World Building in Blender?

Support Basics & Interface
1

A big question, I know, lol but I’m wondering if Blender is worth spending my time to really learn well for what I’m trying to accomplish.

Basically, I’m trying to create a 3D, island-type world with a terrain and I want to be able to design objects, like simple houses and buildings, etc to place on the island. Then I want to be able to move the camera around the island and take renders at specific places. I also want to be able to create indoor renders. Any advice on how I might be able to accompish this, and if blender is the right tool? Like I said, I want to be able to start off making a large terrain the populate it with different buildings, trees and such. I’m not really interested in creating people or anything, just the 3d environment.

Thanks!

2

blender would work nearly as well as any other tool … if you want to start from scratch

the most convient way of getting a similar effect [you wouldn’t exactly be rendering] is using the level editor for far cry, which has a nice terrain designer and a bunch of buildings already made you can insert, and trees, and flora and… bunches of things that wouldn’t be as easy in blender [trvial, but time consuming… if you can model and texture]

3

I am looking for something even more complex like an open 3D environment, that provides a basic editor, but also scripting or similar interfaces, to add new functionality. BUT(!) the focus is not on gaming, but on interactively manipulating Geometry using our own algorithms. Does anybody have an idea about what framework or tool would allow that? Would Blender allow easy plug in development?

Thanks for any comments!
:ollix

4

wow, that sounds perfect, especially the pre-completed objects, since I’m not exactly the best artist lol. Can I alter the pre-done models? I would like to make them somewhat unique…and this level editor and objects are included in Blender? I’m planning to start with the user interface tutorial and go from there. Is there a specific level-editor tutorail? Oh yea, I need some basic atmospheric effects too, just a sky and some clouds, a sun and such lol.

If your wondering, my final goal is to create a world make out of slide-show images for a Myst-esque game I’m working on. I’d most likely be programming it in VB or C++, I just need a good tool to hopefully create decent-looking scenes.

Thanks!

5

Far Cry is a game, its editor is NOT part of Blender, you would have to buy Far Cry the game.

6

Blender has a very good interface for scripting in Python, and it is of course open source so if you want to make changes to the software itself you can. Many users of Blender are not specifically interested in gaming or using the game engine.

I think that Blender would certainly provide you with the functionality you need, and probably a lot of functionality you don’t need.

7

You could download World Machine 1.0 Basic

OR

download Terragen (unregistered version).

Both are excellent terrian creation programs. Export terrains to Lightwave .lwo and import them into blender.

1 Like
8

i have some notes about world building and blender, dunno if they are of any use, but feel free to see and comment http://studio.kyperjokki.fi/engine/MakingWorlds

one thing there is a link to InnerWorld: InnerWorld is a landscape generator running inside Blender. Terrains are generated from Blenders internal noise functions and external height fields. Using an graph editor different noise sources and operators can be used to define a production line for the mesh creation. The landscape generator can be used to fill the world with objects dependent of the terrains hight and slope. http://innerworld.sourceforge.net/index.html