Final Map 17/06/09

Well, team Atlar has finally finished the Hydropolis Map. I feel we have acheived our desired goals and have stuck to the proposed schedule. Although we had some problems down the line with the project such as layers being overwritten and work lost, everything got sorted out in the end. Id like to thank my team for the support and helped that we have all given each other to get our project to a completed stage.



Working on this project and using Cryteks engine for creating a real-time environment has inspired the way I approach architecture and visualisations. Thinking about using 3dsmax to create visualisations seems to be the medium of choice in this industry. But with emerging real time environment engines getting better and better, we might see this taking over the traditional non real time rendering programs. At the moment Crysis is setting the benchmark for realistic and good looking graphics and it is only going to get better.



Through research of the project I have also stumbled upon some apps on crymod that dramatically improve the visuals of Crysis. These files are config files that you only need to download and insert into the crysis directory. Using these configs improve visuals in almost every aspect from better shadows, water, reflections, vegetation etc. Upon using this I also came across a custom time of day file that was created by Hawkeyepuppy from the crymod community called Real Lifesis. Looking at some of the screenshots posted by hawkeye using this ToD file I was really impressed with how light can improve visuals. Here is a link from hawkeye's forum that contains come really nice pics using his ToD file that I recommend looking at:http://www.crymod.com/thread.php?threadid=44080.



After reasearching about these configs and ToD files I added it to the Hydropolis File and was quite amazed to see the difference although it really took a hit on the frame rate. At some stages becoming almost unplayable with a choppy framerate. But using this config file really starts to improve visuals into an almost lifelike state. I believe that this tool here together with the Crysis engine could really be the future in real time architectural visualisation.