Lashkar Gah - Round I
Entry posted by Michael Betke ·
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Over at Pure3d Visualizations we are working hard on our current project "Lashkar Gah". It will be a 4x4 km² realtime landscape viz for virtual training. Google a bit about "virtual training" to get an idea about that stuff. Basically marines are sitting in front of a computer and train combat - observed by an instructor. We did such solutions before but this time we are allowed to show the work plus even sell some of the assets after finishing the project.
We were given the Afghanistan based city of "Lashkar Gah" located in Helmand province. It's an interesting spot to visualize because of the river and mix of nature. We have stony desert there but also green landscape with trees.
Like in all projects the first step is to assembe the "combat area" out of Google Maps to get the satellite data. the combat area will be center of the map which decreasing detail reaching to the borders. This will give a intense and realistic feeling for the training people. Plus the coders can design missions while the artist works on the outer regions.
This image will be the color map in the editor to get the idea where villages, infrastructure and vegetation has to be located.
Now a lot of time goes into research of the area or similar areas. Afghanistan isn't New York so photos are limited. Especially on certain vegetation.
The landscape can be split basically in rural and village like territory.
Modeling wise this project could end up costing a million dollars rebuilding this city 1:1 but we have a budget for 15 buildings, one vegetation and one props set. This isn't bad because modularity is the key for such projects. Some buildings could be stuck into each other to get the impression of a long building. We also need plenty of mud walls to seperate the borders. After blocking out some buildings with just cubes as placeholders we decided to make "sectors" which consist of several buildings and wall parts. All those parts can be rotated or placed near each other. So areas are filled up quickly while taking the main-streets in account. The city doensn't need to fit the satellite map 100%.
Talking about Leadwerks 2.4 we had to use "infinite" view distance because "far" isn't very far and buildings just pop up on a fly through. The ability to define the area of "farness", maybe between 500-1000 meters would be handy.
While using "sectors" a feature to make groups would be very helpfully. Just selecting a group out of 12 buildings and walls would be a lot easier as selecting each manually over and over again.
Otherwise the engine does a great job for now and duplicating hundereds of buildings and walls at once is stable and fast.
At the moment there isn't much to see because modeling and placing the rural buildings consumes most time. For texturing the buildings a mix of vertex painting and decals are used to break up the monotounous tiling of mud on rural areas.
In the next chapter you will read about terrain modifications, texturing and the first vegetation pass and props pass.
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