Dev Diary 11: New 3D map and portrait graphics
Hello fellow Imperator fans and Imperatrix followers!
Today we have a lot to show you from our wonderful 3D graphics contributors, Help, OK and Pureon, who have helped to bring the world of Imperatrix to life, and two thousand years in the future from the original start date of Imperator: Rome.
Hi, I'm Help, also known as nugget in some dark corners of the internet, and I've been designing a whole new set of 3D graphical buildings for the mod. It's been an interesting process not only looking for reference images from a time where cameras were a rare sight, but also trying to recreate these buildings and cities somewhat faithfully in Imperator.
As stated this process would begin by gathering reference material, this i would often accomplish by simply googling something along the lines of “1800s madrid” or “1800s cairo”, which seemed to work pretty well most of the time.
Cairo in the 1870s | Middle East and North Africa city set:
Egypt in Imperatrix |
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Rome in the 1840s | Mediterranean city set:
Mexico City in Imperatrix |
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Next was making the models, and that process is relatively simple, just simplify the buildings in the reference photos into boxes and rooftop shapes, taking care not to make the shape too complex.
Texturing these boxes, or “painting” them, was a little more interesting. You need a 512 by 512 image, split into segments with all of the buildings surfaces on it, walls, roof and everything in between. Opting to make my own, but thoroughly lacking in 2D talent, i simply made 3d “walls” and rendered those, using the renders as textures. This might sound a bit cursed, and that is because it is, but its also the best solution I could think of that didn't involve GIMP.
Exporting these models into imperator was also an interesting experience, with its own list of long arbitrary steps, any of which would cause major problems if forgotten.
That whole process was made considerably easier with ross g’s blender .mesh export addon that you can find here:
https://github.com/ross-g/io_pdx_mesh. With the help of this tool, and with some trial, error, and help from Pureon, I eventually got the workflow down to a science.
The details of the process are a bit messy, and the documentation is scattered and confusing, so I've been making a google doc to keep track of my process, anyone who's interested can read it here:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1iXKPqFfV9vbiirA5iLV9EBUSAvm47EGIdVLa5BpG5Uc/edit?usp=sharing
Any relevant information will also be added to the Imperator modding wiki.
So far i've made buildings for 3 different styles of city, and a few monuments to fill the map. My most recent endeavours have been making various iterations and improvements to the things i've already added, such as making smaller, less dense buildings for the outskirts of a city, creating a more natural transition from dense urban, to suburban, to country.
Southern England, before outskirts were implemented
Southern England, now with outskirts
I’ll be sticking around for the foreseeable future helping with any 3d stuff that the mod needs, but for now ill hand the dd over to Sobisonator.
Wonders
Sobisonator here
As well as the city buildings, Help and OK designed for us a beautiful set of historical wonders, some of which will appear at game start and some of which can be built by the player or AI during the course of the game.
Wonders will not have "gamey" effects, but will provide prestige for those who construct and own them.
In France, the buildable Eiffel Tower.
Warsaw has its historic Warsaw castle
In Königsberg, too, the unique castle is represented:
The Russian capital of St. Petersburg sports the grand Peter & Paul fortress:
And in Crimea, the buildable Konstantinovskaya Battery:
The Kaaba has been rendered in excellent detail in Mecca:
And Washington D.C. is represented by the White House (under repair at the start date, thanks to the British):
More wonders will follow as we gradually populate the world's most famous sites.
Top hats!
As well as building models, we have been making efforts to distinguish our characters more from the base game's ancient-looking models. One unmissable feature of the victorian era is, of course, the top hat. The mod could simply not be released without it, so Pureon went to special lengths to design a full set of top hats each with their own personalities.
To "top off" the end of this dev diary, we offer a gallery of top-hat-sporting gentlemen curated specially for your viewing pleasure:
Next time...
We will be releasing another dev diary very soon, which will be our second dev diary on the trade & economy mechanics. Keep your eyes on the thread for more news about prices, demand curves and trade deals.
