Centennial Plaza in Crysis (continued)

So further to my last post regarding whether to model the context as realistic or abstract, we had a discussion in class which led to the idea that the surrounding buildings should be abstracted like a 'white card model' however the streets would be textured and detailed as realistic. This will give a nice juxtaposition between the two.

We divided the work up between those who will be using the crysis engine and we will then share this model. I have taken on the role of modeling the topography and the roads.

The image below shows the terrain and roads near completion. I have worked on it for at least 20 hours over the last week. It was a steep learning curve to model an area of this size in a software I am relatively new to. Major obstacles included creating a smooth slope to the model (the software isnt designed to model topograph but more for generation random topography like mountains), resolution problems with the terrain texture, applying textures to geometry, figuring out how to use flowgraph to make the traffic lights work (still not 100% resolved), working within the maximum importable polygons and learning to use the roads tool just to name a few.

Once I receive the sketchup models from the other students we should have a modelled a part of Sydney like it has never before!