Roleplaying
Today I’m gonna make a map using Dundjunni that I think might be beyond what Dundjinni once was designed for. I’ve been rendering rooftops for a while now, and have found and made buildings that look like a want them to. Now it is time to make a map from all the pieces I have.
First, when I had found my location for this part of the adventure for Operation:Fallen Reich, Wicked Times: In Vino Veritas, I searched the web for photos, and fund this one, High Street in Hythe, around 1930.
So, I took google maps, and went to street view and tried to find this actual spot, not thinking it would be even remotely possible, but I gave it a shot. I guess who was surprised when I saw this. Loo at that large clock in the building to the left.
So, I then went to normal overhead view to get a feeling for how this part of Hythe looked like, and the really scary thing was, I was off by about 50 feet from this spot when I first guessed where I was to look.
OK, into Dundjinni and start mapping. First I made a rough layout of the streets, with High Street going right to left. Adding pavement to High Street as they were seen in the original Photo.
I will not show you all the rooftops, but here is a collection of cars that I have rendered for use on this map, and other maps as well.
Now I started to add more basic terrain. This is the first rough layout of what buildings will go where,a and I’ve also added a few props like cars and horse carts. The reason I make those white spaces is that I know Dundjinni has limits in how much and how large objects it can handle, so I am prepared for the time when I try to render and it chokes. I will slowly add a few items at a time, same and make a new render, and let the map slowly build.
Here I have added most if the buildings around High Street, and also some street lights, trees and benches.
Here is a closeup of the slightly toxic estate to the South. The poor guy is trying to the things to grow.
Now I have added some more roof of a mechanical industry and a smaller building to the left. The render time for the map is now over 4 hours. OK, Dundjinni only renders using one thread, but 4 hours 100% on a 3GHz CPU is a lot of time.
Now I’ve added a few more props and also the buildings to the right: The render time is now 6 hours.
I only have one last large roof to add, that is whopping 14MB in size and by far the largest object. I thought of cutting it into pieces if this would fail, but adjusting large elements to pixel perfection doesn’t work well either in Dundjinni. Not that Dundjinni is a bad app, on the contrary it is a brilliant and easy to use map making tool, but it has some age to it, and I’m well above and beyond what it was designed for. Normally props are 100-200kB, and occasionally there are a few close to two MB. Now I’ve added a total of 60MB to it, and one file alone is seven times the size of what is seen as too large. But I did it. It rendered, in 9 hours, but it finally made it.
So, what do you say? Is this a good map? I like it, and the fact that it has some real story behind it.
Comments
Leave a Reply