Week #2: designing the map

Hello team, welcome back to my weekly blog post;

Today, I don't have much to tell you. For the first time ever, as its starting to become a tradition in this project for me, I've downloaded software that I never used; That software is called Blender™ version 2.8. This is a powerful, open-source, 3D modeling and renderization program that in our case allowed us to design the map for the technical feasibility prototype using a reference view downloaded from Google Maps™; It took me a while to get the hang of things, but after watching a few tutorials on the web I managed to create an elementary map; With a ground-floor, which is not visible in the image below, as it is hidden by the reference view, some walls and other world objects that more or less depict the real Forte do Bom Sucesso in Belém, Portugal;

I wanted to go further and create the roads and the bridges that you can see on the reference view. Still, I was struggling a lot with bezier curves and gave up on doing that for now since it is not an important objective at this stage.

I soon discovered I could get some free assets online and decided to add some mood to the scene by incorporating some tanks and trees; I realize the trees are not monochromatic like the rest of the scene, but I did not know how to paint the remaining meshes; Here is my final result:

Prototype map for the first level of the game; Version 0.1;

Thankfully the team is not composed only of Blender noobs, and our team-lead Andreia showed up to save my pancetta. As of the writing of this post, she is video-streaming the modifications she is doing over the map, so that I can learn something. She already did the pool, a platform above that pool. She also managed to make a ground-plane that is actually attached to the remaining elements of the scene! Check it out right here:

Prototype map for the first level of the game; Version 0.2;

Stay tuned for more news!