not so easy when you are using a lot of different third party tools, and dealing with a massive world, but for the most part I've got everything pretty flexible after a couple weeks of working with this as a focus.
i'll have a look at the radar, thanks a lot for the help
I like the way it is now more than the more intense idea. I think this suggests a rest moment for your character which is in line with the fact that you are in a menu i.e. not in live play. I hope that makes sense.
There is a dissonance between the menu text (which is military like and in theme) and the sliders and buttons (which are arcade-y)
Good point, I didn't see that but now I do. I'll take a look at some other military games and see what they've done to help spark some ideas there.
By the way, we need some feedback noises for using the instruments. Enabling, disabling. Dragging them around. I don't have a clue what sort of sounds might fit. Any suggestions?
Drop in our Discord to get a download link. https://discord.gg/jBBDXJd
Just a few more and then I'll be done making models for this game.
Anyhow, the new terrain looks good so far. Are you using world machine or what?
Working on moving this project to Unreal. Nothing to do with UE5 - timing is just coincidence there. I am working in 4.26. I've wanted to try Unreal for a long time and had a feeling some of the performance issues faced in unity might not be as hard to solve with Unreal.
So I've started out doing some testing and I am really surprised how much time I could have saved doing this project in Unreal from the beginning.
Floating point errors due to distance from origin are not an issue with same scale world in unreal.
Tested same size world with dense foliage and its not even necessary to stream terrain tiles.
I did test world composition tools and these dramatically save time with tiled world setup, however it looks like its not necessary to use. Performance is basically twice as good as was in unity - though I do need to get more familiar with tools to measure this more in depth than just watching FPS. Right now I am using some nature packages from store and all the textures are too big. I believe reducing those will make the biggest impact. I have to investigate virtual texture streaming as well.
I am going to reduce size of the world to 64sq km anyway. Doesn't need to be bigger than that.
there is cons though.
My programmer only works in unity. I haven't been able to find reliable help at a price I can afford for general programming. So I've been learning how to use blueprints. Since the mechanics in this game as simple and limited I believe I can do most of the work there after several weeks of training. My brain despises programmer stuff but it is nice to be able to do some things on my own so hopefully it will get easier.
So far I have proofed pipeline for the 3d and 2d map generation. Stress tested performance and it seems the show stopping memory issues faced in unity won't be an issue so I will continue with Unreal then.
Still have to get familiar with procedural foliage spawning but that can be done later.
Have to get more familiar with material graph to create a performant landscape material and possibly make some auto-splatmap generation tools. There is plenty already on the store but I dont like documentation that is hard to understand and materials that have many features I don't need. I'd rather have something simple that I know how to control even if it has fewer features.
I got some help in creating a material that generates contour lines plus taught how to use render target blueprint so I can speed up my 2d map making workflow. that's a big bonus and will make experimentation faster.
Main focus right now is getting up to speed with blueprints so I can recreate mechanics for the map, compass, and other tools.
It has helped a me a lot. Main problem i had (have) with code is understanding how one thing points to another, or derives from it, etc. The vector math and logic and all that is pretty straightforward - can just look it up and seems like people all doing the same thing there. But nobody ever really explains how inheritance and the overall architecture works - visual scripting has made that a lot more clear to me. Now I can actually look at scripts and understand what is going on even after just a week of doing some blueprint tutorials.
Now that we have a new terrain, have to rebuild the 2d map for it, then get back to technical matters, finishing out the player controller. I can't wait to get back to art though because it's so easy for me to spend days building my little forest.
I built pretty much everything in speedtree 8, and used megascan textures and atlases.
Performance is fine, staying above 60fps on my machine at max specs. There is a little more I can do to reduce draw calls. If I need to make any serious boost I'll have to get some help because I am not sure what more can be done besides just reduce draw distances and crunch triangles.
I added temporal dithering to the billboards and grass. This helps everything blend together nicely and eliminates a lot of bad shading issues with low poly planes. I also only use shadows on the biggest trees. I found that you don't really notice a difference, and that boost performance significantly.
I started from real world heightmap of the sandhills area where I did landnav training, but it is so flat and featureless I am afraid it will be too challenging for noobies. So I amped up the verticality a bit. I also spawned vegetation in a little bit of a gamified manner more than realistic - big clumps of thorns make obstacles you have to go around, this way you'll never be walking in a straight line too long, getting bored.
I tried but couldnt get a good parallax or fisheye technique for looking through the compass sight, so I just added a vignette for now. It's functional, maybe in the future I can get some help to get a really nice effect here.:
I added in Ultra Dynamic Sky for some time of day and weather effects.
I added this HMMWV model. I couldn't find a decent looking game model, so I had to get a cinematic model and spend a day and a half turning it into something suitable for a game. A much better job could be done condensing materials and reducing poly count but I have to get this game finished so I did a quick job. But at least the model fits with the environment, and it's not making a detriment to performance. So far the project is under 3gb so I am not too concerned.
The HMMWV's purpose is to be a where you start and end exercises from. Later I might put an animated cadre inside who sticks out his arm when you approach to take your notepad for grading.
I also had to redo the protractor model to get it perfectly accurate down to the millimeter. What a chore that was.
I cleared the bigger long leaf pine trees from the taller hills. Right now most the map is pretty homogenous - I'll need to create various zones so that people can get to know different places, and also help prevent boredom and satisfy a sense of wonder. I also added in some background meshes. Just from a freebie pack but it gets the job done. I'd like to make some custom stuff but that comes later.