The Zanarkand Project

[PBGV103 729]

Hey everyone!  Welcome to my second thread here!  Here's the first:  PBGVNYBT

This is where I'll put all my non-NYBT stuff, namely stuff on zanarkand (basically a fictional city from a 10 year old ps2 game).

Here's my latest work in progress:

Click for full view:

Here are some shots from the original game:

There will be more to come!

[Sgt Pepper 864]

I missed your BATs....

Good to see you still BATing! I like this new thing you got here, very interesting.

[Aaron Graham 4,417]

Yes, glad you are still bating, to me bats that look like this is so werd. What is the year in the game?? year 3000

[JayStimson 212]

Very interesting indeed.

[Evillions 552]

Sweet, steampunk much?

[mattlesmcepicwin 9]

I'm so excited for this!! Make lots and lots!

[Blueeyesman 5]

excelent building......hope you releace them... when your done making the pre-destroyed zarkand..you should maked the ruins version too

[PBGV103 729]

I think the majority of the modelling is done but I'm really lost on what about half of the materials should be since the game's images are so LQ.  I guess I'll have to be creative, but I'd love some advice.

There's also the issues with the water: First, I like the material but the water doesn't look natural around the building.  I know 3ds Max had a water simulator with Reactor back in the day, but I is there something similar for Mental Ray?  Second, these buildings aren't organized by a grid pattern and their bases can be seen through the water, so I'm not sure how to proceed with more models and lotting.

Even if I can get all of that figured out, gmax refused to export the test LODs and gave me error code=6 or some nonsense.  I think that means the LODs are too big for it to handle.  Is there a good way around that?  I don't want to chop the model into pieces and just how I can align them in the lot editor, plus antialiasing gets messed up when you do that.

Anyway here's what I have.  Click for original size.

[DanPeterson 45]

Wow that looks great. Old-Zanarkand is beautiful. Archades from FFXII would be great too. You know, I have a blitzball stadium...I think I got it off STEX. I've yet to plop it in my cities though.

[PBGV103 729]

I've been studying the pre-rendered CGI from FFX and it looks like most of the buildings are smashed together in strange ways that wouldn't so aesthetically appealling in RL. They were thrown together so they look cool and impressive when the camera is flying around fast, but if you freeze it there are a few things that don't make sense. For one, the buildings are like 75% concrete and stone, in RL no one would want to have a 100 floor building with only 20 floors with windows. So the first challenge I'll have is taking the style of the city and making the buildings more practical while keeping them appealling. I tried to do that with the building I've been working on. Next there's the issue of roads. In some scenes Zanarkand has roads, other times it just has footbridges between the buildings. Since that's not pracical at all I'll be adding roads but I need to come up with some attractive system of doing so and make sure that they don't overwhelm the buildings. No one wants a 10 square mile spiderweb of roads with only a dozen sparsely buildings, it's not attractive. As far as the buildings being squashed together, I'm still making many of the buildings attached so you still get that closeness, but I'm pulling them appart enough so you can appreciate their individual forms.

Not directly related, but I think this was the inspiration for the design of the city:

[Blueeyesman 5]

an idea would be to make the buildings have overhanging sections in game..then you can simulate the Zanarkand with more buildings closer together

For Example:

                       O

                   (OOO)      <- (example building sorry its bad)

           (OOOOOOOO)

                (OOOOO)

_________OOO___________    

                        ^                       

                   only make it so that these parts (bottom most O's im my example) are the plopable square and the rest of the Building just appears to hang over the other tiles...allowing you to plop other buildings nearby without the super square like distance

[PBGV103 729]

50% larger in 24 hours  lol

Blueeyes - I was thinking about doing something like that, but if I did I'd have to use the in-game water and I don't know how well that would interact with the models.  I do know that in order for the area where the buildings and the water meet to look anywhere near right, the LODs would need to be shrink-wrapped to the base of the model, which would probably crash the game.  So I'm thinking I'll use the water I came up with and make all the buildings almost like puzzle pieces.  The problem with this is the buildings would need to be rendered with the surrounding building present but set to only cast shadows and be visible in reflections.  Otherwise you'll get very strange looking shadows and reflections in the water that start and stop at the edges of lots.  Another problem is I need the water to be transparent so that the base of the buildings are seen going down into it; however, once rendered, Mental Ray, regards the water as a massive, partially transparent plane which would be a problem in-game.  It's not simple by any means, and there's still the issue of the model being too large to export, and by Zanarkand standards this is a medium sized building.  lol

I have made some progress in my knowledge of CADD in the past day.  I've finally gotten better at fixing boolean union errors by converting them to editable polys and welding the messed up vertices.  I've also learned how to reset smoothing groups, since boolean unions tend to give me lots of smoothing group errors, especially where they mess up the vertices.  All basic stuff I should have learned a year ago.

I'm still at a loss as to where I should and shouldn't add details.  When you're recreating a RL building you usually have countless photos to reference and there's no creative process on that end, but with this, I only have a basic style to follow.  I'm almost building an architectural culture from the ground up.  Should I take traditional architectural queues like the cliché egg and dart relief, or come up with completely new ideas and hope they look good to the eyes of the masses?

In other news I saw Mental Images site for iRay which looks AMAZING.  I'm wondering if the fact that it utilizes CPUs and GPUs would significantly cut down on render times, but it seems to only officially support the Nvidia Quadro and Tesla cards which are $$$.  Unfortunately I have a GeForce 9600M GT.  I'm also curious as to if Mental Ray materials can be converted to iRay materials.

The latest zoom5 render is brought to you in glorious 3000x2672 (after cropping in Paint).  Click for full view.

[PBGV103 729]

55505 objects=time to simplify.  I should be able to cut that down some.  I'm just worried abou how the UV maps will be affected.

Here's what it looks like now.  Click for full view.

[Sgt Pepper 864]

It's beautiful work so far Paul, I look forward to an ingame shot though.

I'm not really sure where to go on when it comes to anything in MAX but I think the roof textures could use some tweaking..especially the domes with the blue concrete. To me it has a slight allusion to carpet almost...

I'm wondering if there will be a version without the water plane there....as it would prove useful to some to plop it where ever in the game's lakes and what not.

[_marsh_ 1,118]

Hmm. Interesting design there.

As Sgt Pepper said a version without the water plane would be nice. Even with the water plane you really wouldn't be able to place this in many spots, becasuse this water does'nt blend in with much other watermods/plop water.

Something I want you to consider is making a custom Foundation for this. For me (I don't know about others) I can imagine this being plopped on the side of a mountain.  A foundation would not only be good for the side of a mountain, but placing it in  water would be nicer too. (The fondation would show through the surface.)

,marsh

*edit. I would really like to see this realesed soon. I base more off realism, but I would love to make a far-out structure in my city. I relize it's not done, but I'm anxious. 

[PBGV103 729]

I can start thinking about all of that once I figure out how to get it in the game. Gmax is refusing to export the LODs because they're too large, and it's not like I can make them any smaller.

[PBGV103 729]

Hey guys, it's been a while. Nothing has really changed but here's some shots of the model from different angles. I've updated my blog recently too. Don't forget to check it out! ManhattanModels

  Edited March 9, 2011 by PBGV103  

[T Wrecks 10,210]

Fancy stuff! If you can get this into the game to be plopped on water, some CJers will doubtlessly find interesting applications for it. However, at that object count it remains to be seen whether you'll be able to export it at all. :|

[PBGV103 729]

Actually the object count isn't the main issue. Gmax won't even export the LODs.

[Sgt Pepper 864]

The water plane looks amazing with that model! However, do you think it may have something to do with Gmax refusing to export it? Maybe it making the LOD's too big or something. Have you tried exporting the model without the water plane?

[SimHoTToDDy 2,939]

Are you using complex lods or just a simple box? How big exactly is this (in meters). There is a threshold for the maximum exportable size of a building, although this seems like it may still be within the constraints. Or is it simply that gmax is freezing on a render?

Looks groovy. Could definitely set the mood for a CJ, although people who use it will definitely need more like it in the future

[PBGV103 729]

The LODs are a simple box and I'm pretty sure the size is WAAAYYYY over the maximum that gmax will allow. The LODs are approximately 386x352x256 meters.

[kellydale2003 2,276]

That's one big LOD!!

I'm sure there's a script developed for gmax for LODs.. Have you checked out anything in that field?

[PBGV103 729]

That would be amazing if there was one out there. Has anyone hear of a script like that? I have no idea where to start looking for one.