so im brainstorming some new workflow methods, and i want to know if yall have any suggestions:
im designing a city for a project in mind. heres a draft map of what i have in mind:
essentially, i want to know what the fastest way would be to construct the geometry of this area while also respecting the placement and space of the roads. obviously i dont want a flat map with a bunch of empty space, so im trying to find the most efficient way i can craft low poly hills and mountains to use in conjunction with unreal engine 4. im currently experimenting with unreals in-engine landscape sculpting tools, but im not entirely sure unreal can match the low poly look i want. apparently some people have had luck using specified settings and materials to achieve the sharp geometry and cancel out smooth shading, but it also seems that the suggested method to get what i want is to just create static meshes in an exterior program, import it, and construct it like that
im going to give unreal engine a chance at making low poly geometry (unless anyone thinks i should try something different. if so explain.), but ive also began working on a back up in google sketchup, and this is where i have some questions:
-snoop-
sketchup allows me to use textures as awesome overlays to figure out where/how i want my landscape to be, while being able to maintain proper open space for the roads. the issue i have with GS though, is that actually sculpting to the specific detail id like would take a decent amount of time. i feel like id be able to cut that time in half where i able to use unreals landscaping tools, but im not entirely sure how id be able to do that with my road layout in mind (at least without memorizing the layout exactly.)
so what would you guys do? also for those who have worked with unreal before, would it allow me to use textures as overlays in a similar fashion to google sketchup?
EDIT: i was successfully able to pull off the low poly look i want in ue4:
-snop-
this is the outcome i expected. its monumentally faster than doing it through GS, yet is as easy and quick as sculpting regular landscapes in ue4. now i just need to figure out how to mark roads as easily as i can in GS and ill be in business!!!
I dunno if you're still at this stage still, but what I'd do is import the mountain model into Blender, create a separate plane "traced" model of just the roads (in other words, create a plane in the shape of the roads to-scale to your map model), extrude the 2D road-plane to create a negative or stamp of the road, modify the negative to shape the terrain how you want it (such as making the top parts of the extruded road wider to create a valley). Once the negative is complete, cut the original model with a boolean and the road model, and clean up the verts and edges.
That's just one way, of course, but would probably be my first shot. Another thing you could try is overlaying the image over the map in Blender and using the knife tool to create cuts along the surface to match the road pattern, extrude the road down, select all the road faces, and do S + Z + 0 (set Z scale to 0) to flatten the road. This could end up being the faster, cleaner route, actually.
Use the one above as a backup. :P
